I recently got an email from reader Stephen Locking which alerted me to the YumChums website, a horrific marriage of fast food and kiddie cartoons. It really is an absurd bit of entertainment if you have a few minutes to waste! McDonald’s is really pushing this healthy kids stuff hard… I had discovered the YumChums a while back when poking around on the McDonald’s UK Corporate Website, curious to see if it was playing the health-food card the way the U.S. site is. Click on KIDS ZONE and you’ll be transported to a nightmare land of a cartoon Ronald McDonald and his fast food friends, which all seem to have a “eat me” complex. Oh, and it’s allllll about healthy eating and getting exercise…despite the fact that eating a 2000-calorie meal pretty much negates whatever exercise you got. But have at it, kids!
Sep 072005
That was both creepy and mildly nauseating. Would the illusion of having cartoon characters in your stomach really make a child more likely to eat vegetables and exercise?? I think the image of Ronald is more likely to make the kids say “let’s go to Mcdonalds so I can get a crappy happy meal and the shitty, made in china, commercialized, plastic toy that goes with it.”
As a new mother, I must say that I will be doing my best to keep my child out of McDonalds for as long as humanly possible.
I always hated Ronald McDonald, even as a child. He creeped me out. He still does. YUK.