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Happy meals, Learning, and random drops


Officer1473

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Well, I just heard about San Francisco attempting to ban happy meals. If there is any wonder why, we'll have to look at a concept that should be quite familiar to the onling world. The random drop.

While training animals (of which people are a part), there must be a goal to be obtained. There must also be an incentive to reach that goal. Usually, it's a clicker, followed immediately by food. The animals associate the noise of the clicker with receiving food. This is called a conditioned stimulus.

The whole point of conditioning the stimulus is for the animal to continue doing what you have trained them to do, even without the reward. In essence, McDonald's is setting up a conditioned stimulus within children. They are rewarded with a toy when they eat McDonald's, thus associating toys with eating McDonald's food.

Ever notice how, when there is a group of toys that come with the happy meal, the one you wanted is the one you would least likely to receive? This should be a familiar concept to video gamers, and MMORPGs in specific. Random drops are less random with McDonald's, as evidenced with their Monopoly distribution. If you give little rewards, the customer will more likely come back for bigger rewards.

How many monsters would you slay if you thought you had the chance of getting a great reward? For some, as many as it takes. If the odds were weighted (which they are), you would have to wait quite a long time (though not too long, or else the conditioned stimulus effect would go away). How many large fries would you buy if you thought you had a chance of winning a large screen TV? How many happy meals would you buy if you really wanted that one toy? All while associating the food you're eating with nice rewards.

While I disagree with banning the happy meal, I do see McDonald's as training young children to become loyal customers. Heck, it even works on Adults, too. And that's a tad scary.

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Well the only problem with your assertion is you left out any mention of parents stopping children from being trained. Children, for the most part, dont have the resources to obtain these items (cash, a car to get there), the parent have to be apart of your equation. Now if you had added a blurb about how mcdonalds make it very fast and easy to obtain thus making it easier to feed the children, you'd have something.

But you left it out, you dont get any prize with your happy meal, although im sure if you ask nicely Hero will score you some pokemon toys...

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Well the only problem with your assertion is you left out any mention of parents stopping children from being trained. Children, for the most part, dont have the resources to obtain these items (cash, a car to get there), the parent have to be apart of your equation. Now if you had added a blurb about how mcdonalds make it very fast and easy to obtain thus making it easier to feed the children, you'd have something.

But you left it out, you dont get any prize with your happy meal, although im sure if you ask nicely Hero will score you some pokemon toys...

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you don't have kids. Advertising firms have developed a science around getting children to nag their parents for the latest, greatest thing. Combine that incessant nagging with this little tidbit from a recent study -- children believe a food TASTES BETTER if it has a cartoon character on the packaging:

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/WellnessNews/kids-food-tastes-cartoon-decorated-packages-study-finds/story?id=10957148

So when my kid wants a treat, he knows how to push my buttons... And what is he going to ask for? He's gonna want a Happy Meal, because the Clone Wars toy skateboard makes it taste like crack cocaine.

-Craig

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