A 7-year-old girl in Middletown, Connecticut, opened a promotional Stranger Things Happy Meal toy after an after-school McDonald's trip on August 28 and found loose, leafy green material stuffed inside a small plastic toy house. Her family says it turned out to be marijuana. What began as a treat for the child and her cousins ended with police confiscating the toy and the suspected drugs, and a family demanding answers from a McDonald's location that says it has none to give.
A Trip to McDonald's Turns Alarming
Brittany Fitzpatrick had taken her children and her niece to the McDonald's on South Main Street in Middletown for an after-school treat when her niece opened the toy and discovered the substance, according to WKRC. The child initially told her family that someone had placed rocks inside her toy box, not realizing what she had actually found, as reported by Daily Voice. Fitzpatrick posted video showing the green, leafy substance tucked inside the plastic house and said the toy had not been in a sealed bag.
Shelby Winborne, the child's mother, said she is grateful no one was harmed and that she is now trying to explain to her daughter what happened. Winborne said the substance should never have ended up in a Happy Meal in the first place, and told reporters the incident resulted in a hospital visit for her daughter. Fitzpatrick contacted law enforcement immediately after the discovery and has also reached out to McDonald's corporate and the store directly multiple times.
Store Says It Doesn't Know How Drugs Got There
According to Winborne, a manager at the restaurant said store personnel do not know who placed the substance inside the toy. Fitzpatrick told reporters she left multiple voicemails without an initial response from corporate or store management, and has not received an apology. The disconnect pushed her to go public, seeking accountability after the franchise offered no direct answers, per the same Daily Voice account.
The Middletown Police Department confirmed that its narcotics unit is actively investigating how the suspected marijuana reached the restaurant, according to Daily Voice. Investigators have confiscated both the alleged marijuana and the toy itself, and police say they hope to resolve the investigation quickly. It remains an open question how the drug was hidden inside the toy or otherwise reached the restaurant.
What Connecticut Law Says About Cannabis Near Kids
Connecticut legalized adult recreational cannabis on July 1, 2021, but the law restricts adults 21 and older to carrying no more than 1.5 ounces in public, according to Allan F. Friedman Criminal Lawyer. Possessing more than the legal limit can carry criminal penalties, and unlicensed sales are a felony. Separately, under Connecticut General Statute § 53-21, placing a child under 16 in a situation likely to endanger their physical health is classified as risk of injury to a minor, a Class C felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison, per Ruane Attorneys. Connecticut prosecutors routinely apply that child endangerment statute when controlled substances are made accessible to minors.
A Broader Pattern of Pediatric Cannabis Exposure
The case lands amid a documented rise in accidental child exposure to cannabis since legalization. The Connecticut Poison Control Center receives an average of 40 to 60 calls a month regarding children 17 and younger exposed to cannabis, logging 668 total calls between 2019 and early 2025, according to the Connecticut Hospital Association. Nationally, U.S. poison centers managed more than 22,000 cannabis exposure calls in 2024, with children and teenagers accounting for more than 75 percent of those cases, per data cited by Johnny's Ambassadors.
Fast-food packaging has been used to conceal drugs before. In 1997, police arrested a 19-year-old McDonald's drive-through employee in Monroe, Connecticut, who sold marijuana to undercover officers alongside Happy Meal orders on five separate occasions, according to TIME. In 2007, an 8-year-old girl in Ottawa, Illinois, found a bag of marijuana, a lighter, and a pipe inside her Happy Meal box after a 17-year-old employee hid his personal stash in an empty container, as reported by Fox News; that employee was fired and charged. More recently, in January 2025, a customer at a Burger King in Hamilton, Ohio, found marijuana inside her child's chicken fries order, prompting a police investigation and the employee's immediate termination, according to Retail Wire.
For now, the Middletown family is left waiting. Winborne says she is still hoping for a response from McDonald's, while the narcotics investigation into how the drugs ended up in her daughter's toy continues.
