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Tatiana Guyer
Professor Hanvey
English 100
24 November 2014
Poisonous Gifts
Everyone’s treated themselves to a cheap and tasty meal at a fast food chain
every once in a while. Whether it’s the adorably packaged Happy Meals we had
when we were children, or the nifty bucket of chicken we buy from KFC to avoid
making dinner for ourselves. In the book, Fast Food Nation, it explains that even the
occasional Happy Meal can be catastrophic to our health, and the health of the
nation. But what exactly draws us into the establishments to purchase such toxic
waste? Why, it’s the shiny package it comes in and the small price tag attached to it,
so to speak. If you could have a ten-piece bucket of chicken, two sides, a large drink,
and some kind of dessert for the low price of ten dollars, why wouldn’t you jump at
the chance at a cheap meal? But what happens when we buy this for our children so
man times, it’s their go-to meal when their older and on their own? Or worse, when
they have children of their own and feed them the same things because it’s all they
know. The fact that these franchises advertise towards the children and those on
low wages to sell their product is appalling. The children want the toy offered with
the meal, and will beg their parents until they get it. And the parents on minimum
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wages need to feed their children, and go with the best and easiest option. But it
doesn’t always have to be this way.
In chapter two of Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation, he describes a different
face of the fast food innovator, which is Walt Disney. Like the founder of McDonalds,
Walt Disney came from humble beginnings. He was a man with a dream and a
mouse who couldn’t be stopped on the road to success. He even described once how
a big business man once tried to buy Mickey Mouse off of him for an unfair price,
and when he refused to sell, the man tried to scare him into selling, saying he would
ruin Disney before his feet ever left the ground. But being the determined man that
he was, he never gave up on his dreams. Now his dream has become a reality and is
one of the biggest multinational mass media companies and has taken over movies,
theme parks, radios, and toys. But now, that humble man has become the front of
the ever-growing merchandising companies and is wiling to sell a product if it
makes a profit. It’s even tag-teamed with McDonalds so that they would put a Disney
related toy in every Happy Meal. Further in the chapter, Schlosser describes how
both campaigns market towards children, and persuade the child into persuading
the parents to but them the meals. They’ve even taken over schools to put up their
advertisements or to sell their products so that the school can gain funding. They
completely disregard the health and safety of the children to gain a simple dollar.
The issue that strongly stands out from this chapter is that these franchises
advertise towards innocent children to make them buy their product. They even
make themselves come off as a friend to the children as they prey on those schools
in need of funding. Those schools are starting to grow in numbers, so they let in
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these corporations with their tainted products and start to sell them to the students.
It’s been this way with Coca-Cola, McDonalds, and even Snapple. They all put up
their vending machines or their thawed out products in these schools and have the
children consume them and continue to buy them again. Even Schlosser brings in as
an example how the market extends to ad campaigns on television, toys, and theme
parks. Several parks including Disneyland, Six Flags, Universal Studios, and Raging
Waters all have famous food franchises into their parks to gain a profit from paying
customers who would pay outrageous prices for a halfway decent meal to eat.
Personally, I believe that these kinds of tactics to sell their products are
hideous and disgusting. Disney brainwashes children into believing that if they buy
a toy or a movie from them, it’ll be like you actually accomplished something of
substance, when really your forking your money over for some weird action figure
of sorts or historically inaccurate movie. McDonalds also makes children think that
their friendly demeanor and mascot means that there’s nothing to be afraid of, and
that they should keep buying their Happy Meals. And even worse, the two of them
have teamed up over the years to be some sort of unstoppable corporate machine
hell-bent on making a bigger and more expensive product to sell to children.
Now when you take these two powers and combined them under one big
roof, they could be unstoppable. It’s been seen several times that McDonalds
combines their advertisements along side whatever new fad Disney has come up
with. Now kids are going to buy Happy Meals for the new Big Hero Six or Frozen
toys. Unfortunately for the two companies, the thought of children growing obese
while watching a snowman dance around wasn’t very appealing to parents, so they
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started to grow apart from the product. This has put a strain on the partner ship, as
they point the finger of blame at each other, one for their unfriendly views of
females, and the other for having a creepy clown as a mascot.
McDonalds is famous for their mascot, Ronald McDonald the Clown. In all of
his forms, being a cartoon or a man in a costume, he is known as the best friend to
children everywhere. He is the face of all the McDonalds franchises all over the globe.
It’s even been said that the Happy Meal has become a staple in the American family
lifestyle. And it’s been statistically proven that 87% of six and seven year old
children and 80% of children ages eight and nine said that they buy the meals for
the pure enjoyment of the toys, and not the meal itself. Over the years, sales of the
meals have declined, but that hasn’t stopped McDonalds from trying to up their
game by widening the spectrum to not just toys, but prizes and sweepstakes. If they
make the prize in the box bigger than just a toy, they hope to raise sales of the meals.
And the fact that they are being sold as dirt cheap, you might even treat yourself to
one for old times sake. This kind of marketing is cheap, and half the time, the meat
you’re purchasing isn’t even quality meat. Not to mention the fact that it’s a
heinously unhealthy diet to put your children on. McDonalds is now the biggest
distributor of toys in the world, because the children feel safe with the friendly smile
on the side of those red tombs.
Disney is well know for their Princess themed movies for as long as they’ve
been making movies. While they do bring back fond memories of childhood, they
have corrupted children over the ages, some haven’t even noticed. For starters,
Disney has built an image that real beauty comes from being a size zero. All the
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female characters have thin waists and round hips and are described by their
romantic counterparts as being extremely attractive, with the exception of Snow
White. And God forbid if you’re ugly, then your just evil, like Ursula who was over
weight, Cinderella’s evil and ugly stepsisters, and Snow White’s villain who became
a wrinkly old woman by the end. The films also elude that sexual harassment in all
right, as a reoccurring theme of kissing a girl while she sleeps is romantic and not
creepy. And all the characters that are woken with a kiss don’t take it the wrong way,
but fall in love in under two seconds. Not to mention the fact that the original tale of
Sleeping Beauty has the prince rape his princess while she’s in her coma and
impregnates her with twins. It also emphasizes that status is important, and that
you’re either born into poverty poor or marry into royalty. Disney tries to take the
moral high ground by saying looks and stature doesn’t matter, but in the end, when
is the princess ever ugly or her prince ever poor?
It’s been repeated over and over during the entirety of this paper; the fact
that these franchises advertise towards the children and those on low wages to sell
their product is appalling. These kinds of things are a type of brainwashing put
upon children of a young age, so that when they grow up, the addiction still lingers
and they pass it on to their children. But it doesn’t always have to be this way. It can
be as simple as to just stop eating the product or stop feeding it to your children.
Also, to change the bigger picture, the fact that the food is entirely unhealthy. If fast
food franchises were to actually sell quality meat, good vegetables, and even healthy
drinks, people might be more inclined to buy it without fearing for their lives. When
the public is positive that eating the food won’t harm them or that the animals
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weren’t brutally slaughtered, making blood and feces fly everywhere in the process,
it would be on the whole a better world for children and adults alike. In the future,
we won’t have overly obese adults or mind numbed children.
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Bibliography
Morrison, Maureen. "JUST HOW HAPPY DOES THE HAPPY MEAL
MAKE MCDONALD'S?." Advertising Age Vol. 81 Issue 42
(November 29, 2011): P. 2-41. Article.
Noe, Eric. "Did Childhood-Obesity Worries Kill Disney-McDonald's Pact?."
ABC News. May 8, 2006. ABC News Internet Ventures. 18
November, 2014.
<http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=1937651>. Website.
Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation. Boston: Mariner Books, January 17,
2001. Book.