By the mid-‘70s, the idea of a children’s meal box (with a Cracker Jack-like prize) had been floating around the fast-food industry. Paul Schrage, now-retired senior executive vice president of McDonald’s — he OK’d the Happy Meal to go national — says bluntly: “The idea (for the Happy Meal) came from our competitor, Burger Chef, which had been offering gifts to kids. Our regional ad manager in St. Louis, Dick Brams, was aware of this and thought it was a nifty idea and he contacted a guy in Kansas City named Bob Bernstein.” Of course, it’s more complicated than that: Bernstein, whose advertising firm handled McDonald’s restaurants in the Midwest and Southwest (and still does), had been working already on a kids meal. He said: “I came up with the Happy Meal, in 1975, as I watched my son at the breakfast table reading his cereal box. He did it every morning. I thought, we make a box for McDonald’s that holds a meal and gives kids things to do.”