McDonald’s Leaps and Bounds

I had heard of Leaps and Bounds, but for years I could not have told you exactly what it was. I knew the name in that vague way you remember a place you saw advertised, or maybe passed in a mall, but never actually visited. I was too old to be the target audience when the first location opened in 1991, and too young to care about what McDonald's was doing as a business. It was only much later that I realized Leaps and Bounds was not just another indoor play place. It was McDonald's attempt to build an entirely separate chain around indoor play for children. Once I learned that, the whole thing became much more interesting to me.McDonald’s had been in the playground business long before Leaps and Bounds. In 1972, the company debuted its first outdoor Playland at the Illinois State Fair, with equipment designed by Setmakers, a Hollywood set design firm, and built around the McDonaldland characters. Kids could climb on a Hamburglar swingset or crawl through an Officer Big Mac jail. It…