What Happens After the Experience Ends?
The Kids Engagement Series | What the Happy Meal can teach us about creating an afterlife for children’s engagement
A child visits your restaurant, attraction, hotel, event or holiday club. They have a brilliant time. They take part, they engage, they learn something or discover something new.
Then they leave.
What happens next?
It’s a question we think organisations should ask much more often, because some of the most effective children’s engagement doesn’t end when the experience does. It goes home with them.
And there probably isn’t a more famous example of this than the McDonald’s Happy Meal.
The meal ends. The experience doesn’t.
The Happy Meal was first introduced in the US in 1979, with the UK following in the 1980s.
From the beginning, the idea combined the meal with something children could interact with and take away.
Over the decades, those items have included everything from McDonaldland characters to Hot Wheels, Beanie Babies, Tamagotchis, Furby and Hello Kitty. McDonald’s Corporation
The clever part isn’t simply that McDonald’s gives children a toy.
It’s what happens after they leave the restaurant.
The toy gets played with in the car. It makes its way into a bedroom. A child discovers there are others in the collection. They compare theirs with a friend’s. They might ask to go back for another.
The physical item extends the experience beyond the transaction. The food is long gone, but something from the experience remains.
And McDonald’s is still using that principle today. Its 2025 UK Playmobil Happy Meal included 12 animals to collect, the option of a Little People, Big Dreams book, and a digital game accessed through the box — taking the experience from restaurant, to home, to screen. More recently, its 2026 Crocs collaboration offered 12 mini clip keyrings designed to be attached to bags and taken with children afterwards. McDonald's
That is afterlife.
But there’s another side to this.
Giving a child something to take home isn’t automatically good engagement.
We’ve all encountered the promotional item that gets played with for five minutes and forgotten. The branded giveaway that ends up at the bottom of a drawer. The piece of plastic that nobody really wanted in the first place.
And that matters more now than it perhaps did when the Happy Meal first launched.
McDonald’s itself has had to rethink the materials used in its Happy Meal toys. In the UK, it has experimented with paper-based toys, books, soft toys and other materials while working to reduce its reliance on virgin fossil-fuel-based plastics. Interestingly, McDonald’s says its move towards paper also revealed limitations, leading it to focus on choosing materials that are both more sustainable and robust enough to last through play. McDonald's
That distinction is important.
Because the goal shouldn’t be to give children more stuff.
It should be to give them something worth keeping, using, sharing, completing or remembering.
A book can have an afterlife too.
One of the most interesting developments in the Happy Meal story is that the take-home element no longer has to be a traditional toy.
McDonald’s says its Happy Readers programme has put more than 160 million books into the hands of children across the UK and Ireland since 2013. In 2025, it also partnered with Puffin’s You Choose series on a book-led Happy Meal designed around interactive reading. McDonald's
That changes the nature of the afterlife.
A toy can create play. A book can create a bedtime story, a conversation with a parent, a new interest or another half-hour of engagement tomorrow.
And that got us thinking about the products we create at The Wonder Company.
What will it do when it gets home?
We think about this a lot when we create resources for holiday programmes.
Take a nutrition activity book. On the surface, a child is completing puzzles, challenges, games and activities. They’re having fun, solving things and discovering things. But woven through those activities are messages about food, nutrition, movement and healthy living.
They’re learning without necessarily feeling like they’re learning.
Then the holiday club finishes and the book goes home.
Perhaps they finish another activity later. Maybe they show a page to Mum or Dad. A sibling has a go. They remember something they discovered about food. They try an activity at home. A conversation starts around the dinner table.
Suddenly, something that began as an activity at a holiday club has travelled into the family home.
And for the council or organisation that provided it, the engagement has travelled with it.
That’s very different from handing out something simply because you need a giveaway.
The same principle can work almost anywhere.
Imagine a child leaving a hotel with a passport filled with stamps, discoveries and memories from their stay. A visitor attraction could create something that encourages children to continue exploring once they get home. A sports organisation could give them challenges to practise next week. A charity could create a resource a child takes home and shares with their family.
The format isn't really the important bit.
What happens next is.
That’s why, when we're developing children's resources, one of the questions we ask is whether the product has an afterlife.
Does it continue the experience? Does it reinforce the message? Does it create another conversation? Does it encourage another action? Will it be picked up again?
Or will it be forgotten before they even get home?
Perhaps we need to rethink the word “freebie”.
There’s nothing wrong with giving children something free. The Happy Meal has demonstrated the appeal of that model for decades.
But the opportunity is much bigger than simply adding an object to an experience.
The thing a child takes home can become another touchpoint between them, their family and your organisation.
And when you look at it that way, the question changes.
Instead of asking:
“What can we give them?”
Perhaps we should ask:
“What do we want to continue?”
✓ If it’s learning, create something they'll keep discovering from.
✓ If it’s play, give them something they'll use again.
✓ If it’s a memory, give them somewhere to record it.
✓ If it’s a behaviour, give them a reason to continue it.
✓ If it’s your story, give them something that helps them remember it.
That’s when the take-home stops being a giveaway and starts becoming part of the engagement strategy.
THE WONDER TEST: THE HAPPY MEAL
PICK IT UP ✓ The combination of familiar characters, collaborations, surprise and collectability gives children a strong reason to be interested.
GET INVOLVED ✓ The experience goes beyond eating. Toys, books, activities and increasingly digital elements invite children to play, read or explore.
STICK WITH IT ✓ Collections and changing collaborations give children a reason to engage beyond a single visit.
KEEP IT ✓ This is arguably the Happy Meal’s greatest strength. The take-home element deliberately extends the experience beyond the restaurant.
SHARE IT ✓ — Toys can be played with, books read together and collections compared or discussed with siblings, parents and friends.
REMEMBER IT ✓ — After decades of connecting the meal with play and take-home items, the Happy Meal itself has become strongly associated with McDonald’s family offer. McDonald’s has described the Happy Meal as synonymous with its brand. McDonald’s Corporation
Wonder Score: 6/6 ⭐
The Wonder Verdict: The Happy Meal demonstrates the power of giving an experience somewhere to go next. The challenge today is making sure what goes home has enough value to deserve staying there.
One thing to take away…
Think about the last thing your organisation gave a child. Not just whether they liked it at the time...what happened to it afterwards?
Did they use it again?
Finish it?
Play with it?
Show somebody?
Learn from it?
Talk about it?
Remember where it came from?
Because the real opportunity isn't simply getting something into a child's hands.
It's giving the engagement an afterlife.
EXPERIENCE → TAKE HOME → CONTINUE → REMEMBER
And perhaps the best question to ask isn't:
“Will they take it home?”
It's:
“What will it do when it gets there?”
About The Wonder Company
Every organisation has a story to tell. We help children discover it.
The Wonder Company creates engaging activity books, packs, games and resources that help brands and organisations connect with children in ways that are fun, meaningful and memorable.
From a simple idea to a completely bespoke children's engagement campaign, we design, create and print resources that children actually want to pick up, interact with — and take home.
Want to create something children will remember?
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