Toys ’r them
Meet the folks behind those addictive gifts inside Happy Meals,
CHICAGO— It’s eye candy galore when you enter the Marketing Store, the agency enlisted by McDonald’s over 30 years ago to develop the fast food industry’s most popular, inedible product.
The Golden Arches doesn’t have a toy factory per se, but it does have a giant, uber-modern lab in the windy city, where a team of more than 100 people develops the toys that will land in those familiar red and yellow-arched boxes — and eventually in the hands of their happy little recipients.
The bright, open-concept Marketing Store has a ping-pong table, an old-school pinball machine and a foosball table for employees to unwind. But it’s not all fun and games.
A lot is at play in order to get those lovable Nerf toys, Barbies and Monster High characters into the coveted Happy Meals that are often a child’s first taste of mass-produced burgers and French fries — and keep them coming back for more.
“The Happy Meal is to McDonald’s what fried chicken is to KFC,” says Ken Wong, marketing professor at Queen’s School of Business.
“McDonald’s is trying to re-create the magic the business was built on, with the brand positioning of being a family restaurant, not just another quick service place,” he says.
“And they know they can’t do that without bringing in the kids.”
The monstrous task of having a new toy line for boys and girls every three to four weeks means the production timeline is an overlapping, moving target in order to have new toys enter the rotation in stores on a regular basis.
McDonald’s has anywhere up to 16 different product lines in each calendar year. And there are often eight to 12 collectibles — often with boy and girl themes — during each store offer.
“We distribute 1.4 billion toys a year globally. There’s about 550 a year that are designed and distributed around the world.
“We do all of them here,” says Pam Edwards, McDonald’s director of consumer product safety.
“We like to stay fresh and change up the offer,” explains Lisa Fielder, the Marketing Store’s vice-president of client services, who manages the Happy Meal creation teams and develops promotions globally.
“Sometimes we run the same toy line around the world. And then there are instances where countries will have their own special offer at any given point,” said Fiedler, who has worked on McDonald’s toys for more than 20 years.
“Happy Meals are our lives. We want it to be something you can only experience at McDonald’s.”
It all starts out just toying with ideas.
Sometimes the toys are linked to upcoming movies; in other cases they are the brainchild of toy companies or developed based on kids’ current interests by in-house designers and engineers.
“We look at what is trending with boys and girls, what’s out in the marketplace now,” explained Fred Jasinski, senior vice-president, creative, at the Marketing Store.
“We try to look at things to really bring value into the price point of the toy that we’re developing,” he said.
The top fast-food restaurant chains reported to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission that in 2009 they spent $341million on toys to distribute with children’s meals — an amount well over half the entire amount ($583 million) that they reported spending on all marketing activities aimed at children that same year, according to healthyeatingresearch.org.
In 2009, these restaurants sold slightly more than 1 billion meals with toys to children ages 12 and under, accounting for 18 per cent of all child restaurant visits.
This is where the Marketing Store steps in.
“We understand the power of play and are masters at creating child engagement,” says its website.
Six weeks of intensive brainstorming starts about 15 months before the toy launches. For instance, they are now planning toys for 2017.
“A group of us get together: creative, accounting, planning team, safety. So it starts with a list of ideas, then we quickly get into pencil designs. The team might start sketching up what a character might look like. The safety team is looking at initial sketches before they get put into a presentation,” Jasinski said.
In nine weeks they have the injection mould that will eventually be used to crank out Minions and Muppet babies in factories in China, Vietnam, Europe and the U.S.
Here is a breakdown of the development process that shows how a Happy Meal toy makes its way from an idea to customers’ hands. Planning phase (15–18 months before promotion)
The Marketing Store works with the property or licensor (film, toy company, retailer, professional sports franchise, etc.) to begin kick- ing around ideas. Creative phase (12–16 months before promotion)
The Marketing Store is immersed in the licensed property process that includes gathering relevant information, brainstorming and concept sketching. They then meet with McDonald’s to present the toy concepts. Modelling phase (8–13 months before promotion)
The Marketing Store converts the concept sketch to digital 3D mode. After testing in several safety labs, the toy comes back and can be refined, if necessary, to ensure it looks right aesthetically.
The final approved model undergoes further, final safety checks. Production phase (3-7 months before promotion)
The Happy Meal toys are produced in both the U.S. and overseas toy factories, and are nearly ready to make their way to millions of eager little customers. Distribution phase
The final Happy Meal toys are shipped from manufacturing facilities to McDonald’s distribution centres, then to to restaurants in time for the promotion.