Poll: Is McDonald’s New Happy Meal Mascot The Creepiest Fast Food Shill Yet?

Joining all the creepy mascots that have come before him is Happy the new McDonald’s Happy Meal mascot.

Here’s a little secret about me. I hate mascots. Seeing grown adults running around in gigantic animal-like costumes makes my skin crawl. The sense of dread that washes over me when I see them also translates to their cartoonish counterparts hawking hamburgers, ice cream and other fast food fare on television. Unfortunately, there’s no shortage of creeptastic mascots out there seeking to give us nightmares.

Yesterday, McDonald’s unveiled their newest mascot — “Happy,” a cartoon Happy Meal box with a giant toothy grin.

While USA Today reports that the box is supposed to entice children into eating healthy, that smile really only makes it look like he want to eat the children.

So, what fast food mascots (past and present) make Consumerist’s collective skin break out in goosebumps?

THE OLD RONALD MCDONALD

Let’s stick with McDonald’s for the moment before we dive into other creepy fast food shills.

It’s a known fact that many people find clowns to be terrifying, especially when they are outside their standard milieu of the circus tent.

But the old-school Ronald McDonald, with his paper cup nose and a magic hamburger-dispensing belt, isn’t just disturbing; it established a baseline of creepiness for other fast food establishments to follow for generations to come.

THE NEW RONALD

While the original Ronald McDonald might have been too outre and bizarre for fast food fans, the recently revamped McDonald’s front man is a different kind of creepy.

With the more casual outfit, the all-too-welcoming open arms and ever-frightening grin, it’s like that guy on your block who is always talking a little too much to the kids selling lemonade on the sidewalk; the one that makes parents put their arms around their youngsters when he walks by the playground on the weekends.

We’re not saying Ronald has filthy predilections. He just won’t be getting invited over for family events anytime soon.

THE HAMBURGLAR

Here’s an idea for a mascot: A person that so loves McDonald’s fast food that he’s willing to steal it! What a great way to teach your kids how to get what they want.

Beyond the ethical questions, there’s the fact that the Hamburglar is just plain bad at his job; always getting caught and turned into the burger police, who promptly return him to the streets, presumably because McDonaldland has a lenient attitude toward the theft of sandwiches.

Perhaps if he didn’t walk around in big striped pajamas and a bandit mask, he might not stick out so much, or creep out so many kids.

GRIMACE

While milkshake-loving Grimace may not be as overtly scary as Ronald or the Hamburglar, he poses a sort of existential dread to the young consumer.

“What is this purple monster and why is no one asking it what it is or where it came from?” Is it a figment of Ronald’s imagination? A ghostly manifestation of some man-child who perished during the construction of the first McDonald’s? A hallucinatory, self-referential expression of American overconsumption?

The world may never know; and that may not be a bad thing.

THE BURGER KING

Just as many of us began to shed childhood fears of fast food mascots, Burger King went and dumped this plastic-masked “King” on us.

Not only did the King pop up in ads for the burger chain, he appeared in commercials waking up next to people in bed, or hanging outside their windows. And the King did more than just wake up with strangers; he also cornered them in dark tunnels, further cementing the idea that he was a nightmare from which we could never wake.

The masked man was retired by Burger King in favor of a more healthy-minded campaign around 2011. Apparently the strange dude landed on his feet in the form of a gig behind the register at Taco Bell last Halloween.

THE SUBSERVIENT CHICKEN

While the King hasn’t risen from his marketing grave, Burger King has recently tried to revive this bizarre marketing ploy that melded the jittery low-fi video of webcamming with the do-as-we-say-and-you’re-going-to-die-anyway freakishness of snuff films.

Late last month, the weirdo chicken’s website, which once featured a person in a chicken suit on grainy security com footage, relaunched with a “Missing Chicken Error” message asking consumers to “Help. There’s a chicken on the loose and we are desperately trying to find him.”

We don’t know if the creepy chicken is still out there, but if you see him, it might be best to call animal control.

BILLY BOB BROCKALI FROM SHOWBIZ PIZZA

For the most part, we can could go to the drive-thru in attempts to avoid mascots, but back-in-the-day there was one place you always wanted to go and could simply never escape the monstrous mascots: ShowBiz Pizza.

Billy Bob Brockali underwent a number of nip-and-tuck surgeries over the years, but that bear never did feel quite right to us.

The guitar-picking brown bear first appeared as a walk-around character at ShowBiz then morphed into an animatronic robot bear. To whomever thought that was an improvement: It wasn’t.

But maybe our favorite creepy encounter with Billy Bob took place in some of the pizza place’s poster art and other ads where he’s just hanging out behind a family, eyeing their pepperoni-covered pizza.

If he had an inkling of Yogi in him, that pizza would be gone and those kids would be scarred for life.

THE QUIZNOS SPONGE MONKEY

Rodents — or hybrids thereof — really don’t make people want to eat their food, and they’re certainly among the last things you’d want to associate with a fast food restaurant.

And yet, a number of rodent-like mascots have roamed the airwaves over the years, like this particularly gruesome spokesthing.

The Sponge Monkey of Quiznos, which in spite of the name appeared to be some sort of rat/hamster hybrid — loved his subs, but we did not love his beady eyes, human-like teeth or his fancy looking top hat.

JACK FROM JACK-IN-THE-BOX

Sure, he’s a Jack-in-the-box (we get that) but he walks around in a sharp business suit, and has that dead-eyed, unblinking stare and perma-grin that are straight out of a horror movie.

It’s like a mash-up of some bad early ’90s slasher flick and American Psycho, but it’s also trying to sell us fast food.

The combination of authority figure in a suit and clown-like oversized head is the perfect recipe for a screaming kid (or adult).

Which one of these do you think is the creepiest of them all?

by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

Study: More Kids Injured, Hospitalized After Gobbling Tiny Magnets Since 2009

(Jeremy Schultz)

Magnets. They can be fun toys, cute souvenirs, useful money-saving tools, or a life-threatening health hazard. Yes, it’s rare, but a study that will soon be published in the Journal of Pediatrics shows that in the last decade, strong and tiny magnets have become popular, are marketed as toys, and injuries resulting from magnet consumption have increased.

While the magnets are popular everywhere because magnets are fun, the Toronto-based researchers analyzed cases from the Hospital for Sick Children in that city. (Yes, that is the hospital’s actual name.) They sifted through more than ten years’ worth of cases involving patients under 18 who had ingested foreign objects, finding 94 cases where a magnet was confirmed to be the swallowed object.

Researchers divided the study period up into two periods: before and after 2009, which

is the year that strong neodymium-iron-boron magnets like Buckyballs became popular. While 94 kids is a small sample, they found that the number of patients who were admitted after swallowing magnets tripled in the later period, after 2009, and the number of patients who had swallowed multiple magnets increased tenfold.

Swallowing one magnet isn’t so bad, but swallowing multiple magnets can cause serious damage

Their conclusions? Other than the obvious “don’t eat magnets,” the researchers say that parents and children should be educated on the possible dangers of small magnets, and the potentially fatal results that can come from gobbling more than one.

Companies that market the magnets insist that the toys are not intended as toys for children, and that no one should be snarfing any magnets.

Magnets and Kids: A Dangerous Duo [Journal of Pediatrics](via CBS Atlanta)

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

Another 2.4 Million GM Vehicles Recalled

(Paul Bica)

Because apparently every model of car made by General Motors in the last decade has something wrong with it, GM has announced another round of recalls. This time, it’s four separate recalls totaling 2.42 million vehicles in the U.S.

The first recall involves 1.34 million model year 2009 through 2014 Buick Enclave, Chevrolet Traverse, GMC Acadia full-size crossovers and model year 2009-2010 Saturn Outlooks for issues involving the front safety lap belt.

GM says that cables that connect the belt to the vehicle can fatigue and separate over time, leaving the passenger at increased risk of injury or worse in a crash.

The second recall is for 1.08 million model year 2004-2008 Chevrolet Malibus with 4-speed automatic transmissions and model year 2005-2008 Pontiac G6 cars. This recall involves a shift cable that GM says could wear out over time, “resulting in mismatches of the gear position indicated by the shift lever.”

When the fracture occurs, the driver may not be able to select a different gear, remove the key from the ignition or place the transmission in park.

GM says it knows of 18 crashes and one injuries tied to this defect. Dealers will replace the shift cable and attachment bracket at no charge to the customer.

Then there are two smaller recalls. The larger of these is for 1,402 Cadillac Escalades and Escalade ESVs from the 2015 model year. GM says that an insufficiently heated plastic weld attaching the passenger side air bag to the instrument panel assembly could result in a partial deployment of the air bag in the event of a crash.

The smallest of the recalls is for only 58 Chevrolet Silverado HD and GMC Sierra HD full-size pickups from the 2015 model year. In this case, GM warns that retention clips attaching the generator fuse block to the vehicle body can become loose and lead to a potential fire.

According to the carmaker, no fatalities have been associated with any of these recalls.

These recalls now put the car company around the 13 million mark for the year in terms of total number of vehicles recalled.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Target Reality Vortex Now Runs Its Own Spell Check

We often make fun of Target for being a reality vortex where words and numbers have no meaning. Yet at reader JD’s local Target, the store’s own loose relationship with words and marketers’ need to spell words in distinctive and incorrect ways combined to…spell something correctly.

Sort of. Are you familiar with the Glade air freshener/stank-reducer Febreze? The word “breeze” is in there, but intentionally misspelled. Except at Target, of course.

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

Taco Bell Goes Smaller For A Change, Testing Crunchwrap Sliders

(photo: Twitter user @JohnTaylor84)

In recent years, Taco Bell has had a tendency to go large with many of its menu items, slapping XXL on its burritos and nachos, and selling “Big Box” combo meals along with 12 packs of tacos. But it looks like the fast food chain is now testing Shrink-Rayed “slider” versions of its Crunchwrap thing.

Foodbeast reports that Taco Bell has been testing the smaller Crunchwraps — which are smaller and replace the larger version’s hard taco shell with bits of Fritos corn chips — for about a month in Ohio.

As Foodbeast points out, at $1 each, you can get three of these sliders for less than the $3.29 price of a full-size Crunchwrap.

Perhaps the Bell will start going micro with XXS burritos that are the size of pigs in a blanket, or XXS nachos, which would be a single nacho with a couple shreds of cheese and a smudge of guacamole.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

New Walmart Policy Requires Customers To Fork Over Their Credit Card’s 3-Digit Security Code

(Clean Wal-Mart)

In light of recent, high-profile data breaches, consumers are constantly on guard when it comes to their credit card information. So it might come as a surprise that the country’s largest retailer is asking customer to fork over the sacred three-digit security code on the back of cards in order to make purchases.

Walmart is in the process of rolling out a new security policy and guidelines that require consumers to punch in their three-digit security code for purchases over a certain price threshold, KRPC in Houston reports.

The new policy, which was agreed upon between the company and several card issuers, is an attempt to cut down on credit card fraud, a company spokesperson says.

Often after credit card information is taken during a data breach, thieves create phony cards with the legitimate accounts. Since thieves don’t generally obtain three-digit security codes through breaches, so requiring customers to enter that code would cut down on fraudulent purchases.

Chris Bronk, a Rice University Baker Institute Fellow in IT Policy tells KRPC that Walmart is doing the right thing with their new policy.

“It really is a necessity at this point, because credit card fraud, thanks to the cyber vector, is worse than ever before,” he says.

However, Bronk says for the company to maintain consumer privacy protections it would need to store account numbers and the codes separately.

Once credit card issuers switch to the more secure chip-and-pin cards, also known as EMV cards, Walmart says it will stop requiring consumers to enter their three-digit security codes.

Visa and MasterCard announced earlier this year that they hope to end traditional sign-and-swipe credit card transitions and switch to the chip-and-PIN system by 2015.

The EMV (short for “Europay, MasterCard and Visa”) technology cuts back on card fraud because the chips make cards significantly harder to clone: even if you get all of the information from a card’s magnetic strip, as through a skimmer, without the chip actually being present the card data is useless in a physical transaction.

However, while the use of EMV technology in a card does make it more difficult to clone a card for in-person transactions, it doesn’t necessarily prevent an ID thief from using stolen card numbers for online or phone purchases. There is no such thing as a card that is 100% safe from clever criminals.

Renewed interest in chip-and-PIN cards began shortly after a string of data breaches occurred at national retailers. More than 110 million Target customers were affected in a breach during the 2013 holiday season. Neiman Marcus and Michaels both fell victim to hackers during the early months of 2014.

Last month, Target announced that starting next year the company’s REDcard debit and credit card — along with a separate Target credit card that is currently co-branded with Visa — will be reissued with the MasterCard chip-and-pin technology. In anticipation for the change, the company has already begun installing new card readers at its registers.

New security guidelines for Walmart customers [KRPC Houston]

by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

Americans Dissatisfied With Their Cable Companies, Especially Comcast And Time Warner

(tehusagent)

In news that will not surprise Consumerist readers, a massive annual survey of American consumers shows that we are all generally dissatisfied with our cable and Internet service providers, and that we find Time Warner Cable, Comcast, Charter, and Cox just a little bit less satisfying than average.

These numbers come from the American Consumer Satisfaction Index, a national survey of, well, how satisfied American consumers are with the companies they patronize. The ACSI is a handy tool because for the last 14 years, it has tracked individual companies’ scores as well as scores across entire industries, taking a snapshot of how happy consumers are with the companies they encounter, and how that perception changes over time and over an entire industry.

How are the scores generated? For subscription TV, ACSI asks consumers about picture quality, high definition picture quality, ease of use of remote controls, cable boxes, and onscreen menus, interactions with the call center, and other things that fill people with rage against their cable providers. ISP scoring is similar, but asks customers to rate video streaming quality, peak hour performance, reliability, and online security.

Let’s be fair to Cox: customers did rate them slightly above average in the Internet service provider sector, but “average” is a score of 63 out of 100. That is not a passing grade. The average score for subscription television companies was 65, but the big names are all at the bottom of the rankings, with Charter and Comcast tied at 60, and Time Warner Cable coming in last with a 56.

Whenever a new survey portrays Comcast badly, they point to their improving performance in J.D. Power’s rankings, conveniently not pointing out that they come in last in those rankings. Who comes in second to last? Time Warner Cable, of course.

Benchmarks By Industry: Internet Service Providers [ACSI]

Benchmarks By Industry: Subscription Television Service [ACSI]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

Response To Chipotle’s “Please Don’t Bring Guns” Statement Is Predictably Divided

Sprint To Pay $7.5 Million To Settle Do-Not-Call Violations

(Misfit Photographer)

In the largest settlement yet for violations of Do-Not-Call regulations, Sprint will pay $7.5 million to the FCC to resolve the commission’s investigation into Sprint’s failure to honor consumer requests to opt out of marketing phone calls and texts.

While the Do-Not-Call rules do allow for companies to contact consumers with whom they have an existing business relationship, the company must also institute certain minimum standards for maintaining a list of consumers who opt out of receiving calls made by or on behalf of that company. That’s why you now frequently see opt-in/out boxes about receiving promotional calls/texts/e-mails when you agree to a company’s terms of sale.

But according to the FCC’s Consent Decree [PDF], the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau began investigating Sprint in 2009 in response to consumer complaints about, among other things, receiving telemarketing calls even though they had opted out of receiving these calls from the company.

During the initial investigation, Sprint blamed the problem on an equipment malfunction, saying its servers were not properly processing DNC requests from consumers. And so in 2011, Sprint agreed to report and additional instances of noncompliance to the FCC for a period of two years.

Thus, in March 2012, Sprint admitted to the FCC that it had discovered additional issues resulting in possible violations of the DNC rules. In addition to more technical issues, Sprint also blamed good ol’ human error as one of the reasons it was failing to fully comply with the DNC and do-not-text requests from consumers.

To minimize the damage, Sprint put the brakes on its telemarketing and texting campaigns while it sorted out the problem. Its own investigation turned up even more possible violations, which were then reported to the FCC.

Since then, the wireless company claims to have made a significant investment to implement improvements to its telemarketing compliance. This includes the creation of a single, centralized system that accurately records the preferences of all consumers with respect to telemarketing by Sprint and the third-party vendors that work on behalf of Sprint.

“We expect companies to respect the privacy of consumers who have opted out of marketing calls,” said Travis LeBlanc, Acting Chief of the Enforcement Bureau. “When a consumer tells a company to stop calling or texting with promotional pitches, that request must be honored.”

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

10 errores en el uso de Linkedin #infografia #infographic #socialmedia

Hola:

Una infografía con 10 errores en el uso de Linkedin. Vía websa100

Un saludo

10 errores en el uso de Linkedin

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