Everything you need to know about the McDonald’s Happy Meal VR headset

Last month McDonald's announced it was turning its iconic Happy Meal boxes into foldable VR headsets in Sweden. While the concept isn't yet ready to debut in other countries, it might be one of the coolest DIY VR headsets you’ve seen to date.

First, let's back it up. The Happy Meal promotion called Happy Goggles is similar in most ways to Google cardboard, allowing users to fold up the box to assemble a makeshift VR headset. It essentially turns the Happy Meal box into the toy itself. Read through The Computer Guyz' blog about the Happy Goggles VR headset here and learn more!

Here's how it works: After purchasing a Happy Meal, you can assemble the box by folding along the lines (you might want to eat the food first). The Happy Meal also comes with two plastic lenses that can be popped into the front part of the headset.

The lenses make sure the VR effect actually works, and there's a cut-out so the headset rests comfortably on your nose. Folding the box correctly takes some trial and error, but the printed directions on the side of the box walk you through the process.

The instructions tell you to visit Happy Goggles website on your smartphone to play a game called "se upp i backen," which translates into English to "Watch Out on the Slopes." The game is themed around the Swedish holiday known as Sportlov, a time where families take annual ski trips.

Now just slide your smartphone into the headset, peer through the lenses, and you're ready to play. As VR games go, it's not bad: The premise of the game is to collect stars scattered across the landscape as you ski around poles; it uses its internal motion detectors to sense where you're looking and the direction you want to go.

The experience isn't exactly giving Oculus Rift or PlayStation VR a run for their money, but those systems cost hundreds of dollars, and this is the freebie VR headset that comes with a McDonald's Happy Meal. Considering the reach of McDonald's, the promotion could end up being a big entry point for VR to reach the mainstream!

Even better, if the Happy Meal VR test in Sweden is successful and rolls out elsewhere in the future, we'd love to see some kind of experience that features some of our favourite characters, like the Hamburgular. A virtual trip to McDonaldland seems like an untapped opportunity.