My family and I ended up at McDonald's the other night. What changes they have made; the restaurant was clean, the offerings less ... McRibby. The kids loved it, and we were happy with everything as well. Then I saw the Happy Meal.

In the "girls" version of the Happy Meal, my daughters had tiny dolls which they loved beyond any reason. That was fine, and we have certainly gotten a lot of mileage out of such small prizes. What was disgusting was the amount of packaging. This three-inch doll was cradled in a plastic tray, then covered in plastic wrap!

Now, I understand that they didn't want to get the doll's hair in the food, but some sort of shrink-wrap could have done that. Why did we need two layers of plastic crap that's going right in the garbage? You couldn't have ruined those dolls if you would have flushed them down the toilet, followed by a cherry bomb and a gallon of sulfuric acid. Why do we continue to throw this crap in?

And what can we do about it?