Parents across the country are up in arms over what they believe McDonald’s new Happy Meal toy “Minion” is uttering to kids. (Photo: Universal Studios’ Minions)

Holy s—, McDonald’s new Happy Meal treat is making parents’ blood boil. The kids Minion meal-box toy — representing one of the titular characters in Universal Studios’ Despicable Me spinoff cartoon, Minions — spits out three phrases when you tap it on a hard surface. And irked moms and dads in states as far apart as Alabama, Ohio, and Florida are insisting that one of those blurbs is a swear.

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“Honestly, the beginning, I don’t know what it’s saying, but the last few words sound like ‘W-T-F,’” one shocked Alabama mother griped to WSFA. An Ohio dad told Fox28, “I heard what it said and I’m like, ‘Whoa, hang on here!” A grandfather in Florida also expressed his unhappy surprise about recently receiving the bauble in a meal for his granddaughter. "It turned out to be a toy that decided to talk profanity,” he told WFTV. “I can’t believe it’s coming out of a toy."

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But McDonald’s is urging everyone to calm the heck down.



Photo: Fox 28

“Minions speak ‘Minionese,’ which is a random combination of many languages and nonsense words and sounds,” Lisa McComb, a spokesperson for McDonald’s, tells Yahoo Parenting. “We’re aware of a very small number of customers who have been in touch regarding this toy, and we apologize for any confusion or offense to those who may have interpreted the sounds for anything other than jibberish. [But] the allegation that this toy is saying any offensive phrase is not true.” McComb insists that, “The Minion Caveman Happy Meal toy includes three phrases: ‘para la bukay,’ ‘hahaha,’ and ‘eh eh.’ Any perceived similarities to actual English words are purely coincidental.”



The fact that parents perceive the utterance to be a swear is probably based upon the simple suggestion that it is, according to psychologist and swearing expert, Timothy Jay, author of What To Do When Your Kids Talk Dirty. “It’s top-down processing, when you fill in what you think is really there,” Jay tells Yahoo Parenting. “Parents who hear about this are given a blueprint for what’s there and so they’re going to hear that. Kids just think they’re hearing some funny little Minion thing.” That is, until moms and dads give them a reason to think that the toy’s phrase is something special.



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“Kids aren’t going to recognize that ‘word’ as swearing, per se, unless you draw their attention to it,” explains Jay, a professor at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. “You’re not born with knowledge of what swears are. It’s only when parents reprimand kids for swearing that you’ve taught them that swears are bad words.”

And you’d be surprised at how early children learn the words. In a report, “The Science of Swearing,” published in the Association of Psychological Science’s Observer, Jay and co-author Kristin Janschewitz write, “Our data show that swearing emerges by age 2 and becomes adult-like by ages 11 or 12. By the time children enter school, they have a working vocabulary of 30 to 40 offensive words.”

But that’s not to say that the colorful vocabulary is necessarily such a bad thing. “There is little (if any) social-science data demonstrating that a word in and of itself causes harm,” the researchers note in the Observer. “We have never seen public swearing lead to physical violence. Most public uses of taboo words are not in anger; they are innocuous or produce positive consequences (e.g., humor elicitation).”

The academics add that profanity can, in fact, have a “cathartic effect” and be beneficial “when used positively for joking or storytelling, stress management, fitting in with the crowd, or as a substitute for physical aggression.”

When it comes to kids and swearing, Jay tells Yahoo Parenting that the most important thing parents can do if it bothers them is to not react. “Swear words aren’t bad,” he insists. “What is bad is if a child can’t find a better way to manage his or her emotions than swearing.”

So if your preschooler drops an “F” bomb, instead of disciplining, ask why he or she said it. “Are they angry?” Jay suggests asking. “Tell them, ‘This is what you do when you’re angry.’ If you just punish the language, you’re missing the underlying language that’s causing it. That’s the thing to figure out.”

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