I've gone sour on them:
"Wait — what did this McDonald’s Minion toy just say?" by Steve Annear Globe Staff July 10, 2015
McDonald’s says they are simply speaking “Minionese,” a made-up language created for the tiny, pill-shaped characters featured in the new animated comedy film “Minions.”
Can't see the forest for the trees (I don't think it will help).
But some people are convinced that one of the fast-food chain’s newest Happy Meal figures has a potty mouth.
Ashley Mezack heard it right away. She was certain.
“It sounds like it’s swearing,” she said, holding the yellow-bodied “Minions” toy close to her ear at the McDonald’s restaurant on Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge.
Her friend Eugenia Machado, also a Boston University student, wasn’t entirely convinced.
“I didn’t hear a swear word,” said Machado. “I did not hear that at all.”
Dissenting opinions about the Minions’ verbiage have people across the nation divided.
Why not?
The issue surfaced this week after parents complained that the toy from the film, a prequel to the hit “Despicable Me,” clearly let out a phrase that can be boiled down to “WTF.”
You get a lot of that acronym here.
The directions say that the toy will emit the phrases “para la bukay,” “eh eh,’’ and Minion laughter.
The company on Friday stood by its begoggled creatures, saying there were no plans to take them out of distribution.
‘‘Our goal at McDonald’s is to serve up food and fun for our valued customers, and we’re glad to have the Minions on board,’’ the company said in a statement.
In the Boston area, finding one of the offending Minions was as difficult as deciphering the sayings.
At the fourth McDonald’s visited by a reporter Friday, on Mass Ave. in Cambridge’s Central Square, one was available. After it was turned on and its feet were tapped, it produced a staccato three-syllable sound.
Intrepid Globe reporters.
What the — hmmm?
Like Mezack, Aaron Washington, who recently moved to the area with friends from California, looked shocked when the words squeaked through the tiny toy’s staticky speaker.
“It kind of did” sound like a swear, he said. “If you actually, like, imagine it . . . it sounds like [the offending phrase].”
“ ‘Minionese?’” Washington said, shaking his head. “I don’t think so.”
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I won't be seeing the film. I'm already annoyed by the month-long advertisements promoting them, and honestly have come to question the intentions of today's advertisers and programmers of children's fare.
Call me an old-fashioned sentimentalist if you will, but the values promoted today by ma$$ media border on the perverse.
