mcdonal

I'm really curious why this set was so regionally limited. Even in the US it is said to be utterly scarce!

EDIT:
I don't think that in 1999 TLG did care about much at all (like all companies back then did). There were tons of McDonalds/Lego promos at the time. And design wise it really does not look too much out of place next to 1999 City Center sets.
So still why?

Chief was a much more bizarre item of the same era and he was more widely available^^

I loved this set as a kid because, while there isn’t much to it, it was so different from anything else I had

What happened to the torso print? (If it is a print.) Under the images for the minifigs included here, it's a plain torso. Weird! Does anyone know?

Love the employees cool backwards cap. Very similar to most of the youths working at my local Mcds.

Man I should have bought it NIB last year when I had the chance. The value now is almost triple what was being asked.

Ah well, can’t fry every filet o’ fish.

Love this set and boxart

@MeisterDad said:
"Ah well, can’t fry every filet o’ fish."

Since there’s no baked alternative like there is for chicken, you literally can.

@LuvsLEGO_Cool_J said:
"What happened to the torso print? (If it is a print.) Under the images for the minifigs included here, it's a plain torso. Weird! Does anyone know? "

Not a print! It's a sticker.

This was a gift-with-purchase from the old catalog based Shop @ Home.

It was indeed a strange set. The building was juniorized, but the car was not. This was released contemporaneously with a Happy Meal promotion, but it wasn't available at the restaurants. I only remember this set being released through Shop At Home.

Naahh the bricks are better at Hungry Maxs. (anyone remember Max from Lego Club?)

This is such an hilarious set. Really enjoyed reading the comments section on this post LOL.

The catalog picture (https://images.brickset.com/library/Catalogues/c99sahFall.pdf page 79) was a bit more reasonable and doesn't make the car look like it's flying...

Loved this set, but can’t for the life of me recall how I acquired it back in the day.

$100 will buy him more Big Macs than I think he can even fit in that tiny car

Great art work, was this only available at McD hence a bit crazy!? I understand now why the guy in the car is wearing a flying jacket. Says unique to this set but I'm sure I've seen that jacket somewhere else before so would be possible to recreate yourself without spending $100.

@PurpleDave said:
"You joke, but in Metro Chicago, there are actually McDonald's restaurants that are sandwiched in the middle of the interstate so they can serve customers travelling both directions without anyone have to _really_ leave the interstate."
Wow, that sounds intriguing. But how do they get their supplies? Waste disposal? Do trucks stop on the highway to deliver their goods? Plus, how wide must the gap between the lanes be to fit in an entire fast-food joint? And where do the customers park? Or is it drive-through? In any case, sounds incredibly dangerous and accident-prone.

@Monopoly said:
"Alright, so taking a second, closer look at this, I think this might just be the most bizarre piece of box art I’ve ever seen

- The car is hovering above the road and is strangely scaled compared to everything else
- A section of road directly behind the car is incredibly deformed
- The driver is jumping out of the car seat while flamboyantly presenting a $100 bill
- The car is heading directly for the Drive Thru sign
- The McDonald’s attendant is sporting a radical backwards cap
- The $100 meal the driver has ordered consists of a tray and a pair of coloured mugs
- The outdoor seating area is overlapping the road
- The McDonald’s chain is depicted as being completely isolated and located deep in the mountains
- The only equipment inside the building is two ketchup dispensers
- The McDonald’s building is positioned directly next to a public road rather than within its own lot, meaning this is more some kind of McDonald’s-branded toll booth
"

To answer some of your misgivings, perhaps the work experience kid said he knew how to operate photoshop?

Didn't know there is a McDonald's near Swiss mountains.

This gives a whole new meaning to 'fast' food.
The customer is speedrunning this 'eating on the way' thing.

The set itself -being from the late 90s- is also a fast assembly. And then there's the bizarrely rushed boxart. Lego itself was trying to be fast!
And if you didn't buy it fast it was already gone...

I remember the designer stating in his bricklist that he's grateful to own one of these because they sent one over.

That was quite a mistake by Lego at the time to be promoting unhealthy meals... I am glad they stopped doing that.

@Monopoly: If you look at the instructions, you'll see that one dispenser is yellow, and therefore, mustard. (Which raises disturbing questions about what's in those cups.)

@tmtomh: Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.

@Jack_Sassy: There are McDonald's EVERYWHERE.

I have this one. If I ever build a Lego city/town I figured I would expand it with all the random 2x red bricks I have.

@AllenSmith:
Where’s the car? Is it hiding behind the roller skate? I mean, if he orders a Big Mac, that thing is going to tip sideways like the Flintstones’ car when they get the rack of Bronto ribs.

@LuvsLEGO_Cool_J:
The bomber jacket is a fairly standard print from that era. As @fakejsf noted, the cook has a plain torso, but if you pull up the parts inventory on Bricklink, the very first item is the sticker sheet. In the lower right corner is the buttons and neckerchief from a Chef torso, but with the McD’s logo on the minifig’s upper left breast. Since it was a one-off torso design, and such a limited run, they opted to sticker it rather than invest in expensive pads for printing. There were two LEGO Factory space-themed sets that got the same treatment, so it does happen, even though it’s very rare.

@Binnekamp:
I’ve heard that whoever gets credit as the primary designer of a set gets a free copy of that set.

This box artwork is wild.

"Would you like to Supersize that fry?"

(Anybody else remember them saying that? It's been a while...)

@PurpleDave: thanks for the heads up.
So it's not that different from our service stations on the Autobahn here, only that here those services tend to be next to the roads, not above. Which in essence necessitates two service stations each, one on the north-/eastbound side and one on the south-/eastbound side.

I thought you meant the restaurant would actually be in-between the two sides (which was the reason for my questions about deliveries etc.). It seemed quite unlikely, but since you even have left turns on some interstates it at least seemed like a possibility.

In the US, I think this was only available via Shop @Home. I have a catalog in which this set is prominently featured. I regret not ordering it for the sheer absurdity of it.

As for the $100, what do you expect with a $15/hour minimum wage? (I'm kidding. Such a claim is absurd since some places are already paying McDonald's employees $15/hour...and they really should be paid more.)

That’s a coincidence,
I’ve just acquired a mint sticker sheet for this set and am about to get the parts together to make it!

@AustinPowers:
I once made a wild statement without checking any facts first, and when I did dig into it, I found that there really was at least one US Interstate where the opposing lanes diverge _just_ enough that you could probably drop the Vatican City between them without impacting driving conditions on the freeway. So, that offers plenty enough space that you could build a restaurant between the opposing lanes and have an abundance of space for parking.

I am not aware of a single instance of a US Interstate having any turns, right or left. The highway system that preceded it has tons, but one of the main points of adopting the Interstate system was to get away from that sort of thing. Now, a business loop _may_ have them, but that’s a modification to the Interstate system itself.

@AustinPowers said:
" @PurpleDave said:
"You joke, but in Metro Chicago, there are actually McDonald's restaurants that are sandwiched in the middle of the interstate so they can serve customers travelling both directions without anyone have to _really_ leave the interstate."
Wow, that sounds intriguing. But how do they get their supplies? Waste disposal? Do trucks stop on the highway to deliver their goods? Plus, how wide must the gap between the lanes be to fit in an entire fast-food joint? And where do the customers park? Or is it drive-through? In any case, sounds incredibly dangerous and accident-prone. "

This kind of arrangement is common on toll highways. The rest areas (with big parking lots) are built in the median or on an isolated exit like this so that drivers can avoid going through tollbooths when entering/exiting. Because of the captive audience, they often boast additional commercial services, sometimes extensive. I only remember seeing these megaplazas in turnpike medians, where they're much cheaper to build (no overpass, both directions of traffic served by a single facility). On non-toll freeways, commercial services are usually only found at public exits where they can serve local and traveling customers. Rest areas on such highways are correspondingly smaller affairs (bathroom, picnic area, parking lot), and are situated on the sides with isolated exits, so travelers can't become confused about which direction to re-enter. I'm sure there are exceptions to both, and I haven't driven as much on the east side of the country where turnpikes abound (and I try to avoid them when possible).

It's 1999 and quite too early for Justin Timberlake and his 'i'm lovin' it!' i guess.

A car, building, outdoor dining area, and two minifigures for $10 ?
I’m loving it!

@AllenSmith:
This photo was taken on I-90, probably just across the border from Indiana. We don’t have toll roads anywhere in Michigan, so heading to or from BWC is the only time I tend to see these. I guess it makes sense that they’d be a product of the toll road system, for the reasons you explained.

The only reason they don’t set up rest stops between the opposing freeway lanes is probably that it’s common to split the exit ramp so commercial trucks and RVs can take one side with really long pull-thru diagonal lanes, and passenger vehicles with no trailers can take the other side with regular parking spaces. If they tried to put a single rest stop in the median of a freeway, they’d have to deal with truck and passenger traffic combined on both sides, and you’d invariably end up with some trucker parking across seven regular spaces, or some subcompact smack in the middle of a truck space. Or you’d have to run a loop around the building, and people really would forget which direction they’d been driving and get totally lost.

Anyways, I suspect the other thing that’s throwing @AustinPowers off is that, being from Western Europe, it’s probably difficult to understand just how wasteful we can be with space in the US, just because there’s so much available once you get away from the eastern seaboard. If someone with enough pull thinks it’ll be more efficient, they’ll put an international airport in the middle of an interstate. When I head up to where my mom grew up, the median between opposing lanes, even on one of the highways that predate the interstate system, is so wide you could run a two-lane street with houses on both sides right up the middle. Often, there’s enough trees growing in the gap that you can barely see the opposing traffic. Once you get out in the boonies, a wide space full of naturally-growing trees is a more cost-effective barrier to keep opposing flows of traffic away from each other than anything manmade would be.

@PurpleDave said:
"I suspect the other thing that’s throwing @AustinPowers off is that, being from Western Europe, it’s probably difficult to understand just how wasteful we can be with space in the US, just because there’s so much available once you get away from the eastern seaboard. If someone with enough pull thinks it’ll be more efficient, they’ll put an international airport in the middle of an interstate. When I head up to where my mom grew up, the median between opposing lanes, even on one of the highways that predate the interstate system, is so wide you could run a two-lane street with houses on both sides right up the middle."
Indeed, the waste of space was one thing that struck me as weird when I came to the US the first time. We for example saw car parks where the individual spaces were large enough for an M1 Abrams MBT to fit comfortably. While over here you more often than not have to be careful even when parking a VW Golf (I believe you know it as "Rabbit" strangely enough) as to not scrape the neighbouring vehicle when opening your door. Just today when we went to a multi-level car park I used the "Summon" function to remotely park my Model 3 because the space was so narrow.