Retail Watchers

McDonald’s is now offering a meal to celebrate Grimace’s 52nd birthday.

The meals include a Big Mac or 10 Piece McNugget, Large fry and a special purple berry flavored milkshake in place of a fountain drink.

From what I saw the meal costs about $2 more than a regular Big Mac meal with large drink would.

I saw bags advertising this. The first thought I had was that I thought McDonald's had retired Grimace and all of the various characters some time ago.

I don't know who or what Grimace is.

But I noticed in the Wendys app offers there is a strange offer that says "Fros-T-Pain is gonna buy u a frosty" Free Small Frosty with Purchase. I am not sure if Fros-T-Pain is their version of Grimace or what.

Grimace is the purple McDonaldland character from back in the day along with Hamburglar, Birdie the Early Bird, Officer Big Mac, etc. I haven’t seen much on these characters lately, but I noticed Hamburglar in some recent commercials.

I haven’t heard of “but you a Frosty” but it looks like this is an offer for the month of June to get a free Frosty if you order anything on the app or the website. Not a bad deal, although I don’t ever do online ordering. It seems to be a spin on the old T-Pain song “Buy you a drank”.

The purple milkshake is supposed to be social media friendly. People post photos of this brightly-colored drink and this encourages other people to go to McDonald's to buy it so they can take photos or selfies with it.

The McDonald's app crashed today and it was probably due to all of the people trying to order the purple drink or the meal.

My coworker saw photos and immediately asked me to go to McDonald's to pick one up for him.

As part of this promotion McDonald's commissioned a new homebrew Gameboy Color game of all things:

https://grimacesbirthday.com/

It's playable on that website, but if you have the appropriate hardware to do so it's also playable on an actual Gameboy Color if you download the ROM. Nothing fancy, but surprisingly decent for long obsolete game hardware.

Alpha8472 wrote: ↑June 13th, 2023, 11:31 pm The purple milkshake is supposed to be social media friendly. People post photos of this brightly-colored drink and this encourages other people to go to McDonald's to buy it so they can take photos or selfies with it.

The McDonald's app crashed today and it was probably due to all of the people trying to order the purple drink or the meal.

My coworker saw photos and immediately asked me to go to McDonald's to pick one up for him.

That sounds like the Adult Happy Meal/Cactus Plant Flea Market thing last year with those ridiculous four eyed toys that everyone was buying just to post on social media.

Someone must have made a mistake. Generation X is not usually targeted by a fast-food campaign. It's usually Boomers and Gen Z.

rwsandiego wrote: ↑June 14th, 2023, 5:31 pm Someone must have made a mistake. Generation X is not usually targeted by a fast-food campaign. It's usually Boomers and Gen Z.

'90s nostalgia has been profitable for a while now. Not to mention that generation probably has the fondest memories of McDonald's past.

Personally I like this campaign, but I would like to see it used more as brand reinforcement (something that has stuck with the Golden Arches over the years and is frequently refreshed), rather than nostalgia pandering.

BatteryMill wrote: ↑June 14th, 2023, 9:25 pm

rwsandiego wrote: ↑June 14th, 2023, 5:31 pm Someone must have made a mistake. Generation X is not usually targeted by a fast-food campaign. It's usually Boomers and Gen Z.

...Not to mention that generation probably has the fondest memories of McDonald's past....

Yes, we do!

Grocery shopping was always fun for my brother and me because if we behaved ourselves, we could go to McDonald's afterward and redeem one of our McDonaldland calendar coupons.

Little did my parents know that I LOVED grocery shopping.