TIL the idea for McDonald's Happy Meal was made in a KC ad office

Bob Bernstein ran Bernstein-Rein Advertising here in KC. His agency picked up the local McDonald's franchises as a client in 1967, back when there were nine of them in the metro.

The idea came from watching his own son read the same cereal box every morning at breakfast. Bernstein figured kids wanted something to do while they ate.

His team built a box with the golden arches as handles and puzzles, riddles and comics printed on the outside. It went into test markets in 1977, including Kansas City. National rollout came in 1979 at $1.10 a meal.

A caveat is McDonald's corporate credits Dick Brams, its St. Louis ad manager, as the father of the Happy Meal, since he's the one who asked Bernstein to come up with a kids' meal concept. Depending on who you ask, it's a shared origin story.