Little Peoples McDonald's Restaraunt

#2552

c1990-1990

With the exception of the 4 Little People Sesame Street sets, 1990 was the first time in Little People history that Fisher-Price introduced a licensed Little People set with a non-generic base and theme (House, Farm, Garage). In late 1970's Playskool had a tremendous advantage over Fisher-Price with their square-figure Familiar Places McDonald's® set and Holiday Inn set...their McDonald's® set was the first playset in history to sell over a million units in the first year. Likewise, Hasbro introduced the very popular Weeble licensed sets, including Winni The Pooh, and Disney. The only retort the Fisher-Price offered was 4 Sesame Street sets in the late 1970's, none of which were sold on the market for very long. Nevertheless at the very end of the Original Little People line, they finally did it! The sad part is to compare the Fisher-Price McDonald's® set to the Playskool McDonald's® set...by 1990 all of the Fisher-Price bases were made out of big chunkly-looking plastic that older children find too "baby-looking" to play with, thus causing Fisher-Price to loose a large range of customers. When the Original Little People were discontinued and replaced in 1991 with the Chunky Little People, the McDonald's base was modified to accommodate the Chunky figures. Even then, the Chunky McDonald's set lasted for only 2 years.

The most likable thing about the McDonald's set is that the building itself looks like a real McDonald's® restaurant with red brick-simulated walls and a brown roof. The base has a separate pull-out playground with a "gobbling" cheeseburger slide and a milk shake "shaker". When the McDonald's base is placed beside the #2550 Little People School, it is obvious where the inspiration for the McDonald's base came from. Where the base lacks creativity, the set makes up for in it's accessories, including a Ronald McDonald figure, a Hamburgler figure, and a cute little "fry cart" on wheels. These figures and fry cart are far more collectable and desirable among collectors than the rest of the set put together.