The children at the next table in the food court already owned the toys they got with their Happy Meals, so they left them behind.

They're undoubtedly cute in their own way. However, Little Miss Giggles here is  63 grams of unrecyclable plastic. Mr Tickles is a little lighter at 58 grams. A 2018 article in the LA Times said that worldwide McDonald's served 1.2 billion Happy Meals a year.

Now not all Happy Meal toys are equal but if they all weighed as much as Mr Tickle that's 69,600 tonnes of unrecyclable plastic per year. Sixty-nine thousand six hundred tonnes of plastic that will still exist long after those children have passed away. In fact, after their children and their children's children ... you get the point.

I like a freebie (almost) as much as the next man. But at some point, don't we need to stop and look at ourselves in the mirror.