McDonalds is introducing – for a limited time only – its very own take on virtual reality headsets and introducing them in the famous Happy Meals menus for kids: the McDonalds VR. However, not all McDonalds restaurants are doing this as so far only the ones in Sweden have adopting bundling these Google Cardboard-like devices into their menu. It’s actually pretty bright as the VR headsets don’t even come separately, but instead can be assembled from the packaging that the meal’s contents come in.
The offer is a one-time thing that only 14 restaurants from Sweden will be offering over the next two weekends, and they also come in a limited number: only 3,500 Happy meal boxes will be made available. This will be done on the occasion of the Swedish recreational holiday known as ‘Sportlov’ when families usually go skiing to celebrate it.
Naturally, along the VR headsets that you can make from the Happy Meal packaging, McDonalds created a skiing VR game named ‘Slope Stars’ that you can start putting the virtual reality gear to use with. The game needs to be downloaded off of the respective application online stores (App Store or Google Play) and can be played without the VR headset too, but naturally, the experience will be enhanced that way.
On the other hand, you can use the McDonalds Happy Goggles with any VR-capable mobile game that you can find in the app stores as it contains everything you would ever need to make it work. The way kids are supposed to transform their Happy Meals into VR devices is by simply tearing and cutting along some marked lines and folding the box in a particular way (instructions included, of course), then inserting in the VR lenses that you can find included in the package as well.
The smartphone that you have to put in the VR headset is your responsibility, however.
The new McDonalds VR package is made in collaboration with the Swedish alpine ski team that officially endorsed the ‘Slope Stars’ VR game. It is not known if Google had anything to do with the headset in question, given the uncanny resemblance, but the McDonalds VR set employs the same kind of construction as the Google Cardboard.
And all you have to do in order to get it – as long as you’re in Sweden the next 2 weeks – is to make sure you get there fast enough to catch one of the 3,500 limited edition packages and be prepared to whip out an extra $4.10 for it.
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