I did see that, when I scrolled down.
At a guess (based on drive-thru lines I’ve driven past), adult breakfast and lunch are the major source of revenue. Everybody seems to have some sort of kid’s meal, but even most of the McDonald’s I go by have dropped their Play Place areas.
Yeah, that approach didn’t work out so well for Rax.
Didn’t some McDs have ball pits for the kids? If those wouldn’t be disease vectors, I don’t know what would.
Yup. McDonald’s particularly leaned into their kids’ offerings, but for most fast-food restaurants, their primary target is what we* called HFFUs (pronounced “hoo-foos”; it stands for Heavy Fast Food Users), which are primarily guys in their 20s and 30s. That Hardee’s/Carl’s Jr campaign was targeted squarely at HFFU guys.
(*- I work in advertising, and have had fast-food clients in the past, including Taco Bell and KFC.)
When I worked at McDonald’s I had to clean the ball pit. My kids were never allowed to play in them.
I’m guessing that removing the Play Places was not so much that they were discouraging kids from going there, as that the maintenance and liability were a big financial loss. I’ve heard about people having to climb into those tube slides and clean up big trails of poop, etc. UGH.
Balance of Nature: I’m sort of wondering when this company will claim this stuff cures cancer. 
What the fuck is with all the commercials with people talking about their swampy, stinky regions “Down There”? One dude actually tells us about how his nuts and turd-cutter stink like a rotten Oyster Shack.
That’s just fuckin’ Nasty!
You use your tongue purtier than a twenty-dollar whore, Gato!
I’m sure it wasn’t to discourage kids but rather because the business changed enough that they no longer needed to attract kids (and therefore the Play Places weren’t worth the maintenance/liability). I’m old enough to remember when the Play Places were new. Fast-food was very different then - it was a treat. It wasn’t terribly uncommon to let kids choose exactly what the treat was - whether it was pizza or McDonald’s or Chinese or … Then there were the birthday parties - of course a kid would rather have their party at a McDonald’s with a Play Place or a ball pit than at some other place with just food and a birthday cake. But then things changed - McDonald’s fell out of favor for birthday parties. My kids were born in 1989 and 1990 and I think there was a single McDonald’s birthday party in all the parties they were invited to. Fast food became “lunch” or “dinner”, not a treat. There’s a reason that Play Places started to disappear long before COVID and it’s almost certainly for the same reason that fast food restaurants are getting away from red and yellow buildings - you don’t need to appeal to kids when your customers are mostly adults picking up breakfast or on their lunch break.
Considering @doreen just above and @kenobi_65 about 5 posts ago, I wonder how much the main group of working age fast food eaters today is exactly the same kids who grew up with McDs as their working parents’ common family dinner option. Not the same generation; the same individuals?
I was no stranger to fast food as a child nor as a teen or college kid. But it was occasional, not constant. And once I could drive, any cheap meal out might well be quick or eaten in the car, but it’d sure be a local chain or Mom’n’Pop over e.g. McDs or Burger King.
Nowadays they’re pretty much invisible to me. Yes, they’re around here. But they pass by unnoticed on the way to almost anywhere else to eat. And if I circumstances dictate that I gotta have fast food I still prefer the one-offs, the local chains, or the up-and-comers to the big established names. If 50 years later I’m still following the pattern I established in teenhood, I have to assume lots of other younger folks are doing the same.
I’m sure it’s been derided before, but would drug marketers please stop running ads showing a person who is bizarrely holding up a smiley-face sign to conceal her depression?*
Beyond this meme being tired and hokey, it’s pretty certain that with most people who need antidepressants, your struggle is already plenty apparent to those around you, especially the ones that really matter.
“You look kind of down, Heather. No wait! What a lovely upbeat sign you’re holding! Now go finish that project right away.”
*notice how, even after the person is taking the drug, they still keep carrying the smiley sign in a handy bag, just in case? (similar to the individual with urinary urgency who used to have to walk around everywhere hand-in-hand with her bladder, who has been banished to the background following treatment but is still lurking around somewhere. It’s a more than subliminal hint that the Pharma Magicians can’t promise effectiveness.
Candy-Gram for Dungo!
We went to one last summer, for, expedience. The drive-thru seiously sucks. Now there are two lanes of ordering, that merge into the delivery lane. It reminds me of that one guy whose blanket was too short so he cut 18" off the bottom end and sewed it onto the top end.
You get me. 
$60 worth, I figgur
It is extremely common for depressed people to be able to fool everyone. It’s called masking.
It’s how people can wind up dying by suicide and no one even knew they were unhappy.
That’s why I thought that commercial with the smiley faces was actually kind of clever.
Hey, stop complaining. All you ever do is complain.