Who's Happy Now?

Because San Franciscan parents were unable to tell their children, "No, you can't have McDonald's because it's unhealthy, and I don't care what toy they put in the thing," the city of San Francisco passed a law that said restaurant meals with free toy giveaways had to meet certain healthy-food standards. Since McDonald's Happy Meals don't meet the standards, the problem is solved and parents don't have to do the hard work of parenting, right?

Nope -- the law was passed last year and will go into effect Thursday, which means the corporate sneakies hiding behind Ronald's wig had a little while to figure out a workaround. McDonald's will no longer give away the Happy Meal toys -- they will now charge you ten cents for them, with that ten cents going towards building a Ronald McDonald House. Sounds like a winner, right? Before, you could just buy the toy for the price of a Happy Meal, but now you can get one for a dime!

The problem is that the law prohibits selling the toys separately as well as giving them away with a Happy Meal. And in order to comply with the law, McDonald's can't sell you the Happy Meal toy unless you buy the Happy Meal. Once you buy the Happy Meal you can throw it away if you like, but if you're the kind of jelly-spined person who needs the city of San Francisco to tell your kids no because you can't, you're still going to have to buy a Happy Meal in order to get junior the toy that he is apparently able to force you into buying through his mysterious power to cloud men's minds or well-honed MMA submission skills. Meaning junior gets his toy, McDonald's gets its profits, and you get a wallet that's a couple of bucks lighter.

Not to mention the justifiable derision of people who live in most other cities.

(H/T Reason.com)