A Strange Irony
When I was young and so was McDonald's (we were both born the same year), my go-to order at the home of the Golden Arches was some of their life-changing French fries and an icy-cold, creamy chocolate milkshake. Later, after Ronald McDonald started selling soft-serve ice cream at his establishments, McDonald's became a great place to stop for a quick cone. Mickey Ds locations were a heck of a lot easier to find than Dairy Queen's and the product they served was almost as good. Almost.
Alas, somewhere around 1990, McDonald's caved in to the activist campaign to eliminate fat and cholesterol in the American diet and stopped frying its exquisite shoestring spuds in beef tallow, opting instead for bland, flavorless vegetable oil. This switch from animal renderings to vegetable squeezings immediately “rendered” McDonald's fries inert, dull, and lifeless. They became nothing more than a run-of-the-mill vehicle to deliver salt and a modicum of texture to your palate.
But, hey! At least we still had ice cream, right? And delicious, fresh, creamy shakes? Eh, not so much. The ice cream formula changed, too. In fact, it literally became a “formula” instead of a fresh dairy product.
And now we don't even have that last vestige of so many youthful memories. Have you tried to order any ice cream products from McDonald's lately? Good luck finding one with an operating ice cream machine. It's actually become an Internet thing: you can go online and find dozens of sites dedicated to tracking and cataloging McDonald's non-operating ice cream machines. There's even an app for it.
However you look at it, it's frustrating as hell. You get your mouth all set for something and whammo! “I'm sorry. Our ice cream machine is out of order.” That's what I heard the other day when, after a warm afternoon of yard work, my wife said, “Hey, why don't you run over to McDonald's and get us some fries and shakes?” Sorry, honey. Settle for a nice cup of water with those fries? At least I didn't go to the extreme that three women went to in Daytona Beach. When they ordered ice cream at the drive-thru and were told the machine was down, they went into the restaurant and proceeded to beat up the kid behind the counter. Or the guy in Delray Beach who pulled a gun on the drive-thru worker when he was told the ice cream machine wasn't working. Obviously, people in Florida take their ice cream very seriously.
Now, I was going to try to do some in-depth research into the phenomenon in order to find some explanation that I could pass on to you desperate, ice cream-starved readers. But, lo and behold, one Andy Greenberg over at Wired has already done way, way more legwork than I'd ever dreamed possible and has detailed everything you've ever wanted to know about McDonald's ice cream machine woes right here. Read it and.....weep.
Speaking of weeping, I'll bet Ray Kroc is weeping in his grave as he spins like one of the five spindles on his iconic “Multimixer 9B.” Isn't it a bit of strange irony that a burger chain founded by a guy who sold milkshake machines for a living should be in such straits today? Totally at the mercy of wonky digital technology?
C'mon, McDonald's! It's the twenty-first century. We have personal computers in our pockets and helicopters on Mars. Don't ya think you could come up with an ice cream machine that works at least fifty percent of the time? Surely somebody's got a cache of the old manual clunkers in the basement somewhere. Drag 'em out! At least they were dependable.
As I said before, McDonald's and I have a long history. I actually went to Store #1 when I was a kid. Located in west suburban Chicago, just off US Hwy 12 in Des Plaines, Ray Kroc always said it was his favorite store before they tore it down and rebuilt it as a museum. Even as a museum, you could see a mannequin in a paper hat standing by what I'm sure was a working shake machine. Ah, for the good old days.
Bah dah bah bah bah, McDonald's, when it comes to your perennially malfunctioning ice cream machines, I'm not lovin' it.
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