The happy meal toys that tied in with CBS’s Back to the Future Saturday morning cartoon. The first toy in the the set was a DeLorean with a little flint sparking flywheel under a clear plastic cover. A clear plastic cover that could easily pop off, upsetting some parents enough that McD issued a recall and pulled the toy.
I’ve still got one, mint in original bag, somewhere.
Actually I remeber when a quarter pounder was made to order and you had to pull off to the parking lot and they brought it out to ya
I remeber when they quit using soft serve in their sundaes and used some sort of frozen yogurt… thats about the time I quit going to mcds unless they had 29 cent cheese burger day or someone paid for it
I remeber they had some scratch off contest based on atari games ,
I go to the better fast food places these days like jack in the box carls juniors and a few local ones …
I remember this old jingle:
Grab a bucket and mop!
Scrub the bottom and top!
Tell me, what does it mean?
At McDonald’s its clean!
Boy, was that a long time ago.
I remember going to McD for a tour of the resturaunt at Kingsway and Edmonds in Burnaby. I was a Brownie, so it was sometime between '67-'71. We got a free burger and drink and a paper hat.
I practically lived at the McD’s in New Westminster and Burnaby during my teens. We used to stick straws into the styrofoam boxes and build towers with them. The staff must have hated us! I actually got kicked out of the New West building one night when I was 17 for fighting with a friend. Fist fighting. Over a boy, of course. She won the fight, but I kept the guy!
You got these game tickets with had an event on it. In the McDonald’s was a big grid with each event and you won different food is Americans got a medal in that event. Gold, Silver or Bronze, it was all good. And it wasn’t just the Soviets that boycotted, they led a boycott or the Communist countries. Needless to say customers just cleaned up!
They were originally going to try it in 1980 but the US boycotted. I’m pretty sure they still do it. I know they did it in 1988.
We did that too - probably sometime between '77 and '81/'82, only I think mine was with a school group, not the girl scouts.
I remember when they hadn’t invented quarter-pounders yet.
I remember the number served being in the low millions
I remember being able to get a burger, fries, and a coke for a buck.
Mostly, I remember when the fries were fried in real animal fat and tasted good and everything else was pretty good too. Now it’s always poor service, not clean, cold food, lots more expensive, and tastes bad.
I remember when they had real playground equipment like medal slides and a big heavy merry-go-round. When I was little, we would spin each other around until everyone was either flung off or bailed of because they had to puke up some cheeseburger.
“You can take the girl out of Surrey…”
Anyway, I remember setting up the first Canadian Happy Meal promos; it was 1979, and the meal was served in flimsy plastic flying saucers (4 designs, 4 colours), each with a different Star Trek Movie premium. I still have a mint-in-bag toy communicator and iron-on Starfleet shirt logo. With glitter. Lots of glitter.
I remember when we introduced timers for cooking the meat; before that it was all by eyeballing the characteristics; took a little skill, at least. I think computers run the kitchens now.
I remember when Ray Kroc came to visit our store in Maple Ridge, B.C. He was surrounded by a phalanx of suits, all hearty, power-smiling, crushing-handshake-giving players. Ray was in a Hawaiian shirt, and was actually pretty cool. I asked him about his time in WWI driving an ambulance, and I think he liked that.
I can go even farther back and recall my first ever visit to the Arches as a kid, when we moved from a small prairie town (which had two fast-food places, Dairy Queen and the Dog-'N-Suds) to Winnipeg. The Big Mac came in a red cardboard box.
I remember you could rent a garish yellow and red Igloo cooler and buy a gallon of “orange drink” concentrate for your group function, lol. (You proably still can, huh?)
I remember the year we were in Florida for vacation and whatever city we were in was a test market for something new called Chicken McNuggets. I tried them and they were great! Imagine my disgust when they were put on the national menu and ended up being batter-dipped beaks and gristle. Blech!
I remember if you had your birthday party at McDonalds you got a cake with Ronald McDonald on it.
I still remember bits of the song (an adaptation of “Mack The Knife,” yes?) and have a big plastic Mac Tonight cup. It’s puny compared to the supersize cups they have now, but at the time it was the biggest one offered. My best friend and I used to take our Mac Tonight cups to parties in HS to drink alcoholic beverages out of. Neither of us ate at McDonald’s much, but we went there just to get those cups. Ah, the memories.
Homer: “I like those odds!”
Anyway, I remember…
Going to McDonald’s with my childhood friends every year on the day before school started.
Going to every McDonald’s we could find to get the FREE Monopoly pieces (back when they said “no purchase necessary”).
Yelling at my parents to get me a Happy Meal on every occassion.
Being pissed off because they weren’t distributing THE toy that I wanted.
Getting a guided tour of a McDonald’s when I was 6.
Finding a McDonald’s in Athens.
Finding a McDonald’s in Ireland.
Ordering a McRib sandwich, and then wondering WHY I ordered the McRib sandwich.
I remember being terribly disappointed on my trip to Rome when we went to the Pantheon–the Pantheon for Pete’s sake!–and there was a McDonald’s directly across from it, not 50 yards away.
I remember as a kid seeing the signs saying things like “4 billion served” and thinking it meant they had served 4 billion different customers. This was a bit confusing to me, as I had heard at school that there were only 3.6 billion people in the world. So were they getting customers from other planets or what? It took me a while to realize the “billions served” referred to meals and not to individual customers.
Do they still have those green St. Paddy’s Day shakes? My mother always said those things tasted like some OTC antacid.
You can, but it doesn’t taste as good as I remember it.
Oh, and the Big Mac was invented right here in Western PA!!!
Mmm, I could really go for a Big Mac right now…
I remember the Mac Tonight commercials-I loved them too.
I remember Happy Meals in the box, and styrofoam containers. (though that was when I was little-I loved playing with the lid flaps.)
Mmmmm, Shamrock Shakes. The BEST.
I remember my godmother taking me and my cousin (her son) to McD’s for my birthday when I was little. We’d always get Happy Meals. Before that, she’d take us to the mall and she’d buy my present-I remember one year she got me this really pretty red dress with big black polka dots and a white collar. I wore that for my first day in third grade. Aunt Gigi was the best. (She died when I was 11).
I remember before “McDonald’s Land” there was Ronald McDonald and his “flying hamburger.” This was waaaaaay back in the mid to late 60s. He worked for this grumpy muscle-guy called “The Boss” who was always being sadistic to Ronald, making him work and doing the crappiest jobs, like cleaning up the restaurant. 
Just because it doesn’t say “Quarter Pounder” on the menu doesn’t mean you can’t get one. Ditto double cheeseburgers - just ask. Believe me, they’ve got a little button for it on their registers.
I remember when the only things on the menu were hamburgers, cheeseburgers, filet of fish, fries (one size only), soda and shakes. You couldn’t eat in–we dined in the car in the parking lot. The building was white, yellow and red tile, and had a built in tile bench outside. There was no drive-through. And they were not ubiquitous–there was only one (gasp!) in town, and I didn’t even realize it was a chain.
I remember deep fried apple pies. Mmmmmmm. Now they bake them. 
Then I moved to Japan and discovered that they still deep fry their pies. 
Plus, they have a wonderful thing called a bacon potato pie.
I don’t live in Japan anymore, and can live without the deep fried apple pie, but would give anything for a bacon potato pie.
Mmmmmm, pie.