The Huffington Post is reporting that McDonalds stores in the UK will soon be offering books instead of toys as prizes in their Happy Meals. This is - if you ask me - pretty much the best thing ever.

 

First of all, kids do not need any more toys. I know that sounds curmudgeonly of me, but it's true. Especially the cheap plastic toys that come with Happy Meals. These are just merchandising tie-ins to the latest fad movie, and all they do is encourage kids to consume more advertising. (Sure, the book is a promotional tie-in with the movie War Horse. But the promo item is a real book, "Mudpuddle Farm" by the author of the book "War Horse.")

They also incite this collectible mania in both kids and adults. Which is ridiculous, because as previously mentioned, they are just cheap plastic merchandising tie-ins. (I should know - for a while, many years ago, I was in the habit of buying Happy Meals and selling the toys on eBay. At the time, you could actually flip a popular Happy Meal toy for about ten bucks, which basically subsidized the cost of the meal, once you subtract all the fees involved.)

 

Better still, it slots a book into that place where a kid is expecting a special treat. Where else are you going to find a book being pitched as a prize? 

 

I remember how excited I was, as a kid, to get a Moby Books Illustrated Classic with my fast food meal. Special sets of four Moby Books were released as Happy Meal prizes in the late 1970s. These were greatly abridged and illustrated versions of classic books. I was particularly smitten with Black Beauty, of course, being an eight year old girl. (The other three were The Wizard of Oz, Tom Sawyer, and The Three Musketeers.)

 

People are turning up their noses at this new development, saying that it only encourages childhood obesity. I guess any Happy Meal prize short of a Bowflex machine would incite some people to shake their finger at McDonalds. I can't blame them for it. But if it's inevitable that kids will demand the occasional Happy Meal - which it pretty much is - then why not enrich their minds (while fattening their bottoms)?

 

According to statistics cited in the Huffington Post article, one in three UK children does not own a single book. I imagine they all have plenty of cheap plastic toys, though! I really hope that McDonalds in the US starts doing this, too.