Free Promotional Toys.

New: Pringles Party Speaker. (2015) Available at: http://www.fliptime.co.uk/new-pringles-party-speaker/ (Accessed: 17 September 2015).

Jones, JM (2015) 'Free Toy Promotions, Fast Food Children's Meals and Social Responsibility: Examining the Effects of Toy Value, Nutrition Information and Moderating Variable', Journal Of Managerial Issues, 26, 3, pp. 240-258. Education Source, EBSCOhost (Accessed: 17 September 2015).

One major bribe that occurs in children's food is free toys and McDonalds aren't the only offenders. Kinder Surprise Eggs give away a free toy inside every egg and a lot of children's cereal boxes used to give away free toys inside the packets until it became a health and safety risk. That didn't stop them, however, now they just use a different tactic which is even worse! Now, you have to collect several boxes to enable you to send off for the free toy, so not only do you have to purchase the food several times, you also have to pay a fee to get it sent out to you, so it's not even free in the first place! Pringles are also guilty of this as they offer a 'free speaker' when in reality you have to buy several boxes of Pringles and then pay a fee also. This tactic is even worse than just giving away a free toy within the packaging as it encourages people to buy more and more of the food, even if they don't need it, just to get the 'free gift'.

I found a journal online which covers some interesting points on free toy promotions, looking specifically towards fast food restaurants. 

Toys were introduced as sales promotions in the 1970s. With childhood obesity on the rise, fast food restaurants have been campaigned against to reduce the value of the free toys, only offer them with healthy options, or stop giving them away all together. Fast food restaurants argue that it is not their responsibility to change, it lies with the parents and they are simply adding to the fun experience of eating in their restaurants by giving away free gifts. 

Researchers have pointed out that the average value of the sales promotion is 20% or less of the value of the promoted products; however, for toys with children’s meals, the standard level is much higher, up to 50% of the promoted product’s value (further, some toys have surpassed 75% of value of meals). Most fast food chains have become involved in gradual increases of toy value because they are rising to competitors’ offers.

The journal covers a study which looks to provide answers for the following: If toys were totally withdrawn from children’s meals or were a substantially reduced value, would consumers have different responses toward the meals? If toys were used as promotions with healthier meals but not with normal meals, would consumers have different responses?

The first study looks at the effects of stopping free toys in fast food promotions all together, it also looks at significantly cutting down the value of the free toys that are given and the effects that may have. 

If they were to stop giving away toys completely, this is a huge change and of course people don't like too much change. This could lead to total resistance and could have extremely negative effects compared to slowly and subtly decreasing the value of the toys. 

The findings suggested that offering substantially lower-value toys or uncoupling toys produces unfavorable effects. That is, consumers expect toy promotions of a certain value. If fast food chains respond to calls for them to discontinue toys completely or to offer new toys with substantially reduced value, consumers will not respond favorably. 

The second study extends the research to include nutritional information. It addresses toys to be offered with healthier meals but not with less-healthy normal meals. Overall, the second study looks into the effects of the different levels of nutrition information and free toy/no toy. 

Although findings from this study suggested that nutrition information labels for more healthy meals had slightly more favorable effects than labels for normal less-healthy meals, it was not significant. The findings suggested that nutrition information labels had far less impact than toy promotions. Some individuals believed that healthier options helped fast food chains establish better relationships; however, other individuals gave only a few comments about nutrition but provided several, critical comments about the idea of dropping toys as promotions. The majority of people thought that if fast food chains offer healthier options along with social benefits (e.g., “Ronald McDonald House Charities”), then adults would feel better about them and would be more likely to listen to children’s input.
   

Overall, findings from both studies suggested differential impact of toy promotions and revealed patterns of interactions which indicated strong moderating effects. The findings suggested that if QSRs altered their current way of offering toy promotions (i.e., if QSRs offered substantially lower-value toys, or if they did not offer toys, or if they offered toys only with healthier meals), they produced unfavorable effects.




It just goes to show that although some people may argue that fast food chains need to make huge changes immediately, it doesn't always have the desired effect. Although in the long term, a lot of people would benefit from healthier food being promoted much more than it's unhealthy counterparts and free toys not being used to bribe children into choosing them, it isn't always as simple as that. If they were to stop giving away free toys completely, people would start to complain about the value of the meals and argue that they should be made cheaper because they are no longer offering any giveaways. The same goes for if they only offered free toys with healthy options, they would have people complain that the unhealthy options should be cheaper because they aren't offering quite as much.

There's no doubt that changes need to be made, but they definitely need to be made slowly over a long period of time in order for the changes to be successful and not put anyone out of business, jobs etc.