“Behry hapi” Japanese McDonald’s ads

What do PaRappa, a chocobo, and the Ape Escape monkeys all have in common? Well, aside from them being available across the Sony PlayStation platforms, all of them star in a series of Japanese TV spots for McDonald’s. That’s right, folks: the kids all around Japan are flocking to Mickey Dee’s to buy Happy Meals and get toys of their favorite Sony mascots.

But, despite all the smiles and cute bouncy Japanese kids in the commercial, we’re actually disturbed.

For one thing, we wouldn’t want our video games characters (much less an Ape Escape monkey) to suddenly crawl out of our TV sets just like Sadako (Samara in the US version) did in “The Ring.” Freaky. And then there’s the background jingle that goes “Hapi, hapi, behry behry hapi!” annoys us like a raving lark. But only after a few minutes did we start to realize that we were singing it to ourselves already. Death to catchy jingles!

“Hapi, hapi… Behry behry hapi… Hapi, hapi… Beh-” AAAGH! Can’t. Stop. Singing. The. Song. Must… Stop… “-ry behry hapi…” [faints] Ah… We love the Japanese.

What do PaRappa, a chocobo, and the Ape Escape monkeys all have in common? Well, aside from them being available across the Sony PlayStation platforms, all of them star in a series of Japanese TV spots for McDonald’s. That’s right, folks: the kids all around Japan are flocking to Mickey Dee’s to buy Happy Meals and get toys of their favorite Sony mascots.

But, despite all the smiles and cute bouncy Japanese kids in the commercial, we’re actually disturbed.

For one thing, we wouldn’t want our video games characters (much less an Ape Escape monkey) to suddenly crawl out of our TV sets just like Sadako (Samara in the US version) did in “The Ring.” Freaky. And then there’s the background jingle that goes “Hapi, hapi, behry behry hapi!” annoys us like a raving lark. But only after a few minutes did we start to realize that we were singing it to ourselves already. Death to catchy jingles!

“Hapi, hapi… Behry behry hapi… Hapi, hapi… Beh-” AAAGH! Can’t. Stop. Singing. The. Song. Must… Stop… “-ry behry hapi…” [faints] Ah… We love the Japanese.