🎵Ba da ba ba bah! It’s Brave New World.🎵

  • TheTechnician27@lemmy.worldEnglish
    701·
    16 days ago

    I’m actually going to say that I think designing a restaurant for disastrously unhealthy fast food in a way that makes it look and feel like a playground shouldn’t be legal, and I’m happy to see them look as dull and unappealing as possible to young children.

    The ongoing health crisis is so severe in no small part because of things like that 1990s picture getting kids addicted to trash. This post feels like someone from the 1970s yearning for the days of Joe Camel. Plain packaging does work.

    Edit: I thought Joe Camel was much older than it really is.

    • glitchdx@lemmy.worldEnglish
      14·
      16 days ago

      it’s not about mc d’s. almost every business is doing this. Everything fun, colorful, expressive and artistic MUST go. All must be replaced with homogeneous minimalism.

      mc d’s is used as the example because they led the way with this shit.

      • TheTechnician27@lemmy.worldEnglish
        6·
        16 days ago

        Fair point! I entirely agree with that perspective in other areas. If we’re using this as an example, then I understand why, but I actually think this is one example where the change is a tangibly good thing.

        • glitchdx@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          16 days ago

          That’s what makes using mc d’s as the example is a bad choice, but nobody consulted me about it.

      • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
        5·
        16 days ago

        I also read that cars turned less colorful since 1970s.

        And a colleague told me that he read that skirts got longer on average since 1970, but idk about that one.

        Also i noticed that most pop music these days are break-up songs.

        Really shows you the mood of society.

    • Remember_the_tooth@lemmy.worldOP
      111·
      16 days ago

      Interesting take. Maybe they should be designed like an art gallery of various medical office styles. Kids would hate that.

      Edit: I’m glad cigarettes are on their way out, but I used to love these when I was even stupider:

  • ch00f@lemmy.world
    41·
    16 days ago

    In addition to moving away from marketing directly to children, the reason a lot of fast foot restaurants are rebranding to look like grey cubes is to make the buildings more generic and therefore more valuable as commercial real estate.

    We’ve all seen the local Mexican restaurant that definitely used to be a Pizza Hut. This is to avoid that.

    • Remember_the_tooth@lemmy.worldOP
      16·
      16 days ago

      That sounds like the commercial real estate version of cancer to me, but I’m no expert in that field. I can see you’re right, though. It’s up there with motel art and off-white walls.

    • Final Remix@lemmy.world
      8·
      16 days ago

      That, and they want customers GONE. Eating in take space. People who come, get food, and leave are their favorites because it increases throughput.

  • ℍ𝕂-𝟞𝟝@sopuli.xyz
    English
    32·
    16 days ago

    We used to have the only McDonald’s (that I know of) that was in a building designed by Eiffel.

    They “modernised” it last year.

    • blackris@discuss.tchncs.de
      28·
      16 days ago

      Wow, which piece of shit did they bribe for that? They completely destroyed the interior of the building. Isn’t there any heritage protection?

      • ℍ𝕂-𝟞𝟝@sopuli.xyz
        English
        12·
        16 days ago

        AFAIK it was part of a larger restoration of the whole building complex (this is the Budapest Nyugati railway station), and the global redesign of McDonalds. They justified it by saying that the architecture is closer to the original - the lower level only became part of it when they built the McDonalds in 1990, before that it was a separate diner for the poors in third class. The furniture is default McDonalds.

        The overall restoration on the building at large is not bad per se, but they basically destroyed a symbol of the Hungarian 90s - 00s. This was the place where if you lived in Budapest and got wasted, you could get some nutrition in the city center, and it wasn’t full of tourists because they didn’t think that the railway station buffet was so good.

        BTW the local franchisee is trying to cater more to a “fast casual” crowd rather than the bare minimum, so a McDonalds in Hungary has a menu three times as long as one in the Netherlands for example. All I’m saying is that it was a nice place considering. Sic transit gloria mundi I guess.

    • frezik@midwest.social
      5·
      15 days ago

      Some of that is from white balance making the top picture look warmer, but even accounting for that, it’s a tragedy.

  • faythofdragons@slrpnk.netEnglish
    30·
    16 days ago

    When I talk about how much I miss the 90s McDonalds, I’m mostly complaining about the loss of a third space. My parents would go to McDonalds so we had a safe, climate-controlled, indoor play space, and we could spend hours there for the price of something off the dollar menu.

    I don’t know of anywhere comparable these days. Anything indoors is going to be expensive, you have to get the city to unlock the local hoops, the cops start asking questions if you just want to hang out with friends, and if you have too many friends they make you get a permit to use the public park.

      • thatsTheCatch@lemmy.nz
        17·
        16 days ago

        Libraries are basically the only remaining third space, but they don’t fill the same need as the original commentor. Libraries don’t have places for kids to run around, be noisy, and climb things. That would be awesome though

        • NevermindNoMind@lemmy.world
          4·
          16 days ago

          Some do. My library has a play area set up for littles and another area set up for infants. On Saturdays they have a sing along story hour thing, and other events like that throughout the week. We also have plenty of local parks with playground equipment. No free place with indoor slides and ball pits though like McDonald’s used to have.

    • frezik@midwest.social
      2·
      15 days ago

      Discovery Zone, man. I actually feel bad for the kids that never got to experience Discovery Zone. Lasted for like 2 years. It apparently failed because they had a mountain of debt (all those plastic tubes are capital intensive buildouts) and adults had to sit around while their kids played.

      I feel like if you made it work like a gym membership for your kids, and had something for adults to do off to the side, you might be able to make the numbers work.

    • Remember_the_tooth@lemmy.worldOP
      9·
      16 days ago

      No kidding. Not just them either. I know it’s a cultural thing in US restaurants, but I feel like I’m being rushed out the door. I know on the surface it’s a having respect for a person’s time thing, but it feels like an eating contest sometimes.

    • Remember_the_tooth@lemmy.worldOP
      3·
      15 days ago

      Me, too, but I wasn’t about to chop the original meme and stitch it back together in a better order. If you do it for me, you can have all my imaginary internet points, though.

    • Remember_the_tooth@lemmy.worldOP
      2·
      15 days ago

      You’re right. I just didn’t feel like chopping the original meme and stitching it back together. I just made my little addition to the top. I guess that did make the post a little…shitty.

      • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de
        1·
        14 days ago

        i miss that brief period some 5-10 years ago when they had genuinely pretty green glass mosaics with gold streaks throughout

    • RobotZap10000@feddit.nlEnglish
      2·
      16 days ago

      Same(ish) here in the Netherlands. The fact that the near vicinity isn’t entirely asphalt and concrete, due to there not being 300 parking spaces for a fast food place, probably helps it not feel like a Nazi bunker.