Get them young - McDonald's Foray into Toys that train future employees or customers?

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Permalink Reply by Cissi Sherlock on October 14, 2009 at 3:43pm

Interesting post!

Why, do I say, you ask!

When my 16 year old was young, her favorite toy was a cash drawer we bought her when she was about 2. As she got older, we got her another one. When other girls were playing with dolls, she was playing with money. When she was in the 5 and 6th grades, I was fortunate enough to come across some high school math books that taught, home bookkeeping, how to manage a checkbook and bank account, and several other life skills that involved math.

Just the other day, I found out that she has changes he intended college major to Finance.

But here's the purpose of this post.

Last summer my daughter went to work for McDonald's. The first day she was on the cash register, we looked at each other and laughed. She and I both remembered the days of her playing with the little cash drawer that she would never let me throw away.

Yes, we still have it!

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Permalink Reply by PK Koduri on October 15, 2009 at 1:07pm

Cissi - I understand the value of learning toys but wasn't sure if this was the right approach. My only concern is that we are bombarding young kids with branded messages right from the day they are born.

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Permalink Reply by Cissi Sherlock on October 15, 2009 at 11:16pm

WE had fun! That's all that counted. I did not associate all the adult id's to the reason why we got her a cash register. She wanted it. She got it. She liked it. she had fund with it. And a fitting by product was that she was able to benefit from having it at a later age.

Do you think people are exploring the political and idiosyncratic reasons why I bought her Scrabble, Jr? What might have been the branded message in that? (Forgive me!! I'm playing good cop-bad cop)

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Permalink Reply by Laura Frank on October 15, 2009 at 2:13pm

I had a McDonalds restaurant for Barbie when I was young, complete with the trays and little hamburger buns. Funny, I have been a vegetarian now for 14 years!

But yeah, I find this annoying. They already market heavily toward children with their bright colors, clown mascot, playgrounds and toys.

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