from Happy Meal toys to cuddly mascots to french fried goodness the fast food experience is often geared towards children for better or worse but few restaurant goodies have ever compared to the storied play places where any wildling could wedge themselves into a three-story slide after cramming down a cheeseburger so where did they all go well today we're discussing the meteoric rise and lawsuit riddled fall of restaurant Play Place [Music] but before we get started be sure to subscribe to the weird history Food Channel after that leave us a comment and let us know what other
gimmicks of restaurants past you would like to hear about all right you sticky finger Rugrats let's dive into that ball pit enough is enough time to go home now it's my home now although restaurant play places have mostly gone extinct there was a time when those Tangled slides and bright L colored rubber mats were everywhere whether the local fast food joint was serving outdoor Antics or indoor fun houses most Quick Service restaurants came equipped with a place for kids to go nuts so where did it all begin perhaps unsurprisingly these fun zones were first implemented
by the golden arched Titan known as McDonald's by the early '70s McDonald's restaurants had certified themselves as a modern American Mainstay but despite their relative popularity Wendy's absolutely dominated the Market those Square sizzling patties were a major hit in the Wendy's Heyday and McDonald's needed a serious boost to help bolster the appeal of Ronald a McDonald's restaurant located in the small California town of Chula Vista started a revolution in 1971 by adding a few slides and climbing bars to an enclosed Outdoor El Cove the Chula Vista McDonald's increased their profits at an extremely high rate
and the effect was almost immediate as a wise old baseball ghost once said if you build it they will come and a local family soon flocked to the colorful new additions to their favorite fast food spot with its rudimentary outdoor jungle gym and some clever theming this West Coast location became the grandfather of the modern Play Place take that Wendy's it's cool the year after Chula vista's playpl prototype debuted McDonald's Executives took note of the added value to customers and their children with such high results and relatively low cost Ronald and the Gang decided to
up their game in 1972 the official line of McDonald's play places appeared at the 1972 Illinois State Fair in the city of Chicago and its surrounding suburbs these outdoor recreation areas sprouted up everywhere with Eerie large scale character statues rickety metal amusements and a literal Grimace jail these early play places didn't really resemble the plastic wonderlands that would come to fruit in the following decades but at the time even these slightly Grim offerings were a huge hit for kids in the windy city though the infamous Big Mac climbing bars look archaic now they were once
wildly popular hey this was a long time before every kid had a literal Nintendo in their pocket I've been playing this 72 hours straight so playground with a 7-ft Hamburglar statue was the next best thing despite aesthetic Growing Pains McDonald's play places thrived on the east coast and before long franchises and other states began ordering construction of their own and just a matter of a few short years Grimace jails spread across the nation the bad kids need a place to play too under the neon gleam of the80s McDonald's began to thrive despite trailing the lead
in the previous decade customers served beneath the Golden Archers were rising and with family Centric tactics and mascot heavy appeal they soon took the fast food Crown while many competitors scrambled to make way for wealthier hungrier customers McDonald's focused on children first as play places evolved from vaguely creepy statues into brighter happier playgrounds their customer base swelled franchise fast food restaurants have a long history of copycats and Quick Cash grabs so it's genuinely surprising that so few of McDonald's competitors built themed play places of their own from trying to outshot season to an eternal competition
for bigger and better Burgers most Quick Service joints were shockingly slow to grab those red and yellow coattails in fact fact it wasn't until the implementation of plastic tubes and interior spaces that other restaurants got the memo in 1989 two Kansas City entrepreneurs opened the very first Discovery Zone with its rainbow colored setting big Thrills for Daredevil Tikes and an emphasis on physical play The Discovery Zone was a regional hit and when Discovery zones began popping up around America a certain red-haired clown took notice in 1991 McDonald's opened their first Leaps and Bounds location featuring
an enormous Maze of bright plastic tubing a few arcade games and party sized foods like pizzas and cakes McDonald's brought the play place indoors and much like their Discovery Zone competitors Leaps and Bounds hous the first mainstream ball pits although both SeaWorld and Ikea both claim to be The Originators of the ball pit once Ronald got his gloves on the concept the idea became almost synonymous with McDonald's wait were the Ikea ball pits filled with their meatballs by the mid90s McDonald's merged with Discovery Zone and the Leaps and Bounds locations slowly dissolved with the play
plays competition out of the way the fast food Big Shots turned their sights on reclaiming playgrounds and with these new developments freshly painted and primed indoor play places took over featuring familiar tube mazes and ball pits these indoor play places offered families an opportunity Unity to beat the heat and let the kids loose at the same time and for those diners without children these new play places were separated by a thick wall of glass just enough to keep the screams to a dull thrum with these new indoor structures fast food competitors finally took note everyone
from Taco Bell to Wendy's added indoor playgrounds to their kid Centric locations and all of them took serious inspiration from the McDonald's Discovery Zone hybrid but unlike McDonald's these competing chains were not nearly as focused on the youngest customers with fewer play places overall and less emphasis on kid-friendly theming Ronald still reigned Supreme as kid-friendly attitudes Rose Among restaurants so too did the need for bigger and better ideas with the introduction of children's meals parents of picky eaters soon had more than just playgrounds to look forward to although many fast food chains began offering toys
and smaller portions it was once again McDonald's that led the pack with their hit Happy Meals your kids will love McDonald's Happ Meal McDonald's also cemented themselves as the masters of children's birthday parties during the 80s and '90s as seen in the film Mac and Me with their classic white birthday cakes and themed party rooms many parents found a fun affordable option for the kids' big day you had to bring your own alien though not even mayor MC chees can stop the flow of time so these parent traps had to constantly evolve to stay competitive
as video games continued to Surge in popularity restaurants decided it was time to score that coinage although arcades had been popularized in the previous decades pie chains like Pizza Hut began keeping small game rooms to entice kids and their parents what could be better than snagging a couple quarters from dad to hit the t2 machine while Mom orders a large pepperoni taking things even further Chi-Chi's pizza and Regional chains like Mr gaddy's added large scale arcades to the restaurants these darkened Pizza Halls were a favorite for parents with kids too old to hit the ball
pit but not yet old enough to sit politely at the table although they had been around since the80s a particular brand of kids specific pizza parlor truly broke into the mainstream during this time whether you're a fan of the classic Showbiz band or if you grew up on Big Chuck himself animatronic Pizza shows became an American hit with full-sized dancing and singing robots Pizza shows often went down right outside of indoor play places in fact Chuck-E-Cheese locations are often cited as The Originators of the classic Sky tubes this offered kids a chance to crawl a
cross the ceiling and peered down from a bubble window to catch Munch in the band and maybe drop a drink on them meanwhile McDonald's Incorporated video game systems like the Nintendo 64 into some of their play places in the 9s they even got an animatronic show of their own although inexplicably star the moonhead mascot Mac tonight and even more inexplicably was meant for adults we imagine most families hurried past Mac Tonight on their way to the ball pit struggling to avoid eye contact tell me when it h hurts it hurt from the beginning like any
good oldfashioned Trend the restaurant playpl fat eventually tapered off because it turns out play places had a Sinister Edge more menacing than a grimus jail as children's safety became a focal point for American society in the late '90s the consumer product safety commission discovered a startling truth over 30 years 400 children were injured on the Big Mac climbing bars and to had insult to those injuries McDonald's allegedly covered up the majority of those incidents this resulted in the largest fine ever paid by a company to the cpsc around this time an advocate for Children's Health
named Dr Aaron car Jordan took swab samples and 50 playpl locations across the country according to Dr Carr's findings all but one of those playgrounds carried bacteria that was potentially harmful to kids when these findings hit the news parents and advocacy groups were horrified this led to a period where many rumors and exaggerations mixed with truth to create a slurry of gross out stories and over-the-top myths as rumors and hard facts swirled indoor play places took the hardest hit lawsuits ensued and soon fewer play places could be found ball pits in particular became the source
of ir for news reports and shocking discoveries despite the fond feelings of nostalgia many of us had for these childhood relics ball pits eventually disappear the babies look unhappy and add more balls play places staggered along through the early ODS in the wake of all the controversy and as portable video game systems became more common but during the covid-19 pandemic things truly came to a grinding halt any surviving indoor play places were ordered closed and many even shied away from outdoor play places as well but eventually time healed some of these wounds and anxieties and
parents soon found themselves in need of a place to let their cooped up kids run [Music] free although a handful of indoor play places reopened in late 2022 many restaurant owners adopted outdoor areas instead today you can visit a Burger King in some small suburban town and catch a glimpse of a play place and occasionally you can even still find the classic McDonald's play place of yester year but these modern play places are generally heavily padded open air and free of any death to in structures like the Big Mac bars they presumably still have the
Grimace jails though so what do you think do you have fond memories of playing at a play place and which restaurant had the best one let us know in the comments below and why are there check out some of these other weird history food videos
