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Yahoo
4 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
The Vintage McDonald's Cutlery That Was 'Banned' For An Unexpected Reason
In the 1970s and 1980s, McDonald's was known for more than just Big Macs and Happy Meals. It sounds too absurd to be true, but the fast food giant accidentally became part of the earliest stages of the "War on Drugs." It involved a tiny plastic coffee spoon, a drug epidemic, and an eventual government crackdown. Before we learned just how awful single-use plastic was, the innocent-looking utensil was first introduced as a convenient tool for stirring coffee. The offender was about five inches long and featured a small, flattened scoop at the end — just enough to stir a serving of sugar or cream into a cup of coffee. With the iconic golden arches as its handle, the spoon was another effort to add branding to the customer experience. But it wasn't long before the spoon found an unexpected second life outside of McDonald's dining rooms ... Cocaine use was truly booming in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and its fans were always looking for an easy way to measure clean, consistent bumps of the drug. The McDonald's spoon just happened to be the perfect size and shape for this purpose. This little tool became so widely associated with cocaine that it soon earned the nickname "the McSpoon." Its popularity in both the underground drug world and upper-class dinner parties didn't go unnoticed. One Connecticut newspaper in 1979 remarked, "One thing is certain: From the Tiffany's set to the McDonald's crowd, New York is snowed in coke." Read more: Taco Bell's Decades Menu Brings Back Old Faves, And We Ranked Them The U.S. government soon took issue with the spoon. At a hearing with senators and anti-drug activists, a lobbyist for the drug paraphernalia trade quipped that, "This is the best cocaine spoon in town and it's free with every cup of coffee at McDonald's." Unfortunately, the joke backfired. One of the activists attending, Joyce Nalepka, decided to personally call McDonald's then-president Edward Schmidt and ask him to replace and redesign the infamous McSpoon. Her talk must have been pretty persuasive, because the spoons soon disappeared from American McD's, replaced by a flat plastic coffee stir stick. Over time, the McDonald's coke spoon has become something of a pop culture relic. It has appeared in online forums, drug history retrospectives, and even as one of the nostalgia buys on eBay, where vintage versions of the spoon occasionally sell as collector's items. Of course, McDonald's never created or distributed the spoon with any malicious intent. But in the eyes of law enforcement and drug culture observers, the spoon had become too closely linked to illegal activities. The story of the McDonald's coffee spoon is a cautionary tale of unintended consequences. Even the most mundane products can be swept up in larger cultural trends, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. Today, the tiny plastic spoon lives on as a quirky footnote in the surprisingly intertwined histories of fast food and America's War on Drugs. For more food and drink goodness, join The Takeout's newsletter. Get taste tests, food & drink news, deals from your favorite chains, recipes, cooking tips, and more! Read the original article on The Takeout.
Yahoo
02-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
The Tiny McDonald's Spoon That Stirred Up Trouble In The 1970s
People can surprise you with how industrious they are sometimes, and that's not always a good thing. McDonald's learned this lesson the hard way back in the 1970s, thanks to the unintentional use of a tiny coffee spoon they provided that became associated with drug culture. The spoon came with every coffee and was meant for stirring. It was branded on the end of the handle with the golden arches, making it an unmistakable symbol of the company. The diminutive utensil, with its long neck and small bowl, was adopted by cocaine users as an ideal vessel for snorting the drug. In 1979, Joe Biden, a senator at the time, held hearings in Baltimore on the Model Drug Paraphernalia Act, which had been proposed as a way to curb drug use and allowed for almost anything in the proximity of drugs to be considered paraphernalia. The Paraphernalia Trade Association, which wanted looser restrictions, came to fight. On the other side of things, Joyce Nalepka, President of Drug-Free Kids: America's Challenge, recounted how representatives of the drug paraphernalia industry testified at the hearing that a McDonald's coffee spoon was "the best cocaine spoon in town." They even demonstrated how to use it, according to Congressional transcripts. Read more: 15 Failed Restaurant Chains We Actually Miss As noted by TIME, McDonald's was not embarrassed that the spoons were being misused in this way. But after that Baltimore hearing, Nalepka called McDonald's then-President Ed Schmidt because she thought he should have been embarrassed. After 20 minutes, he agreed to redesign the spoons, she wrote on CNBC. The company is no stranger to adapting to controversy. It dropped its Supersize menu in 2004 because "not many Supersize fries are sold," said spokesperson Walt Riker via CBS News. And while "Super Size Me" documentarian Morgan Spurlock confirmed the timing was just a coincidence after his film, according to the Guardian, it also came on the heels of a historic 2002 lawsuit by two teens accusing the chain of making them obese. The optics for Supersize and unhealthy menus were bad. In the 1980s, McDonald's had to field environmental concerns due to its McD.L.T. burger, one of the menu items we definitely don't miss. Packaged in a double-sided Styrofoam package to separate the hot side from the cold side, the waste was basically double that of a normal burger. Bowing to pressure from environmentalist groups, the package and sandwich were eliminated by the early 1990s. Given its concern with optics, it's not hard to see why the company wanted to distance itself from what drug users dubbed the "McSpoon" and put the whole controversy behind them. Besides, based on our review of its coffee, they don't want anything to draw more attention to it. Skip the coffee and try one of these much better breakfast items instead. Read the original article on Tasting Table.
