And so the McDonald's Happy Meal, a huge moneymaker for the fast-food company, was born, pairing a child-size meal with a tiny toy. The product, tested for two years, went into national release 25 years ago.

Happy Meals lure millions of children to McDonald's Corp. restaurants, and bring in sales from parents who pick up a Big Mac or Chicken McNuggets for themselves when they stop in. Happy Meals are served at 31,000 restaurants in more than 100 countries and have made McDonald's the world's biggest distributor of toys.

Marketing experts agree, it was brilliant.

"Happy Meals proved that you could actually 'brand' a meal and make kids harass their parents for it," said Adam Hanft, president of Hanft Raboy & Partners, a New York advertising and marketing firm.

Exactly as Bernstein had planned.

"My feeling was if you get the children to think about McDonald's, mom would bring them there," he said.

What set the meal apart was the way it paired food and entertainment — an idea later advanced with McDonald's addition of play areas.

"Up until that point, McDonald's was just a restaurant," said Jay Lipe, a marketing consultant and author of "The Marketing Toolkit for Growing Businesses." "But with the advent of the Happy Meal, it also became a very convenient toy store."

Bernstein holds the patent for the product's packaging and a bronze Happy Meal in his office — a gift from McDonald's on the meal's 10th anniversary — thanks him "for bringing the Happy Meal, a bold idea, to the McDonald's system."

Still, McDonald's credits, Dick Brams, its former advertising manager in St. Louis, as "Father of the Happy Meal." He asked Bernstein to develop a children's meal concept, McDonald's says.

The Happy Meal debuted in St. Louis, Kansas City, Phoenix and Las Vegas in 1977. It was tested in four other markets before being released nationally in 1979.

It helped streamline McDonald's operations and was a predecessor to its order-by-number menu. It wasn't the first such product at a restaurant, but it was the first to be so widely available.

"You know a good idea when you see it. I just didn't know how good it would be," Bernstein said.

The meals themselves have changed little, though parents can now opt for apple juice and milk instead of soda and apple slices over fries. In England, Happy Meals can come with Evian; France offers fish nuggets; Romania has mini apricot pies.

Children like the taste of a Happy Meal but are drawn by its toys — from "Star Trek" space rings in 1979 to Teeny Beanie Babies in 1997 to small video games last year.