Sadly, I feel like we live in an age where kids aren’t even allowed to be kids anymore. With phones and tablets and pretty much unsupervised access to the internet, children these days are growing up faster than kids my age did, and I’m only 25 lol.

My local McDonald's was remodeled a couple years ago with this drab gray color for the floors and ceiling and some tacky cheap plywood-like material for the walls while also being decorated with pictures of steam pipes. Now it feels more like a craft brewery in Seattle than McDonald's. The kids room was the saddest looking thing I had ever seen when compared to the expansive playplaces many McDonalds' had in the past. The experience didn't just feel anti-child but anti-human in general.

Kind of surprising that the main reason for the shift in this culture was only mentioned briefly as a side note: government regulation. Marketing fast food to children and developing “brand loyalty” in minors was heavily cracked down on in the early 2000’s to tackle rising child obesity and diabetes rates which forced fast food companies like McDonalds to change their child-centric marketing model since they were legally not allowed to do that anymore. It wasn’t a lightbulb moment for McDonald’s, they would have happily continued doing it had the regulations not stopped them.

We live in an age where kids aren't allowed to be kids because they are exposed to so much online way too early. But the thing is, where else are kids to go, what else are they to do? Go outside, where? The shopping mall that doesn't allow unsupervised teens? The park that got bulldozed for a parking lot? Or the small town designed for those with cars, making it impossible to walk anywhere without it taking 30+ mins? Kids are forced to grow up on the internet and not allowed to exist in real life. As much as I would love for kids to have time off of screens, parents don't have 24/7/365 to spend with their kids, and there isn't anywhere for kids to safely go nowadays.

"Manipulative Marketing" also known as "Marketing"

This feels like a form of hostile architecture against customers. Make the lobby bland and unappealing so people are in a hurry to get in and out. Give kids nothing to do so they get fussy and loud, and parents will feel pressured get them out of there faster. Conveniently discourages people from loitering, coming there to use wifi, bringing loud messy kids that might annoy other customers or create more work for the staff.

Getting a Burger King ad in the middle of this video honestly felt diabolical

I'm 37 and have two kids, and my kids like going to the McDonalds that has a play place. I'm fully aware they're germ factories, but so is any place that kids are around, and raising them in a sterile bubble is just going to stunt their immune system.

I think the bigger issue with this outside of McDonald's is that we don't really have fun spaces/things for kids anymore. At least not like it was back in the 80s and 90s. It's like kids today don't have their own "secret" spaces to be themselves and have fun without their parents. Like we had McDonald's, Nickelodeon, etc. Things that were not marketed to adults much at all that were ONLY for us as kids. I think kids today need outlets like that for their own imagination/creativity and should be brought back for the next generation. Kids should not just be miniature adults or treated like accessories to their parents. They're individuals.

As a kid I found out that if I went to McDonald's down the block for my house during birthday parties, I would be able to crash them sometimes and get free burgers and cake if I just acted natural and acquainted myself with the other kids and most of the time the adults wouldn't even notice. Once they did notice I already ate my food and was hopping on my bike to head home😂

at 13:50 when you referred to 2023 as "the 20's" gave me such a weird feeling, like I don't think I've ever thought of the fact we're technically in the 20's. Maybe I'm just too high

It feels like these companies' attempts at removing the human interaction from the experience is a deliberate move to avoid accountability. If there's no one to complain to when your order gets, inevitably, fucked up then they don't have to take any losses ever.

My kids, born in the mid to late 2000s, were among the last generation to see McDonald's as the fun place to eat. Just as they were outgrowing Playplaces and Happy Meals, the company was beginning to phase them out. I never liked McDonald's food, but I wouldn't trade those memories with the kids for anything.

Up until now, I didn’t think it was possible to have 2nd hand embarrassment for a company. But damnit that “virtual birthday party” segment had me feeling a certain type of way.

Northern Mexican over here, recently went to a McDonald's on a mall with a small playplace and kids running, climbing and playing with those Ms. Marvel and Stitch plushies from their happy meal. Was truly interesting seeing the joy of being a kid prevailing on that new sterile cardboard cutout deco the restaurant had.

It's so interesting watching this from a UK perspective. McDonalds is universally viewed as the place to go after the club/when you're drunk. I wonder how that developed.

Mc Donalds went from "Kid Friendly and Fun" to "Depressed 40y old just going for a Coffe" Edit: oh damn ty for all the Likes!. Read some of the Comments. Mixxed Opinions still all Valid, some are just older some are younger, hope every1 still has a good day! Head´s Up ppl Ps: dont forget to Sub, dude put some effort into it

I think a big part of the shift away from children's marketing is reflective of major socioeconomic issues within the last two decades. Birthrates are on the decline, food is much more expensive than it used to be, and families today have less disposable income to spend on fast food than they did 20 years ago. Childless adults on the other hand have more disposable income which is why they are being marketed to more and why stores and menus have been redesigned to better reflect their tastes.

The amount of lawsuits related to the play areas definitely had a hand in it.

Every McDonalds that is in my area, bar for one, has removed the play area entire after remodeling. I was so devastated because those McDonalds still had Nintendo 64s and GameCubes that were *actually* and *genuinely* free to play, as in the entire game! It was either Mario Tennis, Mario Kart, Donkey Kong, and a variety of other Nintendo games that was trending at the time.

I think after like 2010 everyone just went insane and most places became more sterile looking to soothe psychotic parent's worries

I had my 12th birthday in the basement of a McDonalds. They brought in a guy in a Grimace costume and we got to play Tony Hawk Pro Skater on their demo computers.

4:21 as a kid that loved the museum, you can’t bring your friends and run around and have a party, you go with a parent and like 1 friend as an outing. Zoos are so expensive it’s not even worth it imo, outside, lots of strangers, arguing over where to go, they just can’t replace kids hang outs like Chuck E Cheese or McDonalds Play Place. At least you were in a much more confined space and screaming was expected.

I feel like the world is getting less and less kid friendly. Sure, the playplace was a giant colorful science experiment, but that's just because the tunnels are nigh impossible for adults to clean. If it was just a regular playground that a minimum wage worker could just hose down before closing it would be a different experience. Nowadays, there's nothing for kids to do that isn't online

despite it's influence. the Super Size Me doc had it's own problems. like how the experiment has never been able to be replicated, how Sperlock didn't keep a log of his daily food intake, the fact that Sperlock was a raging alcoholic which probably did more harm to his body than eating McDonald's everyday, among other things.

Anybody ever think about how Ronald, despite being a clown, actually looks VERY FRIENDLY? Like, a lot of kids can be scared of clowns, but I never hear anybody say they’re scared of Ronald McDonald.

I...don't know what's sadder--the fact that McDonalds and other restaurants COMPLETELY phased out their big, loud, happy, colorful, freakin' iconic kids' stuff... ...or the fact that I (and many others) never even noticed. :( I'm a Gen Xer and grew up with stuff like the McDonaldLand characters, Saturday Morning Cartoons, etc. It's so SAD to think kids today don't have an equivalent to that.

Every fast food place is really going away from being a place child friendly. I’d say society in general doesn’t like noisy, bubbly, playing outside, energetic children.

This reminds me of the thesis someone wrote about how society has essentially shifted towards a hostile environment against kids. Its way too long to summarize properly but it essentially reaches the consequence of there being no room for any sense of childhood for future youths. Future children will grow up in drab, colorless neighborhoods, schools, and public spaces where it almost seems like being a playful child is discouraged, and instead life as they know it is something they just don’t understand yet because they’re kids. Then as teenagers, the lack of carefree, low stakes work available forces them to consider more serious careers for money early on as teenagers, priming them earlier on for the kind of serious, no-nonsense working class future the rest of their life will be. All the while the only concepts of fun that seem to have been validated for them are adult ones. Drama, substances, sensuality, materialism, all of these things are normalized and the kids of the future will be expected to pick out something they’ll “like to do” for the rest of their life. This in turn is what will cause the emergence of “little adults” instead of young adults. Kids acting, talking, dressing, and to the best of their ability, thinking like adults. You can see the existence of little adults today even, where although kids seem to mind their own business away from adults, they find themselves involved in increasingly more and more adult situations on social media and the worst cases have 13 year olds almost looking like 20 year olds in how they dress and present themselves. It’s tragic as an early Zoomer to see the later half and younger generations turn out this way.

Quick story about the jungle gyms. I remember playing in one that had a rope like bridge at the top that you crawled through. When I looked at it, it was frayed with duct tape on it and I refused to go across it. When I got down my mom was like "Why wouldn't you go across the bridge? Were you too scared?" So I asked her "Who fixes the playground when it breaks" and she said "The workers" and I responded with "The workers that make the food?" and she said "I don't know, probably?" so yeah most parents just kinda blindy trusted logos back then.

I'm amazed she found rotting food in the crevices of the play place because I was under the assumption McDonald's food cannot rot.

The amount of times they showed “super size me” doc in school was crazy I swear I basically knew the doc word for word

As a teen right now, I'm stuck in the strange place where things like mcdonalds play places, chuck e cheeses, and even mall arcades were at their prime when I was too young (and too poor) to go to them. Now that I'm older and my family is better off all of those things are being phased out. I remember seeing commercials for them on TV and being so excited for when I could finally go- only to end up in a place where I can but they are no longer there. It's the depressing feeling of being promised something wonderful only to be told it doesn't exist anymore. Ignorance is bliss and I, unfortunately, never got to have the ignorance that the world was always an unfriendly place for kids and teens.

To put things into perspective, large number of current McDonalds employees probably don’t even remember / know that they ever had party rooms or hosted parties - they are too young to have experienced that.

This is such a high quality, entertaining video. Like the editing, the script, the jokes, the research. Its all professional level.

That McVirtual Bday party bit was freakin hilarious 😂

This opens up into a bigger discussion on how modernization and social media affect children in the long run. I feel that we are destroying the idea of being a child by taking away things that are to be perceived as “childish”. Don’t even get me started on TikTok and beige babies. Little edit: The replies do a better job on expanding my point better than I could, thanks guys❤️

The "modernization" of McDonalds has made the dining room as boring as the kitchen. When I was a kid, I wanted to go to McDonalds to have a fun time. It wasn't until I was in high school that I realized how much I disliked the food.

i would love to see someone do a deep dive into 90s/2000s Happy Meals like- finding the people who were behind marketing and advertising at the time and what happened

16:43 Lmao the mom probably just saw the "Super S" and thought it was gang related

It wasn’t until I had my son (now 4yrs) that I realized how the world had become so unfriendly to parents. It’s actually kinda depressing :,)

It sucks how all these kid-centric places are disappearing. Kids these days will never have the same kind of experience I had. Their childhood will be nothing but tiktok and cocomelon. Kids these days don't want to go to the park, they don't play outside, they don't go to Chuck E. Cheese, they don't watch Saturday morning cartoons, they don't try to get that one cool McDonalds toy, etc

I still fondly remember the McDonalds animated show that I got in the mail (or from a happy meal?) back when I was a kid. I used to be obsessed with that show and I think I had almost all the VHS tapes of it. Also, I'm pretty sure the "gang sign" that the mother saw in the playhouse was probably just a cool S since they were everywhere. XD

You edit like a game theory video, which is honestly pretty high quality. Happy to be a part of witnessing this channel before it amasses a million subs 👍

More than ten years later, I am still depressed over the fact that my local Dairy Queen removed their outdoor patio tables with the permanent umbrellas and literally replaced them with nothing. There is just a ginormous concrete slab with no shade and no seating. How am I supposed to eat my Dilly Bar outside on a sunny day, when there's just a concrete Sahara desert? 😢

I think part of the minimalism thing is to make the restaurants easier to clean and feel more sanitary. Play places feel nasty, making adults maybe not want to eat there.

I can’t imagine how long this took to edit. PS… amazing video. Enjoyed every second of it. You deserve everything good coming to you and your channel! Keep up the great work.

This channel is going to blow up so much. Only seen 2/3 of your vids, but damn is your editing, flow, and entertainment value up there. Good luck man! :D

"Turns out customers weren't just an amorphous blob of mouths and money!" That won't stop McDonald's from treating them as such, though.

“The children? I don’t care about the children! All I care about is their parents’ money! Ah, the fact that their feeble minds are easily manipulated by cheap playgrounds and talentless clowns is no skin up my nose!” -Eugene H. Krabs (AKA Krabby the Clown, AKA Cheapy the Cheapskate), 2004

When McDonald's first came to China, it was ridiculed for being "Too childlike" especially with their first parade there ever. This made little sense to their market due to the one child law, it made more sense to sell to the parents not the kids. I imagine McDonald's has shifted their marketing after lessons they learned overseas as well.

McDonald's once sold these happy meal toys that are transformers in the shape of McDonald's menu items and I almost had the whole set at one point. That shit lives rent free in my head now.

the big concern for me is the modern push in america to lump in childhood with the teenage experience. i dont like seeing 8-12 year olds acting like 12-17 year olds on tiktok and instagram, it's uncanny. that being said there's still plenty of kids out there having "childhood experiences" especially in video game franchises

What I learned from this 1.) The world doesn't like fun 2.) One man who proved eating one thing everyday is a bad thing (amazing i know) can kill beloved mascots 3.) Teens are stupider than kids

In Australia outside of the CBD of major cities McDonald's locations are mostly on highways, most people Aus will use a McDonald's as their break on a road trip but would rarely go to one any other time.

20:39 that lady seemed genuinely upset she wasn't able to throw a birthday party to your son Newton. Bless her heart lol

This leaves out an important fact. In the 1960's, McDonalds, while not exactly struggling, was not the juggernaut that they would eventually become. They got a hold of a study that showed that in a vast majority of cases, it was the child who would decide where to go out to eat. They then began aggressively marketing to children. It paid off and McDonalds became the top fast-food chain in America. Eventually those kids all grew up and began taking their own kids, so the marketing model eventually became obsolete and unneeded. The damage was already done, so to speak. They now focus on keeping older customers who might be less inclined to see a Big Mac as a suitable meal.

As a kid from the 90’s the holy trinity for Birthday Parties were Mcdonalds, Chuck-E-Cheese and literally any Bowling Alley. So to see that all 3 are basically dying is a clear signifier that Fun is dead. These are the new Dark Ages. Where Brutalism is king and Colors are against the law.

Game cube boxes did exist, the one at my McDonald's was like hacked by McDonald's to vut you off, it was very annoying for years you could only play half a game and then it would crash or say something about how you have played as long as the game would allow. And when your half way through a game of super smash baseball, it'd force a rage.

My memories of McDonalds are playing with my friend in the playground after ice skating while our parents got the chance to catch up while eating dinner. Not only is it removing space for kids to be kids, but also removing a space for parents to be people while their kids are both distracted and safe. Going to a normal restaurant to socialise would require a babysitter; going to Maccas just requires an eye line and an ear out to the playground in case somebody gets hurt, but otherwise getting to interact effectively child-free for an hour or so. These spaces are important! Edit: Additionally, McDonalds was one of the go-to rest stop locations for my family on road trips, mainly because they _knew_ the bathrooms would be clean. And when you're a little kid who's been cooped up in a car seat bored out of your mind for several hours, being able to run the sillies out in the playground was super important! Both for the kiddo and for the parents who have to deal with the bored kiddo. It's actually awful seeing the play places not being an option anymore for younger generations of kids and their families 😞

I got a happy meal a week or two ago for nostalgia's sake, and the 'toy' that was listed on my receipt was a cardboard image of a pokemon. Not a card, just like a weird cardboard octagon thing. I feel bad for kids these days. IVe heard them say its to phase out plastic toys for environmental reasons but it seems more like a copout to me.

One thing that I think is weird, is how the kids targeted in the 90s were the teens targeted later, and then the adults. Literally the gradual stripping away of child-friendly elements (i.e. maturing) practically follows a whole generation into their adult years. I guess they had to maintain some sort of loyalty?

Kids stuff in general just seems either dumbed down or in a state of decay. I've been to 2 playgrounds that didn't have webs or cloudy plastic windows that half the time you couldn't even see through. It's probably still fun to run around the place and jump on the platforms, but a lot of the fun is diminished when you can't even see out of the parascope because the lense is opaque and there's a spider living in it

here i am high off my face just absolutely lovin the powerful engagement that you provide to the viewers!! you have earned a new sub !

There was something so special about 90s McDonald's. The character spinny chairs, the happy meal toys, the video game cabinets that never worked, the playplace.

It seems that there are fewer and fewer places for kids to socialize with each other and to play every year, for a lot of parents with low incomes McDonald’s and places like it also served as a very inexpensive way to entertain your children. I feel bad for the next generation of kids. Also I highly doubt the health concerns at McDonald’s play places were all that much worse then what would be at a normal park, I’d certainly say anecdotally that I’ve seen way more gang sign graffiti at my local parks then I ever saw at McDonald’s, and many other unsavory things at that...

They actually went away from advertising for kids when things like the documentary "Super Size Me " came out. They started putting calorie information out to the public and tried to clean up their image as being the reason Americans were becoming so overweight. They didn't want to be known as the unhealthy place to eat that targeted children at a time when the talk was all about healthier school lunches for kids. Even breakfast cereals stopped doing as many commercials as they had in the past.

The confusion in the last woman's voice when you asked if they did birthday parties haha. That's crazy how there's people who don't remember those being a thing at McDonalds now.

Fast food places were a real treat as a kid from a lower income single mom. It was never a thing to be eaten every day, but when we went? Playplaces even a SNES lover like me would tire myself out on, genuinely neat little toys that found their way into my toy box for years to come. It's a real bummer that general outrage, people not wanting to learn about nutrition, and a... pretty misleading campaign from a guy who knew the studies were off kicked off the end to all of that. I especially pity the live people who still work at them as things get more uniform, faster, and generally sterilized. Fast food is brutal work, it grinds people down, the money is unlivable, and the customers don't see them as fully human most of the time.

One thing that almost never gets brought up when discussing the removal of Ronald and co. from McDonald's marketing is that, around the same time questions were being raised about advertising to kids in general, questions were raised over the fact that the characters were also used by the Ronald McDonald House Charities, and how that might also be indirectly advertising McDonald's to children through charity work. A decision was made on whether to either retire Ronald from the charities or from McDonald's marketing, and they opted for the latter.

I really love the virtual birthday party segment, it's just fun to imagine someone going out of their way to fully immerse themselves in the experience provided by printable entertainment, like what a waste of printer ink

I bet the "gang signs" in the slide were actually the Super S and other easy-to-draw things kids would write in the margins of their school work.

I used to work at McDonalds and the “getting things done fast” mentality was toxic. Managers would clear orders from the board so the measured time it took to complete is as low as possible. Meaning that workers who had to get the orders ready and out needed to memorize every order and the number to it since an order marked as completed was now off the monitor. I was also told to go out into the rain to collect money from customers in drive through so the orders could be marked as finished faster.

I remember one of the most bizarre things for me post lockdown was going to the same McDonald’s that had always been near where I live and seeing that you order and pay into a screen, instead of telling the cashier what you want and paying them. It just feels odd having the only human interaction as getting handed the food and saying thanks. Only a matter of time before they find a way to completely automate the entire restaurant and in the process kill millions of jobs.

As a guy who watched "Super Size Me" I can see why they changed it.

I like the format of this video plus your delivery method and editing style

About the crappy toys, one of the effects of super size me phenomena was actually Disney dropping support for the company and stopping them from licensing their characters for toys in 2006. Disney would eventually go back on this decision 12 years later, but by then it was too late. They had over a decade of dealing out crappy toys no kid wanted. You would often see parents just buying these happy meals simply because of the small portion size and the toys that came with it were just left to the side or thrown out.

Worked at a Burger King in the late 90's... had a concerned parent come to the counter and complain her kid was in hysterics as they saw a "dead hamburger" in the playground. So i was volunteered to crawl through the whole thing to find a.piece of half-eaten hamburger sandwich.

Great videos dude! Catching style and good delivery. I'm glad KZfaq recommended me your channel.

Been working in advertising my entire career; so glad I discovered this channel!

I am honestly amazed that Super Size Me had as big of an impact on McDonald's as it did. I was born in the 90s and I knew how unhealthy McDonald's was before then lol. Like did people not know that super size fries weren't good for health?

The books at mcdonalds is honestly one of the only good things theyve done. Some kids get so excited over books! But there should def be a toy option for kids who have books and no toys

Saw this video on November 14 but didn’t finish it. Today I saw his videos on five gum and Chuck E. Cheese so I said why not wrap this one up? Also, I subscribed! Good luck on 106K!

as a fellow mid- 20's year old i have to say your video essays are super informative and well-edited. propsss

When I worked at McDonald's, I got yelled at by a couple who wanted a party for their kid, but got mad when I told them that we didn't do parties and haven't done them in a long time. I also got yelled at for corporate discontinuing items, raising prices, wait times, adding items, dirty bathrooms, the frappe machine being cleaned...

As a 12 year old, I always looked at McDonald’s as just a normal fast food place but I never knew it was like a fun place with a ball pit and jungle gym and cool stuff. Now it’s way more boring

For a modern child, how much time do they actually have to be a kid in their day? Assuming their family has enough time, money, or...parents..

Underrated channel! This will be big, keep on keepin on dude!!

Most restaurants these days don't really market themselves to children anymore. Subway doesn't market themselves to kids for really good reasons. Their mascot loved kids way too much.

It really feels like this generation just really hates kids lmao, even someone like me who enjoys the internet alot still needs a break. constantly watching huggy wuggy cocomelon minecraft school nonstop is probably so damaging to a kid that they would be better off smoking cigarettes and waving guns like those ghetto ass omegle kids in twitch streams

Most of this video just made me angry, but the gag at the end was so worth it.

I will say I remember enjoying the Playplace as a place where adults couldn't go, and it felt very secret and special. I feel bad for kids who don't get to experience that in some fashion. We also had stuff like tree houses, and tunnels in the snow. We don't even get enough snow here anymore for kids to be able to do that.

Someone said "McDonald's buildings went from colorful and fun to a depressed adult" That hit me hard

Great commentary. Subscribed. ❤

Gonna be honest, didn't expect this video to be so interesting. Well done man.

As a kid growing up in 2007 I've seen a mix of the old and the new. My favorite mcdonalds was in the near city with the playplace going all around the store, I would wave at cashiers, wave at people eating and have the time of my life. I'm sad to see them go.

The 80s and 90s was a great time to go McDonald's as a kid. Actually it felt like all of society was just different than and really pushed family oriented marketing and lots of fun Saturday morning kids shows, breakfast cereal with actual toys and then tons of toys.

As a first time viewer, I love the attention to detail, like the 2003 Viewsonic monitor and the GTA San Andreas startup sound. 💯

10 years ago my dad would make fun of me for going to mcdonalds as a teenager, he would say 'that place is for kids'. Well guess who goes to mcdonalds now because it's so classy... my dad.

I just watched this video while having a McDonalds lunch on my break. Yes I work there and this video is super true. I even asked a manager afterwards if we do bday parties and she said no. We still have a play place but it’s closed. A manager said it’ll be reopened soon but idk. The drive thru is also way more crowded then the lobby. Great video! Learned a lot. Especially the toys cause I was literally wondering a few days ago why the toys became worse. It’s understandable why they’re doing all this but it’s also sad. You put it best when you said death of fun. The world is losing all joy.