McMarketing

I remember, as a kid - maybe 7-8? - my brother and I were invited to a birthday party at what was then considered prime child quisine: MCDONALD'S!

Like, really, the parents got together and brought all their kids and we had a...a...cheeseburger? Or a Happy Meal? I distinctly remember fries and juice, but not much mcanything else. I lie, of course there were sandwiches from McDonald's there. But that's not where I'm going with this.

I remember comparing the whole thing to my birthday parties. Parents would get together at somebody's home, bring their kids, here's your food, stop running, could you please not, and then they'd just sit and have a drink and talk about whatever it was that adults talked about.

We kids? We thought that was crap! Unless there was a cat or a dog. But otherwise crap. Well, you know, the regular crap, where we ran around and played hide-and-seek and moved things and broke things and generally had a lot of fun!

But, like...not McDonald's level of fun! That place was where the colorful tables were. Where you could jump into a surprisingly small ball pit and potentially win prizes from Happy Meals! Yeaaaaaah! That was the place to be! Just like on TV!

So there we were, my brother and I, at a birthday party for some kid (if you're the kid whose birthday it was and you're reading this, please, take no offense, I have no recollection of whose birthday it was) whose parents could afford to throw a party at McDonald's!

Like, this was amazing! This was it! This is what we wanted! What we saw on TV! On the billboards! The food, the drinks, the ball pit, the...well, that was kind of it, BUT IT WAS THERE!

And then I remember, after everybody got their Happy Meals and stuff and quickly gorged on them, my brother and I, we were still hungry! So we ask the person we had designated in our minds as "Lady in Charge of Food and Stuff" if we can have another burger.

And she says "No!"

And we're like "What? But we're still hungry!"

And she says "Let me see what I can do about it."

And off she goes and 5 minutes later returns with another cheeseburger for each. And we were happy again! (though we were told we shouldn't tell the other kids and eat them as discretely as possible...as if...)

But, even at that age, I remember thinking "You guys have cash for a McDonald's birthday party - the most luxurious thing I've seen on TV - but not for 2 burgers for each kid?"

God knows if she actually managed to get two extra burgers or if she'd asked my parents if they could pay. Anyway, the point I'm making is that kids probably have a natural tendency to evaluate market value based on limited data.

I mean, I know now that the economy in the mid-late 90's was in shambles, but even so, being able to rent the place means you could afford extra food, if necessary, right? Well, that was my thinking back then anyway...

And now, as I bite into a Double Whopper from Burger King - that's right McDonald's! The King beat you to it after all! - I'm thinking...well, I'm kind of asking myself whether the people that had invited us there were either being very careful with their money, as they had overpaid for the perfect birthday that their son wanted (I do remember it being a boy's birthday), or if they were being just stingy with cash.

But that's still not where I'm going with this. The point of this is marketing, really.

Imagine you're either the birthday boy or one of the kids invited. This is THE BEST DAY EVER! YOU GOT TO PARTY AT MCDONALD'S! And now I'm asking myself: why?

Well, of course, because the parents consented...but were probably not very happy about it. But we children had, by that point, been indoctrinated into the paradigm of Western imagery - look at the colors, the smiles, the songs, the ENGLISH! 

This was where the high life was! Not home with delicious home-cooked meals, with loving people who would shower you with attention, with comfort and very few questions asked. Here! With the colors and the weird, soggy, boring burgers (honestly, the first time I held a cheeseburger from McDonald's I thought "what a sham!"), but with exactly, EXACTLY what you saw on TV!

And now, when McDonald's is so cheap you could literally live off of them (well, survive, not live), I think...how susceptible were we back then? How easily did we fall into that trap? How much did we scream and shout to get our parents to take us there?

And...now, 20-something years later...what other traps am I falling into? What other idealized images of "the good life" am I falling for?

I'd honestly go into it, but I have to order a new headset and desk online, so I gotta go.

Cheers!