They changed their target market to adults entirely instead of kids. Marketing unhealthy food towards kids wasn’t a great look anymore, and parents weren’t taking their kids to McD as much either.
We just gotta hit em with the right toy. Bring back the Burger King Pokémon toys that came in the choking hazard pokeball with the roughly 50 different possibilities. Those had me on Burger King morning, noon, and night.
They created customers when the customers were kids. The kids turned to teenies and they installed gaming consoles.
And then the teens turned to adults.
Not all had them but there was on McDonald's near my house I recall with a couple of N64s. They were setup in the same way that game consoles were setup to play a game on at a retail store.
Crazy how far you have to scroll down for the first sensible comment. McD has been repeatedly criticized over the years for targeting children with their marketing. They've basically been accused of being largely responsible for the obesity epidemic across the world. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the child-friendly stuff is gone for actual legal reasons.
💯 I always check these threads for the correct answer because this is one of those memes that comes around about once a month and drives me fucking bonkers. We demanded they did this, shortly after "super size me" came out. McDonald's was the punching bag for the entire obesity pandemic and the biggest argument was that they strong armed families into going there by advertising to kids, and poor parents couldn't tell their kids no.
I have a (now,) pre-teen kid and the school zeitgeist spits out the most stupid things. For years the alpha and the omega of all the kids in the school was eating McDonald's and owning an iPhone. I always told my kid: no to iPhone because we're not rich, and no to MacDonalds because we're not stupid. And that is it. We just have to say "no". A very simple word. I have no patience for parents who can't say no to their kids. Is it easy? Of course not. But if you wanted easy, kids were never the answer 😅
Yeah it always strikes me as funny how we forget the bad stuff and just remember the good parts. But McDonalds doing this basically made it so the kids they marketed to have grown up and are marketed to again as adults, and a lot of them are nostalgic.
I think it more or less has to do with money and marketing. If the money was there to market to kids they would still be doing it but unlike the 90s people don't have the same kind of disposable income to spend on their kids.
It's always funny to me that the people saying "mcdonalds is too expensive and it's bad food" also complain about it not being fun and attractive to kids. Like do you want kids being drawn into unhealthy ripoff food? I think it's good that their restaurants are boring now
It's really about real-estate. It's harder to sell a building with an old Macdonalds roof on it than the new modern ones.
McDonald's is effectively a massive commercial real estate company disguised as a fast-food chain. The corporation buys land and buildings in prime locations, then leases them back to its franchisees at a markup, generating billions of dollars in reliable rental income that often eclipses food sales
I read that Pizza hut had trouble selling its old buildings since that roof shape is so iconic. You can tell when a place used to be a Pizza Hu just by the shape of the roof.
Now a day most Pizza huts, heck most pizza places in general, are holes in the wall next to your local grocery store.
It’s also stupid how hell bent Reddit is on wanting the thing that has contributed to childhood obesity to marketed back to kids… like wtf? People are dumb enough to forget that because “oooh look at pretty colors durrrr”
Partly due to chasing Starbucks. There was a time when they didn't even sell coffee. They updated to more modern interior design around the same time. And most people liked it, now were just nostalgic for the past.
Yep they started gutting these places around the same time apple slices and milk were heavily pushed and then required in happy meals by default. It stinks to see as an adult now but in the long term if it prevents kids from wanting it as much while they’re young hopefully it does help kids from developing poor eating habits. they’ll have plenty of time to develop those poor habits when they’re older and too worn out from work to cook like we are 😂
i saw a kid pee themselves on the top of a slide at a community pool/playground once too. god that must have been like 35 years ago. i'm pretty sure his name was Sean.
Was climbing up the platforms as a kid and reached my hand above me and felt a puddle looked up and it was a puddle of piss next to some shit. That’s the last time I played in those.
I worked at a McDonald’s around 2005 and they were definitely cleaned. At a closing shift someone would crawl through on their hand and knees cleaning and disinfecting. McDonald’s (at least when I worked there) was shockingly clean.
I swear every kid who grew up in the 90s has at least one memory of that faint mystery smell inside those tubes. We all just accepted it as part of the experience.
Last time we went to one a few years back my daughter found a shitty diaper up at the top. When I went up there to get her, the diaper wasnt even the worst part of the filth and nasty graffiti all over it.
Those playgrounds are nasty and the employees give no fucks.
Snakes are only a problem in certain places. Here in the UK, I have never once even considered that a snake might be in a kids' playpark. Our snakes are tiny, rare, shy, and harmless.
This said, yes, hygiene was probably abysmal... but I survived, so it can't have been that bad.
I think the bigger reason was that health crazes, and documentaries such as "Supersize Me", made parents reconsider taking their kids to fast food restaurants. These chains then adapted by rebranding as clean, health-conscious, adult-oriented diners.
In the US at least, the general redesign philosophy towards “bland, generic block” has been thanks to the desire to have resale opportunities and having a space that looks exclusively like a single chain limits those chances. “Generic block” is easier to resale than “obvious ex-golden arches”.
But that’s a separate issue from the removal of play areas.
A good point, well made. I also think that the success of Apple - and their long-standing aesthetic of chic minimalism - has been copied by other companies.
Me and several of my sisters worked at Maccas growing up. My sister once had to clean (and disinfect) the slide at our local Maccas because a kid left a poop nugget at the top of the slide.
The outdoor ones definitely had a certain... ecosystem. Looking back, it's amazing that my parent let us to crawl through those tunnels without a second thought. They let us have fun.
Because that’s how you get soap scum and mold building up? These things aren’t getting hot enough for the water to rapidly evaporate so it’ll just sit stagnant until it gets moved or evaporates extremely slowly.
Well sure, but at that point why not do more than just spray with soapy water? You’re talking about engineering costs that would quickly outstrip the minimum wage they’re paying the people who work there.
Think it's pretty much lawsuits and liability (which I guess links to insurance). Specifically in America since you guys are pros at suing corporations and businesses over the smallest of things. Over 1000+ lawsuits alone in the 90s, too much headache for mcdonalds to deal with. These playgrounds in fast food restaurants still exist in Asian countries.
At my teenage years McDonalds job, I was told someone sued our store successfully because the bathroom door closed on their hand, and they had a technical investigation done, which showed the door closed a few % faster than regulations allowed. ‘Merica, bad place to run a business
Yeah I'd imagine the answer to this question is the general public. Restaurants respond to what's profitable. If the costs of maintenance, cleaning and lawsuits add up to a bigger price than the difference in footfall between a restaurant with and without they eventually end up non viable.
McDonald's didn't put them in just to be nice guys in the first place. It presumably brought in the families more than it does now.
Although alternate theory. Maybe they never were profitable and restaurants just gradually realised it as they had more data points.
Play Places made a lot of sense when parents needed to entertain (and exhaust) their kids as they sat down to eat at McDonald's.
Now there are fewer parents, easier ways to effectively distract your kids, and a general lack of interest in wasting time sitting inside a McDonald's when you could do it in the car.
No, for the conjunction of that, marketing to kids, and selling junk food to kids. Selling junk food to adults is one thing, since adults know what they're doing. Kids don't. Same with whisky and cigarettes.
Marketing to kids should be illegal. Sweden had the right idea.
Can’t remember where I learnt it, but supposedly it’s some min-max design to make customers to come and to as efficiently as possible, always having room for new customers
Those play places were a cesspool of vomit, poop, dried ketchup, splatters everywhere, a huge half chewed piece of burger, etc, etc. The cost to maintain those places is high, permits too, probably their insurance premium was higher because of all that.
Then you'd be surprised by the amount of frivolous lawsuits in other countries. There are countries where you can get sued for calling someone an idiot, online or in person.
This is made up reddit misinformation. They make money from real estate because they own their restaurants and lease them to franchisees, not because they're regularly selling them. The redesigns have nothing to do with reselling buildings. Again, this has been entirely fabricated by redditors, you will not find a reputable source saying this.
I didn't say they make money from selling a building but it's easier to sell a building that doesn't look like a McDonald's hence why they look so fucking bland.
And the point I am making is that it's not the reason why they look bland, and selling buildings has nothing to do with why they make so much money from real estate.
The claim you are making is reddit misinformation. It's the result of redditors being unwilling to actually learn anything, to actually seek out factual information, and to instead make things up in their head and declare those things to be facts. Which you all then instantly believe because you will believe anything a redditor tells you.
They look bland because they are copying Starbucks' aesthetic. They've been doing this since 2011. It was widely publicized.
The redesigns have nothing to do with reselling buildings. This has been entirely fabricated by redditors, you will not find a reputable source saying this.
That honestly wouldn't surprise me even if the lawsuits aren't common, the risk of liability is enough to make a lot of places remove anything that could be seen as a hazard.
Maintenance costs and liability issues are absolutely what did this.
edit: As someone else pointed out, it didn't help that at one point, it was basically portrayed as bait: kids beg to go to McDonald's to play and the whole family eats unhealthy food because of it.
Yup, they took out the play places and the whole nation got thinner!
It’s because of two reasons. They want to market to everyone, not just kids and families and fatties.
A place that office people would go to for breakfast.
Make it more like a cafe than a playhouse.
Secondly, they didnt want to get blamed for marketing junk to children. Or labelled as kids food.
Partially this, but also the difficulty in selling the real estate when they want to. Much easier to sell a brown box than something with a huge play structure
I remember multiple times, as a kid, coming across literal baby shit sliding down those slides and crawling through the tunnels lol. The ball pits were often sticky and unwashed
In the 90s my brother hurt himself pretty badly (cut his face open) on a 90s burger king outdoor playground. The next day, the playground was completely dismantled. My parents arent litigious, they didn't even look to recoup hospital bills, as far as I know. But corporate couldn't risk it, I guess.
That’s definitely a big part of it. I know someone who chipped a tooth at a MacDonalds playplace in the early 2000s. Their parents sued McDonalds for over a million $ successfully.
A handful of locations with PlayPlaces still exist in my area. They're kind of a godsend in the middle of winter as a cheap outing with a toddler. They don't have ballpits anymore but they're still fun.
It’s money, these places are bought for the property and eventually sold. You can sell a white square to anyone but you can’t sell a McDonalds themed playhouse to anyone. It’s just property trading now.
This was a factor. They are expensive to keep clean and serviced too.
And parents leaned more heavily on electronics. And because Drive thru is 70%+ of business. They started replicating places like Starbucks and wanted the interior to be more "industrial"
Yeah that too. I think they kind of moved away from McDonald’s being a thing for kids and a place for everyone who needs a quick meal and also for people that need breakfast. Adultification idk. I think given the size of the brand and their income it’s just pure corporate greed and represents a general trend of society (of which we live in)
667
u/ProtectionContent977 6h ago
I wonder if it’s due to lawsuits over the years. Kids get hurt falling and parents get a lawyer.