Talk:List of McDonald's marketing campaigns/Archives/2014

Media tie-ins

So, I have to say at the outset that this "article" sucks ass. We've recently had a recurring vandal adding in various movie tie-ins for 2017 and beyond that are likely entirely fictional. With this in mind, I just removed a bunch listed as 2015 tie-ins. Maybe they're real, maybe they aren't. Hell, that's true about just about everything in this article.

Given the issue that brought me here (that one vandal), I went right to the "Media tie-ins" section. Wow. What a steaming pile. Let's see: We're going to list all of the movies, TV shows, and (on rare occasions) books used in McD's promotions since the dawn of time. First, to make it easy (and worthless), we won't have sources. There is no chance that a vandal or two will come along and add in made up garbage, right? Wrong. That's exactly the kind of thing that happens all the time.

Next, how should we arrange this? Chronologically? Alphabetically? Maybe in a sortable list? No. Obviously we should create sub lists based on the corporate entity that owns the rights to the media franchise. Hmmm, what was that one ad campaign in the late 1990s involving that kids' movie? Let's see... I know it was a kids' movie in the late 1990s, now all I have to do is figure out who owns the rights to the movie. Simple? Impossible.

Within each corporation's section, how should we arrange them? Chronologically? Alphabetically by media title? A mix of the two? No, but you're getting closer. How about chronologically in some of them (some by campaign year, some by the year of the media), alphabetically by media title in some, alphabetically by franchise name in some, alphabetically by media title except for individual characters from those media are in an undifferentiated section after the rest in some and -- my personal favorite -- a list that starts out chronological before switching to alphabetical then switching back with a few randomly tacked on at the end.

Finally, for good measure, there's a "Misc." (can't be bothered to spell out the big words) section at the end for media that (I guess) aren't owned by one of the entities listed. Who owns E.T., 101 Dalamations and The Little Mermaid? I can't begin to guess. No years on these, so good luck verifying when McD did a tie-in with that well known media entity NERF (is this the NERF movie, the line of NERF books or that NERF prime time series from the 1980s?).

I haven't looked at the whole mess just yet, but I'm willing to bet there are several other steaming piles of unsourced maybe-true-maybe-complete-vandalism-all-completely-useless crap strewn throughout. Basically, we probably need some strategically placed WP:TNT here. Right about now, someone will chime in (if anyone is actually reading this) with concerns about all of the "information" that would be lost. No, it wouldn't. If the "information" is verifiable (supposedly one of our core principles), it is "out there" somewhere, just waiting for us to find it and add it here with a source. If not, we have no use for it. Killing the article and starting from scratch with sources for everything is the only way to sort out the baby (legitimate content) from the bathwater (vandalism and misremembered garbage) here.

Now a pause for any weeping and gnashing of teeth... - SummerPhD (talk) 13:01, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

After a bit of Googling, I have found zero reliable sources and three wikis for the first ten listed. I'm thinking this whole section might need to disappear. While there are certainly collectors of Happy Meal toys, that does not mean an unsourced list of them is in any way encyclopedic. Wikipedia is not a collector's guide. - SummerPhD (talk) 16:12, 10 August 2014 (UTC)