McDonald's Adult Happy Meal Made Me VERY Unhappy
I’m seeing double! Eight eyes on that Grimace freak!
I’m one of those dads who diligently tracks the toys in Happy Meals because Chicken Nuggets are just about all my two sons will eat but also because I’m an emotionally stunted man-child.
So I was the ideal audience for McDonald’s recently announced Cactus Plant Flea Market Boxes. They’re pricey adult, or rather “adult” variations on the Happy Meal with larger food portions and a weird hipster collectible of a McDonaldland spokes-creature with four eyes instead of a piece of plastic advertising the latest Disney cartoon or Marvel movie.
When I learned of the existence of these throwback exercises in pandering nostalgia I rolled my eyes, scoffed loudly and conceded that I’d definitely be wasting my money on these newly available consumer items all the same.
Or at least I WOULD have wasted my money on Cactus Plant Flea Market Boxes if they hadn’t run out very quickly. It was a replay of the notorious 2017 Rick and Morty “Szechuan sauce” debacle, when a subplot on an episode of the cult show famously beloved by assholes led an army of nerds to angrily demand that McDonald’s bring back a dipping sauce briefly used in a Mulan promotion in 1996.
The fast food giant brought back the condiment that a cartoon tricked stoners into thinking they desperately wanted for one magical day but the demand was far greater than the supply. With the angry entitlement that they are known and reviled for, geeks flew into a rage at poor cashier jockeys and fry cooks who did nothing to earn their nerd anger.
A seedy, lucrative secondary market for Szechuan sauce and Szechuan sauce-related swag soon sprung up among Rick and Morty fans. As always, scarcity and large amounts of money over nonsense brought out the worst in people.
McDonald’s rollout of the Cactus Plant Flea Market Boxes proves that it learned nothing from the great Szechuan sauce Disaster of 2017. It made the same obvious mistakes in wildly under-estimating the demand for the Boxes to the point that it seemed to run out almost immediately.
That meant that only a fraction of the Ebay opportunists, overgrown kids, collectors and hipsters semi-ironically reliving their childhoods who wanted in on adult Happy Meals got a chance to actually buy them.
The toys and boxes were all snapped up early in the campaign yet people keep asking employees about their availability all the same. People like me!
When we asked a teenaged employee who was clearly extremely high about the boxes his irritation was palpable. The capitalist consumer frenzy over these dumb, overpriced gimmicks was harshing this young man’s mellow.
Yet I regularly trudged into McDonald’s all the same just to find that, predictably, they were still sold out. My dream of paying 11 dollars for a glorified Happy Meal would seemingly be forever just out of my reach.
Little did I know that I would end up spending much, much more for much, much less. I thought I found a way to get my hands on one of these trash treasures when they showed up as an option on Uber Eats.
All I had to do was grossly overpay for food that would be lukewarm and congealed by the time it reached me. Yet I was willing to be ripped off by two insidious corporations to the tune of just over of TWENTY SIX DOLLARS once taxes, delivery fee and tip were included.
That’s right: I paid over twenty-six dollars, or enough to buy a decent steak at a nice restaurant, for a Big Mac, fries and Dr. Pepper in a tacky box with a cheap, ugly toy.
At least that was my foolish hope. When the Uber Eats driver dropped it off, then ran back to their vehicle, it was in a plain paper sack with no toy. I had paid a small fortune for an unappealing mass of grease and salt and starch in hopes of experiencing a cheap but potent surge of nostalgia for my McDonald’s-poisoned childhood.
Instead I was given the same inevitably disappointing experience as always, but worse because of the forty minute lag between when my food was just barely made by assembly line and when it was haphazardly delivered to me.
There are few things in the world sadder than a cold Big Mac with a skinny little grayish patty of beef, American cheese and iceberg lettuce crumbling in your hands with the notable exception of paying twenty-six dollars for that sorry excuse for fast food.
I tried to get in touch with my delivery driver but he understandably and perhaps correctly ignored me. The same was true of the store itself and even McDonald’s corporate when I tweeted angrily at them, trying to wield the power of public shaming.
None of that worked but Uber Eats’ customer support did the bare minimum and refunded me my money and gave me a fifteen dollar Uber credit.
It was better than nothing, but I would rather have a four eyed Grimace figure I now felt a weird animosity towards than my money back.
Yes, the adult Happy Meal at McDonald’s made me very unhappy and I am, unfortunately, far from alone in that respect it seems. It seems to have pissed everyone off, which seemed inevitable given the way the cynical campaign was mismanaged and thoroughly botched.
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