• Promo, Wednesday, August 30, 2006 1:15 PM

Fast-food marketer McDonald's has come under fire from an environmental watchdog group for offering toy Hummers in a promotion for the chain's Happy Meal menu offering. The Environmental Working Group says the Hummer, a General Motors vehicle, creates pollution that can cause children to develop asthma. "McDonald's is promoting Hummers, the least fuel efficient and probably most pollutant vehicle people can buy at a time when gas prices are at an all-time high," says Environmental Working Group spokesperson Lauren Sucher. For its part, McDonald's is standing its ground. The company says it's only offering toys, not the real car--and it has no plans to stop the promotion, in which one of eight different Hummer toy vehicles is offered to boys, while girls receive Polly Pocket miniature dolls. McDonald's made 42 million toy Hummers as part of the promotion. But EWG isn't giving up. The group plans to send petitions signed by some 4,500 consumers asking McDonald's COO and President Ralph Alvarez to stop the "ill-advised and offensive promotion," which ends Thursday. Consumers also can sign a petition (a pre-typed e-mail) addressed to Alvarez from an interactive Web site EWG developed, RonaldMcHummer.com. "The fast-food chain that helped make our kids the fattest on Earth is now selling future car buyers on the fun of driving a supersized, smog-spewing, gas-guzzling SUV originally built for the military," the Web site says.

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