The Response from Mickey D's

You may recall this post in which I emailed McDonald's, letting them know that I was not happy about their decision to include skanky, crotch-flashing, tube-top wearing roller derby hos My Scene dolls in their Happy Meals. I'm not sure what I was expecting, exactly. Probably a company form letter thanking me for my opinion, which is pretty much what I got:

Hello Shelley:
Thank you for contacting McDonald's to share your comments about our recent Happy Meal toys. I'm sorry you were disappointed with the theme of this Happy Meal.

You may be interested to know that our Marketing staff reviews several different criteria when designing toys -- playability, durability, safety, quality and popularity with children just to name a few. The latter is always a challenge given the number of Happy Meal toys we offer every year. We often offer toys from kids' favorite television shows, retail toy lines and movie or television characters.

Please know that we would never intentionally upset our customers. Your comments are important and have been shared with our Marketing staff for their review. They've assured me they will consider your feedback when planning future Happy Meal offers.

Once again, thank you for letting us know how you feel. We hope you'll enjoy our future Happy Meal promotions.

Chris
McDonald's Customer Response Center

Well, Chris...thanks. I feel better now that I realize that McDonald's offers so many toys per year (which all wind up in my garbage can sooner or later) that they had no choice but to offer a line of roller-derby skank dolls. By the way, I was in Target the other day and I saw about a thousand toys. I saw a Kelly (Barbie's little sister) doll in an extremely cute little witch costume for Halloween. I also saw some My Little Ponys in adorable Halloween costumes. But perhaps Mattel has had enough of you. I also had the TV on the other day, and I think there are about 942 TV shows for kids that don't involve whores on skates. I can certainly see the difficulty that you face though...so many toys to offer, so few choices for themes. I wonder what toys Burger King is offering right now? Oh look: Little piñatas with a tiny surprise inside each one. Now that's really cute, not to mention age-appropriate. No micro-mini skirt, tube-top wearing skanks over there. However, I am pretty excited that McDonald's is going to "consider (my) feedback when planning future Happy Meal offers." Call me.

Edited to add: After a very nice lady commented on this post, saying she found my blog by Googling to find out what other moms thought of this toy in the Happy Meals, I did a little Googling myself. I discovered two things: First, if you Google the words "My Scene McDonald's moms", my blog comes up as one of the results! Cool! Another thing I found out is that I'm not the only one that is unhappy with this particular promotion. Apparently, the folks over at The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood aren't too pleased either.