The McDonald's Happy Meal Box Has A Hidden Feature You May Have Missed (It Makes Eating Less Messy)

It's possible the battle over which city is the top foodie heavyweight has been settled by a perforated edge around the bottom of the McDonald's Happy Meal box. It's a small but meaningful feature that has gone largely unnoticed until the hidden gem started popping up in social media videos. Customers were thrilled to find that with an easy pull of a little tab, the McDonald's Happy Meal box bottom detaches into a small but sturdy serving tray. Though it's a small element of the whole meal, this adjustment makes it far easier to hold and enjoy both burger and fries simultaneously. (Not to mention, it's the perfect spot to hold open sauces for nuggets, too.)

A joyful design element, but alas, you will not find it in America, at least not yet anyway. It's only the lucky McDonald's fans living in the United Kingdom who enjoy this mess-saving element on their Happy Meal boxes — and have been since 2017, when McDonald's rolled out the tab-pull option for select international locations. 

McDonald's launched its now-famous Happy Meals in 1979 in a cute Circus Wagon cardboard box covered in quirky jokes and puzzles. The process of turning them into a marketing ploy that lured parents in just to satisfy their kids' demand for a McDonald's Happy Meal in their own little box, and get their hands on the hot commodity that became McDonald's Happy Meal toys, started with a dad who noticed his son staring at his cereal box every morning while he ate his breakfast. The dad, a Kansas City ad executive, knew a fun box would hold kids' attention at lunchtime too. This turned out to be true, with Happy Meals now selling at a rate of about 5,000 every minute.

There have been a few Happy Meal changes through the years, from briefly switching to paper bags in the 1990s to shifting menu options, like the addition of chicken McNuggets or offering milk rather than soda options only. In 2016, McDonald's briefly offered breakfast Happy Meals in select cities, but, much like McDonald's all-day breakfast coming to an end, the Happy Meal, breakfast edition, was also shelved.