McDonald’s New Adult Happy Meal Toys Are Pretty Ugly

A promotional image shows a McDonald's Happy Meal box and Cactus Plant Flea Market promotional toys.

‘Member of McDonald’s OG mascots?
Image: McDonald’s / Cactus Plant Flea Market / Kotaku

In the latest example of not letting your memes be dreams, McDonald’s has announced that adults can reconnect with their inner child by opening a Happy Meal and discovering their very own toy. Yes, Happy Meal toys for adults are going to be a thing, at least for a limited time.

A McDonald’s promotional page reveals that the new Happy Meal is a cross with Cactus flea market, a fashion streetwear company. Instead of getting the toy that McDonald’s distributes to children, adults who order a meal box from the Cactus Plant flea market will receive either stylized figures of the McDonald’s mascots Grimace, the Hamburglar or Birdie, or one of the original characters from the CPFM, Cactus Buddy. The promotion will run from October 3 to October 30.

This news comes from a encrypted facebook message from McDonald’s in which the fast food company said, “One day you ordered a Happy Meal for the last time and you didn’t even know it.” I don’t know if McDonald’s social media manager wanted people to take this as some sort of threat, but the fact that he just left his message about it was a bad omen. Turns out McDonald’s did not become existential about the fragility of the human body, but about the longevity of its inner child. Also disturbing, but suitable for marketing purposes, I suppose.

A promotional image shows an artist's illustration for McDonald's upcoming adult toys.

Image: McDonald’s / Cactus Plant Flea Market / Kotaku

Read more: McDonald’s Pokemon Happy Meals are back, but fans aren’t happy

Considered generously, the promotion might actually do some good by giving youngsters a break from the crushing disappointment of adults buying up all the stock of toys promoted by kids. Concrete example, at McDonald’s Pokemon Happy Meal promotion last month, customers were supposed to receive a Pokemon spinner, a Pikachu cardboard piece and a pack of four holographic trading cards. Instead, many received leftovers Space Containment 2 toys after a group of scalpers bulk-bought McDonald’s supply of pocket monster cards.

It was not the first time the scalpers raised their collective heads during a Happy Meal promotion for children. Safe to say adults will only be competing against themselves on CPFM’s Happy Meal toys, as I doubt zoomers even know who the OG McDonald mascots are besides Sir Ronald McDonald. That’s probably for the best, given that a Google search for Hamburglar has a high probability of scaring them away for life if they ever find out about McDonald’s ominous rebranding in 2015. Yes, IRL Hamburglar is realand he will hurt you if he gets the chance.

Let’s just hope that on October 3 we don’t have a repeat of people making fun of themselves like they did during the rick and morty Szechuan Sauce Breakup. Given how ugly these things are, clown deli regulars probably don’t need to worry.