All The Good Names Were Taken

So I'm sitting in McDonald's, watching my kids run around in their indoor playground, thinking about what I might blog on my admittedly more-robust parenting blog, when I start looking at the artwork on the side of a Happy Meal. The caption--and I don't have total recall--says something like, "Where would YOU go if you had a hummer?" And there's a map of the mountainous countryside, with arrows showing the hummer driving from one spot to another with captions like--and I'm paraphrasing--that if you come to a creek that's two feet deep, don't worry, you can drive through it! It suggests that you might want to camp underneath the stars, and if you come to a swimming hole, it suggests that you personally get out of the car and swim because it's good for your heart. I figure they had to throw that in there, so they couldn't be accused of not having an important message on this Happy Meal box.

Well, anyway, my girls are running around the indoor playground--I'm not out to totally trash the Golden Arches--the playgrounds are great, and the Apple Dippers are fantastic. I get those for the girls, and I share my fries, so we at least manage to get some sort of nutrition among our caloric-laden feast. And in case it matters, I should put it out there that I wrote a feature story about McDonald's Hamburger University a year ago or so. Again, this isn't an indictment of the restaurant--just the stupid idea of promoting a gas-guzzling, environmental disaster of a car to young children.

But then it hit me.

They're not after the kids. They're after the parents.

We all know that by the time preschoolers and tweens are driving, the Hummer is probably going to no longer exist, unless they've made some Hummers that are fueled on vegetable oil or some other alternative fuel. No, they're not trying to market the Hummer to kids. Not really. They know that parents buy the food, and parents are going to be looking at these.

For a moment, I almost admired General Motors' savvy in getting themselves to team up with McDonald's. (The boys all receive toy Hummers with their Happy Meals; and stereotypically, the girls get some sort of tiny action-figure doll, which Isabelle and Lorelei loved, I must say. But every Happy Meal has the Hummer "ad.")

But just as I started to admire the craftiness of GM, I decided that it wasn't admirable enough. After all, kids who can read are reading it, and the whole idea of promoting a Hummer as a great vehicle to take off a road through the countryside, throttling animals in its path and tearing apart grass and creeks and such--well, not so good. I'm not a tree hugger (though my wife is), but I am concerned about the environment as most people are these days... and so even if it helps to sell Hummers, I'm not sure what it does for the image of GM and McDonald's. It seems like a bad decision made by two good companies that should know better.