Most millennials have fond memories of those playgrounds attached to many a McDonalds or Burger King. Well, hold on to that nostalgia because they’re slowly disappearing. As fun as these play areas were, their hidden dangers are causing their downfall. 

Cheddar Explains

The Rise And Fall Of Fast Food Playgrounds

legend has it that a young boy named kevin archer was celebrating his third birthday at a Mcdonald's when he was pierced by a hypodermic syringe before his mother had a chance to take him to the hospital. He fell ill and died. His autopsy declared his cause of death as a heroine overdose. And a police investigation found knives, feces and other hypodermic syringes within the play pit. Now kevin's story was completely fabricated and many other stories like it, mainly because of the public perception of these play areas as filthy and dangerous for any millennial like me. The sites of colorful tube slides and smells of cheap plastic are all too familiar. Well hold on to that nostalgia because they're slowly disappearing. In fact, the number of families who take their Children to these play areas decreased by 18.6% from 2011 to 2016. You see as stimulating as these play areas might be. They're riddled with issues Before we dive any further. We need to go back to where it all began back to 1972. In this unassuming city in California at this Mcdonald's like all good stories about Mcdonald's, our tale begins on a beautiful spring like day. This is Macdonald's play land kind of creepy if you ask me. But it worked. The first plane land in Chula Vista brought in a 34% increase in business before the park was even completed and others wanted in first Burger King in 1985. And then other restaurants like chick fil A and Carl's jr would soon follow suit. But it wasn't long before safety issues began popping up in every direction. Remember that creepy Big Mac structure that kind of looked like a mini Children's jail? Well in 1999 the U. S. Consumer Product Safety Commission revealed that more than 400 Children were injured after playing on it from the 19 seventies to the 19 nineties and Mcdonald's failed to report anything. Instead, the franchise slowly phased out the climber and other hard metal play structures and replaced them with padded equipment. In the end, McDonald's paid out $4 million dollars to the federal government, the largest penalty the CPSC had ever received. And in the same decade, playgrounds moved indoors. But these didn't last long either. Why people have found some of the weirdest and potentially dangerous objects hidden all throughout these playgrounds like cigarettes, scissors, the dead iguana and lots and lots of feces. And it's not just safety concerns that have gotten fast food playgrounds in hot water either. More and more are disappearing also because of organisms too small for the naked eye to see. Okay, so it's not that surprising that fast food playgrounds are cesspools for germs, germs and more germs but there are alarmingly few federal or state regulations for playground cleanliness at least Dr Aaron car Jordan. Think so, mother of four and somewhat of a playground sanitation vigilante. She set out across the country to take bacterial swabs at different fast food chains. Her results. Nearly every single one of the 50 playgrounds she surveyed showed several strains of bacteria that could endanger Children. So what's been done to combat this? Well, not much playgrounds are technically considered non food zones, so restaurant inspectors from the CDC often ignore them, but that hasn't stopped. Concerned parents and restaurant goers from fighting against playground filth, nonprofit groups like kids play safe pushed restaurants to improve regulations for proper sanitation. Nevertheless, plastic fast food playgrounds have become more of a relic of the past the slides and ball pits. Once the pinnacle of childhood carefree madness may now even be permanently lost as they're being replaced by ipads and iphones. For people my age, I think we'd rather run the risk of coming eye to eye with the dead iguana than be glued to a screen all day. But maybe that's just me.