McDonald's Pimping Happy Meals With Cutesy Animations
McDonald's, which last week again defended itself from doctors' and parents' accusations that it makes kids fat, is out with timely new commercials that are notable mostly for not sending shivers down our spines. Created by Leo Burnett in Chicago (with production houses Kompost and Duck), the elaborately detailed 3-D cartoons subtly cast the brand's Happy Meals as not just fun but healthful and wholesome to boot. In an upbeat, honky-tonk spot, a twig-like young girl named Suzy van Zoom is so famished after tearing around burning calories on her new two-wheeled bicycle that she descends upon the local McDonald's franchise to fuel up. (She's accompanied, of course, by a stampede of equally hungry animal friends that she picked up while zipping through the zoo—perhaps inviting accusations from PETA that McDonald's makes penguins fat, too.) In a second, more mawkish ad (posted after the jump), a bird nests her young in what turns out to be one of the iconic boxes the Happy Meals come in. Whether or not the naturalistic, feel-good tone of these animations misleads youth toward obesity, it's safe to say any child who opens up a Happy Meal to find nothing but yogurt, apple slices, and feathers is going to be pretty pissed off.
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