One of the most nostalgic things about McDonald’s is the McDonald’s Happy Meal. As children, customers would often buy Happy Meal kits from their nearest McDonald’s stores as a special treat. It would be sold with a combination of food items, the main dish, a side, a drink, plus a cute little toy, depending on whatever collaboration they would have going on. The company would usually work with a family-friendly children-oriented media franchise as a marketing tie-in.
The McDonald’s Happy Meal was launched in 1979, with the Star Trek: The Motion Picture toys in December. They have previously worked with Transformers toys, Looney Tunes Toys, and even Disney’s Snow White toys. Once McDonald even collaborated with Mattel over Barbie and Hot Wheels for the Happy Meal.
It is no surprise that kids absolutely love it! It is also no surprise that adults wanted to have something like a happy adult meal too. And fans were delighted when the company announced a limited edition of Adult Happy Meals in 2022.
Adult Happy Meals 2022
To cater to the surprisingly huge demand for Adult Happy Meals, McDonald’s released a line of limited edition Adult Happy Meals in collaboration with Cactus Plant Flea Market. To everyone’s surprise and shock, the sales went crazy for the Adult Happy Meals, with stores running out extremely fast. The Adult Happy Meal came with a standard Big Mac or Chicken McNuggets Combo Meal, where the customer had the choice of choosing whichever they preferred, plus a collectible Cactus Buddy toy. The influx of customers was so high that it began stressing out the McDonald’s employees.
Cactus Plant Flea Market
The company McDonald’s is collaborating with for the Adult Happy Meals is Cactus Plant Flea Market. This is a streetwear fashion brand known for its unique asymmetrical style and the use of puff prints that is growing across shoes and other accessories as well. They have designed the collectible toy Cactus Buddy and caricatures from McDonaldland of Hamburglar, Grimace, and Birdie. They have infused a unique design that depicts the characters with four eyes to stand out. This is McDonald’s first collaboration with an Adult Happy Meal.
Stressed-Out McDonald’s Employees
The launch of the Adult Happy Meal with Cactus Plant Flea Market has put a lot of stress on the frontline McDonald’s workers who are serving the customers. This is because the demand for the meals is so high, and since the meals take a while to put together compared to a standard Big Mac, this is causing the customers to wait for longer times too. Several stores were, in fact, running out of toys.
Employees took to the internet to share relief on how glad they were that they were running out of toys. In fact, if you open the merchandise website for McDonald’s, you will notice that all of the Cactus Plant Flea Market merchandise has been sold out. It is only a testament to how much demand an Adult Happy Meal has.
Reception Of Adult Happy Meal
Since fans had been demanding Adult Happy Meals for quite some time, this launch was expected to have a good response. However, the response has been off the charts despite popular ideas that adults are not fans of toys. The element of nostalgia, where people are able to go back to their childhood and reimagine buying McDonald’s Happy Meals as children, has been a major contributing factor in popularizing Adult Happy Meals.
Not only are stores selling out, but the internet is flooded with people who are disappointed that they were not able to get their hands on those meals. There have been several requests to restock, but it is yet to be seen if McDonald’s will restock them anytime soon.
When Will The McDonald’s Adult Happy Meal Limited Edition Period End?
Since this was McDonald’s first try at providing Happy Meals for adults, they decided to have a limited edition. This limited edition period with Cactus Plant Flea Market will end on October 31, 2022. However, it is highly likely that the stores will be sold out of the toys and the merch well before that date comes to pass.
