Did You Know: McDonald's Turned Old Happy Meal Toys Into a Computer Mouse Shaped Like a Box of Fries

SHANGHAI - Did you know that some of the plastic toys children once pulled out of Happy Meal boxes in China are now sitting on desks as a computer mouse? McDonald’s China and Lenovo took toys that customers returned to restaurants, recycled them into new plastic and turned it into a wireless mouse shaped like a red carton of fries. More than 60 percent of the shell comes from recycled plastic, according to IT Home, and only 4,000 sets were made.

Even the name is a joke. The Chinese word for a computer mouse is shubiao. McDonald’s swapped the first character, which means rat or mouse, for one that sounds exactly the same and means potato, the character used in the Chinese word for french fries. The result reads roughly as “fry mouse,” which Japanese gaming site Denfaminicogamer was quick to point out. Notebookcheck rendered it in English as the Fry Mark.

Screenshot: @hisspai on X

The toys came from the public. During the 2026 FIFA World Cup this summer, McDonald’s China put collection bins in selected restaurants, in cities including Beijing and Shanghai, and invited families to drop off old plastic toys, the company said in a June announcement. Lenovo, an official technology partner of that World Cup, handled the rest. In its own post about the project, Lenovo said the toys went through its supply chain to be sorted, crushed, purified and modified into recycled ABS, the same family of hard plastic used in many keyboards and mice, before a factory processed the new material into mouse shells.

“Recycling resources is not only about reducing waste, it is about rediscovering the value of resources,” Gu Lei, McDonald’s China’s chief impact officer, said in the June statement, which was issued in Chinese.

Image: McDonald’s China

Under the novelty, it is an ordinary small office mouse. It connects over a 2.4GHz wireless receiver or Bluetooth, has quiet-click buttons and three sensitivity settings, and runs on a 380mAh rechargeable battery, IT Home reported. McDonald’s has not said what those three settings are or how long a charge lasts. The set includes a felt pouch that unzips and unfolds into a mouse pad shaped like a green McDonald’s serving tray, and Notebookcheck reports that it ships in plastic-free cardboard packaging.

Image: McDonald’s China

The sale was over almost as soon as it started. McDonald’s China released 2,000 sets at 10:45 a.m. local time on Oct. 22 and another 2,000 at the same time on Oct. 23 in its in-app store, at 99 yuan, about $14, plus 18 loyalty points, with a limit of two per person. More than 6,000 people had signed up in advance, IT Home reported two days before the first drop, and Notebookcheck says the run sold out shortly after launch. It was sold only in China.

Image: McDonald’s China

The mouse is the newest item from a recycling effort McDonald’s China started in 2021, which has already turned waste material into restaurant trays, staff uniforms and plush toys. Lenovo says it has used about 150,000 metric tons of recycled plastic in its products since 2005. Next to that figure, 4,000 mice are a rounding error. But they make the idea easy to picture: a toy that once came with a child’s meal is now the thing someone clicks on all day at work.