KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Bob Bernstein’s 9-year-old son ate the same cereal from the same box every morning and stared at the packaging so intently, it gave Bernstein, an advertising executive, a great idea.
“I got to think,” Bernstein recalled from his office at Bernstein-Rein Advertising Inc., “kids want something to do while they’re eating.”
And so the McDonald’s Happy Meal, a huge moneymaker for the fast-food company, was born, pairing a child-size meal with a tiny toy. The product, tested for two years, went into national release 25 years ago.
Happy Meals lure millions of children to McDonald’s Corp. restaurants, and also bring in sales from parents who pick up a Big Mac or Chicken McNuggets for themselves when they stop in. Happy Meals are served at 31,000 restaurants in more than 100 countries and have made McDonald’s the world’s biggest distributor of toys.
Marketing experts agree, it was brilliant.
“Happy Meals proved that you could actually ‘brand’ a meal and make kids harass their parents for it,” said Adam Hanft, president of Hanft Raboy &Partners, a New York advertising and marketing firm.
Exactly as Bernstein had planned.
“My feeling was if you get the children to think about McDonald’s, Mom would bring them there,” he said.
What set the meal apart was the way it paired food and entertainment – an idea later advanced with McDonald’s addition of play areas.
“Up until that point, McDonald’s was just a restaurant,” said Jay Lipe, a marketing consultant.
Bernstein’s firm had been working with McDonald’s franchisees for 10 years when he was challenged to create a promotion that would bring children back under the golden arches.
He holds the patent for the product’s packaging and a bronze Happy Meal in his office – a gift from McDonald’s on the meal’s 10th anniversary – thanks him “for bringing the Happy Meal, a bold idea, to the McDonald’s system.”
Associated Press
An original Happy Meal box is shown beside a 10th anniversary award in Kansas City, Mo.
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