Nicolas Mancini
08/16/2021 7:01 AM
Clarín.com
International
Updated 08/16/2021 7:01 AM
Probably, if someone bought you Happy Meal at McDonald's, you will remember that the boy or girl you were once walked triumphantly from the restaurant box to the table with only one objective: to
open the glorious cardboard box, extract the toy, brutally remove it out of the transparent bag and taste it.
There was no paper to maintain the temperature of the cheeseburger that came in the package.
The small meat medallion got cold because one was distracted for minutes and minutes with the toy, a product that flirted between the professional and the homemade, between the original and the second-hand.
Bugs Bunny
,
Daffy Duck
and
Coyote
are once again in the hands of children - and some great ones - thanks to the collection of dolls that McDonald's currently gives to each person who buys a Happy Meal.
They are characters that, like the curious menu, are
not tied to a single generation
.
The men and women in their mid-thirties or thirty-five years who were McDonald's regulars today probably had a Looney Tunes "puzzle" toy in their possession.
The 1996 Space Jam Collection.
In '96, Warner's endearing "crazy" dolls were all the rage because they appeared on Space Jam and today the same thing happens for the film's sequel.
Opening the box that contains the new version of the hit is a smack of nostalgia.
How was this very symbolic menu born?
What were the weirdest toys that appeared in a Happy Meal?
And the first ones?
Let's see
.
Made in Guatemala
There are several theories about who created McDonald's famous “Happy Meal” menu, but we will be left with only one.
So attentive and attentive to this name:
Yolanda Fernández de Cofiño
.
It is strange that the American company has recognized the "owners" of each of its dishes and
not the Happy Meal
.
Some speak of
Dick Brams
as "father of the Happy Meal", a nickname that is largely true.
Brams worked on the menu in 1977, when he was regional and commercial manager for McDonald's, but the one who ended up patenting the box was Chicago franchise manager
Bob Bernstein
.
Yolanda Fernández de Cofiño.
Bernstein tested it, recorded it and recognized Brams' work and influence, which is why when Dick died in tribute he called him "the King of the Happy Meal."
Before these two characters played the Happy Meal game, a Chilean entrepreneur threw the first stone.
It was "Doña Yoli", the highest bastion of McDonald's Mesoamerica.
From the Red Cross to Ronald
“Doña Yoli” was born in '34, in Santiago de Chile, and worked in her youth in the Red Cross.
When his father was named ambassador of Guatemala, he moved to the Central American country.
I was only 21 years old
.
There she married
José María Cofiño Valladares
and had five children.
His great culinary influence had to do with building a McDonald's empire.
The first McDonald's in Guatemala.
Photo: Twitter
Willing to blindly change professions, Yolanda and her husband realized that theirs was the only country in Central America where there was no McDonald's.
So she enrolled at Oak Brook Burger University and, negotiation going negotiation coming, she
put up the first brand franchise in the country
.
The company
Ray Kroc
and
Richard and Maurice McDonald's
was nearly twenty years ago and it
was a shame that the home not yet known.
On June 19, 1974, José María and “Doña Yoli” hired thirty employees and sent them to work in a place between fifth and sixth streets, zone 1 of the capital.
They wanted it to be a totally familiar place, so much so that for the first few years they ran the business as if it were a large house.
Shortly after opening, Yolanda's husband decided to sell the franchise, but she objected and, taking a leap of faith, enlarged it.
Agreeable clientele, good negotiations and inventions involved, the woman
became the president of McDonald's Mesoamerica, a position she still holds.
In its power, it has hundreds of franchises in Central America, with more than 5,500 employees and 133 restaurants, of which there are 98 in Guatemala, 19 in El Salvador, 9 in Honduras and 7 in Nicaragua.
He also fulfilled one of his dreams: to build a “Ronald McDonald's House” in Guatemala to help low-income families living in the interior of the country.
Currently, his company also assists those harmed by confinement and the pandemic.
The Silver Ronald
McDonald's awarded Yolanda the Silver Ronald in '82
, an award for those who bring an idea to the brand.
He received it for coming up
with Ronald's Menu
, a dish that, as you might guess, would eventually become the "Happy Meal."
The recognition it received is, perhaps, the closest thing to making the menu creation official.
During his first years at the helm of the franchise, more precisely in 1978, "Doña Yoli"
realized that children did not eat her products because they were too big
.
There the lamp went on.
His way of solving this problem was by putting smaller toys and foods on the menu.
He called this combination
Ronald's Menu
.
The children no longer gave three bites of the Big Mac, but finished the whole hamburger and, as a reward, they got a gift.
Upon noticing the success of her invention, “Doña Yoli” presented McDonald's managers with her menu and in 1979, after Bornstein's registration and name change, the world adopted it as “Happy Meal”.
Color fact: "Yoli", meanwhile, had been recognized in 1980 for having devised another of McDonald's strengths:
birthday parties on the premises
.
The Happy Meal
It is a small cardboard box that is closed by the famous arches of the brand and contains
a cheeseburger, some small fries, a drink and a toy
with their respective alternatives, including the occasional dessert.
A Happy Meal of the XXI century.
Photo: AP.
The first collection of Happy Meal toys was called
Circus Train
and the gifts were as simple as the menu:
a McDoodle template, McWrist wallet, bracelet, puzzle, character eraser or spinning top could come.
.
Over the decades, dolls related to movies, television shows or any commercial success that would later become part of pop culture were imposed.
The first film that had its McDonald's collection was
Star Trek
.
The boxes from the late seventies and early eighties came with motifs from the film and inside them you could find boards, stickers, a bracelet and even a special phone from the saga.
The Happy Meal from Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
Photo: Capture YouTube.
Then came
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Transformers, Bambi, Garfield, Back to the Future, the Tiny Toons, Barbie, Batman, Jurassic Park, Sonic, Mickey, Shrek, Marvel superheroes, Star Wars, Pixar
and more.
The rarest toys
McDonald's delivered endless toys throughout its history
.
Cars, figurines, glasses, posters, dolls with lights, without lights, with movement, without movement, stuffed animals, etc.
Some collections were pitiful, some made no noise, and some were just amazing (see Atlantis).
At the moment, the collections change monthly or bimonthly, but at the beginning I spent more time between one and the other.
Leaving aside the new deliveries a bit, the retro -and even bizarre- essence of some can be rescued over others.
For example,
the
1982
ET posters
are a delicacy.
Few things more eighties than its design.
Their strangeness lies in the fact that they were not dolls from the famous Steven Spielberg movie, but rather strange drawings.
The poster that came in ET's Happy Meal Photo: Vadel.
A special mention deserves the glasses of the late eighties of
Dick Tracy
and
Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
The Happy Meal drink came with special glasses designed with motifs from the movies.
Dick Tracy's glasses.
Photo: EBay.
Extrañísimos are also toys of '89
MacTonight
, a character in the franchise medialuna head and glasses.
Surely some other child was a little scared.
That's right.
The strange MacTonight collection.
Photo: Amazon
In the '90s there was a collection called
Sportsball
that consisted of different designs of sports balls.
The balls of the Sportsball collection.
Photo: Pinterest
Near the end of the nineties, toys began to flirt with the technology of the moment and there came to be a collection of
Tamagotchis
.
Inspector Gadget took the laurels with a series of very curious toys that did not work individually, but together they completed the main character of the film.
The promotional poster for the Inspector Gadget collection.
Some of these copies can be found in online stores, such as Mercadolibre, Amazon or Ebay at ridiculous prices and more affordable costs.
There are no criteria.
The Space Jam 1996 collection, for example, is at 4000 pesos in Mercado Libre.
It is worth remembering that other famous hamburger fast food chains such as Wendy's, Mustard and Burger King, also have their children's menu and give away toys from other franchises.
But that, for now, is another story.
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