Why McDonald's Discontinued Its Beloved McDonaldland Cookies

Here at tasting Table, there are some discontinued McDonald's menu items we don't miss at all (here's lookin' at you, McLean Deluxe). We are not alone, however, in our deep, endless jones for the long-since-retired McDonaldland cookie.

McDonald's first debuted Happy Meals in 1979, and the pioneer iteration included cookies. Unlike McDonald's current soft, chewy chocolate chip cookies, the cookies that dominated the early aughts were a hard, crunchy cookie spiked with a distinct lemon flavor, animal-cracker-meets-shortbread style. Packaged in technicolor cardboard boxes designed with the cartoon faces of O.G. McDonald's universe characters (think Grimace, the Fry Kids, Hamburglar, and Birdie), the shortbread cookies came with every Happy Meal. This reporter is old enough to remember when those cardboard boxes were replaced by yellow-hued paper packets, also printed with Hamburglar & Company. Even the cookies themselves were shaped and imprinted to resemble the faces of the McDonaldland crew. 

Alas, like a setting sun, these lemony beauties weren't to last. Due to changing national health standards, McDonald's switched up the McDonaldland meal in 2003, much to many fans' chagrin. By 2004, the iconic cookies were discontinued. Facing public concerns about growing childhood obesity rates, they were replaced with apple slices in Happy Meals as a healthier option for meals marketed toward children. Still, sporadic reappearances of the McDonaldland crew of cookie stardom have cropped up over the years since, including the viral Grimace shake and subsequent 2022 Adult Happy Meal – which had a striking impact on foot traffic.

Despite being a bonafide bummer, this move might have contributed to a larger success; the national childhood obesity rate in the U.S. slowed down dramatically in 2003, to a degree yet unmatched in any year since. In the 1980s, when Mickey D's added chicken nuggets as a Happy Meal entree option alongside burgers, the expansion was also spurred by a health-conscious public shift away from red meat. 

Still, there's a reason why those cookies tasted so good (and not just the flattering effect of memory). They were baked by the Keebler brand exclusively for McDonald's. Now, more than 20 years after their discontinuation, fans who grew up in the '90s and early 2000s have never forgotten 'em.

One Reddit thread with 4.5K upvotes posts a photo of the retired McDonaldland cookies. Nostalgic fans write, "I can taste this picture" and "these were so good!" Another Facebook post dedicated to the cookies sports comments like "I loved these as an adult and would still buy them if I could. They were GOOD," and "Bring em back!!" Our fingers are crossed for a comeback, too. Until then, the McDonaldland-eaters of yore will have to keep writhing and thrashing in the unique anguish of craving a food that doesn't exist anymore. Although we didn't have a Grimace shake back in 2003, so that's something ... even if we don't have it now, either. Make that bad boy a permanent menu item, McDon's.