This week Chick-fil-A’s bonus in the child’s meal is this insect model:
Reid was thrilled. He wanted to put it together at the restaurant, but because I am such a wise mommy I encouraged waiting until we got home so I could help with less distraction.
I started on the instructions. Following each fairly vague direction to the best of my ability.
My mommy assembly resume is impressive:
1. Ikea furniture.
2. Transformers (into and out of the action figure/motor vehicle).
3. Legos.
4. Magnet sets.
5. Tinker Toys.
I could go on. Let’s just say, I can put things together.
Approximately an HOUR later I had produced this:
Not bad! It resembles a dragonfly.
Reid took one look at it and started to complain…
“It is missing a wing.”
“You didn’t put it together right.”
“This is upside down.”
Details!
Details!
Details!
I thought I had adequately hidden this:
Oops. Extra wing. Really, who needs more than one?
Let’s review what I accomplished in the last hour.
I took this…
…and turned it into this:
About that time blog-Stedman came in from work. He took one look at my dragonfly and stated:
“It is missing a wing.”
“You didn’t put it together right.”
“This is upside down.”
Details!
Details!
Details!
I handed him the disfigured dragonfly and the instructions and told him to go fix it.
About 30 minutes later he returned with this:
Overachiever.
Note to Chick-fil-A: Your child’s toy took two people with a combined 13 years of higher education 1 1/2 hours to assemble.
Right before bed tonight, Reid was holding his dragonfly close to his heart and said, “I can’t wait until we go back to Chick-fil-A and get the bumble bee…”
I also ran across this while Googling Chick-Fil-A Insect Engineer. We have managed to assemble the butterfly, twice without too much trouble but we are on the second honey bee. What a nightmare!!! I tried putting one together last week and gave up halfway, assuming my husband would come home and fix it with no problem. He is usually a master at this kind of thing. He proclaimed that I had it together wrong, had to take it totally apart and by the time he started to reassemble it, the tabs were breaking off and he got so mad he crumbled it and put it in the trash. We were “lucky” enough to get another one tonight and he wanted to challenge himself. An hour later he is still trying to get it together, after using tape AND glue and having all kinds of trouble. This is a man that never has trouble with stuff like this! My daughter asked if the bee was ready before she went to bed. We told her hopefully he’d be ready at breakfast. Now I’m not so sure LOL! I’m sure the Chick-Fil-A people are getting a huge kick out of this!
HILARIOUS! Our Chick-fil-A just started handing these out again (must be in between toys or something) and we hadn’t put any together until tonight. I had just been piling them up (we go to Chick-fil-A more often than we should apparently) and tonight our 3-year old asked if we could put them together.
“SURE! Daddy and I will each make one!”
Oh my word – like you, we both have advanced degrees and it took us each at least 30 minutes to put together the ladybug (me – it was the “easy” one) and the praying mantis (my husband – this one looked much more difficult), but he came out with a broken leg. The praying mantis that is…not my husband.
I actually just found your blog now because I Googled “Insect Engineer” to see if anyone posted anything about how difficult these were – ha!!
-Erin Marie
Thanks Anonymous for that information, I just wish you would leave your name so we could have an engaging conversation.
Let me start with that I am the BIGGEST fan of imagination toys. My children play for the most part with blocks, legos, tinker toys and other building toys when we are not outside playing in an unstructured way. I home school for this VERY reason. I think children these days – especially boys – are shoved into structured situations WAY BEFORE their time.
Now, on to the kid’s meal toy. The kid’s meal, by definition is for kids. The largest kid’s meal is sized for the age 6 and under crowd. My seven year old already needs more food than a kid’s meal contains. SO, I would expect that the toys that come in these meals would be sized accordingly. I love Chick-fil-A and mentioned that above. They usually do an amazing job finding an educational item to put into their kid’s meals. Often a book, or a workbook that is just perfect compared with the promotional CRAP that other fast food restaurants place in their meals.
My reaction to this situation is out of humor. They missed the mark a bit on the age appropriate-ness of this “toy”. Obviously it wasn’t that big of a deal. I thought it was funny. I wrote about it because even I, who have assembled many a piece of IKEA furniture couldn’t get it right. But it was free. It was an experience. It was something to write about that made me laugh at myself for my inadequacies…
Thanks for leaving a comment. Next time please stand behind it with your name.
It’s sad to see fine crafting skills disappear from our culture. I have run various workshops and classes for children using paper, wood, plastic, etc., and for the most part when they start out, they are clueless and all thumbs. Parents have not taught them these things. It’s my belief that many are not teachable any more because they lack the ability to consentrate and follow simple instructions – written, spoken or from a video. They want to be entertained not trained to entertain themselves by designing or modifying, building and playing with their own creations. For those who do learn, there are zillions of paper toys waiting to be printed out and assembled on the Web. It’s an inexpensive source of projects that can lead to an interest in creating things. Inspirational projects in cereal boxes and the like inspired several of my friends and I to spend hours figuring them out (I’m talking about a long time ago!) and moving on to more difficult challenges – like engineering! They taught us that doing hard things are not only fun, but have lasting benefits. Of course the culture supported it more too, we weren’t geeks, just high achievers. If more companies were bold enough to provide challenges like these paper insects to more children, maybe we’d eventually see fewer complainers who think they are entitled to have things made easy for them and more inovation that characterized our country in the past. I applaud those who spend the time to puzzle it out and at least show their children that persistence and delayed gratification can pay off. I also thank Chick Fillet for implementing this grand social experiment. Rather than shun the opportunity, it’s time to bring all the kids and start a revolution!
Couldn’t get the final two big pieces together on the honeybee. So close, but hopeless.
The dragonfly is impossible. I used tape. And glue. And the we decided that it wasn’t worth it. Today we made a honeybee…much easier.
love it!
It would take me a long time to assemble one of those toys, even without distractions. My 14 yr old could do it in 15 minutes. He can build the most amazing creations from legos, knex, etc. When he was much younger, he solved the wooden blocks not stacking the way he wanted problem by putting the pieces on the floor and then using elmers glue in them. Once it dried, he put it upright again.