You’ve probably heard about this already:
McDonald’s tweeted a photo of the new Happy Meal mascot, saying: “Say hello to our newest friend, Happy!”
But within hours, the new square-faced red and yellow mascot with big white teeth was scaring away people on Twitter and had become the butt of jokes.
@DrZombield said: THAT! Is scary!@CraigGrannell warned: “HE WILL EAT YOU ALIVE! RUN!”
@Naive_Steve came up with his own tag-line: “Happy”, “It’s the meal that eats you.”
Wow, talk about tone deaf. Even the wording of the Tweet was scary:
Say hello to our newest friend, Happy! http://t.co/CuR3hU8Chj #HappyMeal pic.twitter.com/xgluLaHfcY
— McDonald’s (@McDonalds) May 19, 2014
Say hello to our newest friend? They should have gotten Al Pacino to deliver that line.
But you have to hand it to McDonald’s for the way they rolled with it. Operating on a variant of the classic principle that no press is bad press, they’ve had fun with the uproar:
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It looks like Wallace and Gromit made a trash can.
This mascot is fitting for this greedy corporation that pushes it’s super unhealthy junk food onto the impressionable children of America. No telling how many lives have been shortened by these peddlers of empty calories, high-fructose corn syrup and grease.
Exactly! McDonald’s and the Koch brothers are engaged in conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.
Finally, you understand what I’m saying, Mandrake!
You’re gonna have to answer to the Coca-Cola company.
Another quote from bud’s manifesto on corporate greed.
Everyone thinks I have it in for the super-wealthy. But I can’t hold a candle to these guys:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/05/24/iran-billionaire-executed-over-26b-bank-fraud/9535639/
Even a blind squirrel (or an Islamic Republic, in this case) can find acorns every once in a while. We could take a lesson…
http://kitchenette.jezebel.com/watch-terrified-children-first-encounters-with-mcdonald-1581365211/+ishaaran
McDonald’s entire rebranding effort has been a complete fiasco: http://southcarolina1670.wordpress.com/2014/04/28/ronald-mcdonald-from-apathy-to-loathing/
My girls – ages 14, 13, 13 and 10 – responded with laughter last month when they heard details about the “new and improved” Ronald McDonald. This is more of the same foolishness.