It's the perfect solution for the parent whose rambunctious spawn just downed a family pack of Chicken McNuggets and have all that "Now with white meat!" energy to burn.
McDonald's PlayPlace.
But an Erin Brokovitch for the YouTube generation is on a campaign to teach parents why they shouldn't let their kids run wild in fast-food restaurant playgrounds, the Consumerist reports.
Erin Carr-Jordan, a mom but also a developmental psychologist, was so disgusted by the physical condition of one of her local McDonald's PlayPlaces, she took a video of what she saw and posted it to YouTube. She also sent samples she'd gathered to a lab for testing.
What came back?
"Meningitis and gonorrhea. We found coli forms which is indicative of fecal matter and if you found that in any pool you have to actually close the pool down," she told a CBS station in Sacramento, Calif. "We found bacteria which resides in the intestines of humans and pigs."
She's travelled to more than 50 other McDonald's PlayPlaces since, on a one-woman crusade to clean them up.
McDonald's responded to her video, and said the playgrounds are cleaned daily, according to the Los Angeles Times. But they wouldn't say whether they were disinfected.
A 1999 study found elevated levels of bacteria in ball pits, prompting researchers to recommend routine sanitization.
But the dangers of ball pits and yellow plastic slides don't end with the obvious "they're plastic cesspools!" complaint. In 2007, an incident between two young children in a ball pit escalated into a fight between their families which ended with one man being run off the road by another and causing a five-car pileup, according to the Saskatoon StarPhoenix.
Yikes.
Fast-food playgrounds: provider of free childcare for the kiddies so mommy can eat her Filet-O-Fish in peace or grimy, sticky, crawling-with-bacteria death traps?
Dakshana Bascaramurty