McDonald's really seemed to hit their stride in the 90's when it comes to Happy Meals. Direct product placement for movies by making toys of the popular characters lead to McDonald's becoming one of the main sources of kid's film promotion during the decade. From Lion King Toys (Writers note: I cannot wait to right THAT) article to Super Mario Bros. Toys, McDonald's received merchandising licenses for most movies aimed at the 4-12 year old demographic.
The Happy Meal was one of their most popular products on the menu, kids loved them because they had fries, chicken or a burger, and a soda; parents loved them because they were cheap and the toy could shut their kids up for a little bit.
"These should keep em quiet" -Average Soccer Mom
McDonald's honestly must have loved the sales of the Happy Meal because they decided to capitalize on them; they not only created a happy meal for the young adult demographic (Mighty Kids Meal), they also created the Arch Deluxe.
If your sandwich needs a diagram, it's probably gonna fail. Sorry Ronald.
What was an Arch Deluxe? If you are asking yourself that, then you are the 99% of the population that did not give a damn about McDonald's Adult burger. I don't blame you because apparently, according to stomach-witness accounts, it sucked. Yet, even after doing some test markets for the adult sandwich, McDonald's did a hard debut for the sandwich, complete with a marketing campaign that lightened the wallets of Ronald and his McDonaldland friends by somewhere in the ballpark of $300 million dollars. Yes, $300 MILLION dollars. For a fucking sandwich.
The price of this sandwich? $2.49. The price to market it? $300,000,000.00 Do the math.
McDonald's marketed this sandwich by having commercials saying that it was for adults, having kids say "I don't get it", and having fresh ingredients shown flashing by. None of this seemed to appease consumers. While McDonald's expected this sandwich to make them $1 billion dollars in its debut year, the sandwich fizzled out and was soon moved to the coupon section, being sold for only $1.00, before finally being taken off the menu entirely.
Arch Deluxe went the way of the McDLT, the Hula Burger, McHotDog, McLobster, and the McLean , it went to fast food heaven....
.....well maybe its fast food hell
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