McDonald’s Happy Meals for adults were all part of a nostalgic craze

Nostalgia, he said, is a Greek word meaning “the pain of an old wound, it’s a pang in your heart far stronger than the memory alone,” as he scrolled through pictures of his happy family in the New York suburbs. “It takes us to a place that we long to go back to,” he told a spellbound boardroom.

“This device,” he added, “is not a spaceship. It’s a time machine.”

In other words, nostalgia sells in tough economic times. And McDonald’s learned from Don Draper in 2022, taking generations back in a time machine to the ’90s.

When the fast-food giant partnered with streetwear brand Cactus Plant Flea Market last month to sell Happy Meals for adults, complete with a limited-edition toy, the golden arches’ fan base went wild. Shortly thereafter, the fast-food chain relaunched its iconic collectible Halloween buckets, which first appeared in 1986. The strategy was intended to attract Gen Z and Millennials nostalgic for their childhood McDonaldland, as well as older customers who enjoyed Happy Meals when they were first served more than 40 years ago, a spokesman for McDonald’s USA said wealth.

But while those Happy Meals evoked childhood memories for some, the frenzy wreaked havoc on the workers, who were inundated with orders. “New adult Happy Meals are killing me,” wrote one user on the McDonald’s staff subreddit.

“We ran out of boxes the first day we had them, the second day we ran out of toys, and the third day we had to say the truck wasn’t coming until tomorrow,” wrote another commenter elsewhere on the subreddit. “It was… not fun.”

Some disgruntled customers unable to get their hands on a meal took to eBay, where adult Happy Meal toys cost as much as $300,000 a piece.

It’s not the first time one of McDonald’s product rollouts has been met with more excitement than expected. The 2021 revival of Pokémon Happy Meals also created a secondary market that flipped trading cards at inflated prices.

But the chaos at all of these Happy Meals is never really about the Happy Meal, says Clay Routledge, a psychologist who specializes in nostalgia. “The Happy Meal is an attempt to achieve something different,” he says wealth. “There is something you want in life, and a Happy Meal is a way of getting that.”

That something is in the past and says a lot about where our heads are after years of pandemic-related chaos and economic precarity.

The pandemic has triggered a wave of nostalgia

Nostalgia gives us comfort amid fear and uncertainty about the future. It’s a natural reaction to the past few years, because nostalgia is a social emotion centered around memories that make us feel more connected, says Krystine Batcho, a professor at Le Moyne College who studies nostalgia. The stress of a looming recession, rising inflation and the lingering fear of COVID-19 have created an excellent opportunity for McDonald’s to unleash a wave of nostalgic offerings and products that appeal to our desire for ease and a return to simpler times.

“Today, with all the turmoil, there are so many things that we’re not sure about,” Batcho says wealth. “This is the perfect storm for nostalgia.”

People of all ages can be nostalgic, but developmental transitions can be important triggers, such as: B. late adolescence, early adulthood and retirement age. Batcho notes that trading childhood for independence leads to looking back on moments of security. Because nostalgia is so closely tied to trust — something that has declined significantly in recent years — we’re more likely to remember our childhoods, which Batcho says is often the only time in life when we trusted someone fully.

So it’s no surprise that Gen Z, Millennials or even retired Baby Boomers were running for Happy Meals for adults. “On a broader societal level, when a culture is going through a major shift, you see consumer nostalgia really picking up,” says Routledge.

The separation from the Happy Meal

Businesses have plunged heavily into nostalgia to sell more product during the pandemic, a calculated move to indicate our heightened feelings of warmth towards pre-COVID times.

But finding the right marketing campaign can be tricky when it comes to capturing people’s emotions.

There’s also a risk of overdoing it and oversaturating the market: “It’s very complex because getting the mix right is genius,” explains Batcho, pointing to Subaru’s promotion and the Subaru’s popularity top gun Continued as successful examples.

Effective nostalgia isn’t about a specific thing, it’s about the emotion behind it. That was one of the problems with the adult Happy Meal, Batcho says: It aimed at a specific type of audience rather than the experience itself.

Acting out of nostalgia can also lead to disappointment when we find that reality doesn’t reflect our childhood. That’s how it was with the Happy Meal for adults.

“I’m a resident and an adult,” tweeted Eric Pillado: “But yeah, I ordered a Happy Meal because it came in a Halloween bucket. And I’ve never been happier. And yes, I did express my frustration that they were out of the pumpkin.”

Such frustration “destroys the nostalgic value,” says Batcho. A scarcity mindset can make nostalgic purchases tenuous. If the customer feels that the company is intentionally falling short or not launching enough products, they may lose trust in the company. As such, some customers may have viewed McDonald’s offering as a deliberate attempt to create a competitive market. As Batcho puts it, “Once you get angry, the nostalgia is gone.”

In a strange way, that enthusiasm was a sign of optimism

The backlash to nostalgia is the idea that it’s some sort of blocked development, feeding into the narrative of Happy Meal customers avoiding adulthood. But nostalgia is more about regaining that childish hope, says Routledge; In that sense, the stupidity of this madness is actually a sign that better things are to come.

Routledge adds that nostalgic people are often fueled by good memories, which gives them momentum to move forward. It’s restorative, he says, adding that studies show that nostalgia makes people more optimistic, hopeful, and confident that they can achieve their goals.

Adult Happy Meal lovers also enjoy the perks of intergenerational bonding. “He just lets the adult feel the good feelings he had as a kid,” says Batcho. “But now they can pass that on and take their child or grandchildren to the Happy Meal.”

Granted, the endless access to nostalgia the internet offers can sometimes make it less authentic. Routledge says that while nostalgia is adaptive, technology-driven nostalgia is less so. “A Happy Meal craze or something doesn’t really go deep enough into what makes the nostalgia meaningful; it has more of a superficial element,” he says, adding that it’s like a quick fix for nostalgia. While it may be tied to a personal memory, “it’s not a very nourishing source of nostalgia.”

But that superficial nostalgia for buying the same plastic toy can help bridge the cultural connection gap that people crave so badly, he explains.

Beyond connecting, it’s nice to be silly. “It’s good that it shows that we remember that we can handle the silly, the shallow, and just having fun,” says Batcho. “That’s why childhood was so precious in the first place.”

Who would have thought that a waxy grimacing figure could be a sign of our hope for the future. Or as Don Draper would say, a place where we know we are loved.