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Happy Meal Hummers make some not so happy

Ronald McHummer is not the name of a gay Scottish porn star, as I first assumed, but is instead a Web site set up by some people who feel that the toy Hummers that come with McDonald's Happy Meals are sending the wrong message to kids. No one has asked my opinion on this, but that's never stopped me from expressing it, so here goes: I have no opinion. More precisely, my feelings on SUVs and their affect on the environment is a moot point. To me, this is a matter of picking your battles, and going after trinkets that come in a box with a lamp-heated patty on a stale bun and lukewarm french fries doesn't seem like it's going to do much for your cause. The site has a program where you can create an anti-SUV slogan on a McDonald's sign, but that's only going to attract people who already have negative feelings toward those vehicles. To be fair, the site does link to other sources to back up some of their claims, but saying a toy Hummer is somehow going to lead to kids purchasing them later in life is like saying any kid with the game Operation is going to grow up to be a surgeon. Okay, I was trying to be funny there, but my point is that to a small child, these are toys and nothing more. They'll wind up in the toy box with everything else and will not, as the site seems to suggest, plant some kind of subconscious message in their minds that will render them powerless to resist the urge to buy an SUV when they get older.

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