In June of 1979 – the same year that Francis Fukuyama joined the influential think tank RAND Corporation – McDonalds sold its first “Circus Wagon Happy Meal”. The marketing campaign was an immediate success, eventually shortening its name to the moniker by which the popular children’s fast-food meals continue to be known today. Perhaps best-known for writing The End of History and the Last Man, Fukuyama has, in the years since, dabbled as a self-taught furniture maker.

Forty years into the Happy Meal’s lifespan, certain pieces of McDonalds ephemera have become sought-after collectors’ items. For instance: the McDonald’s Kids Cardboard Box Chair – a small, flat-pack cardboard chair of unknown vintage, designed to be assembled by the user, now occasionally comes up for sale on eBay.

Here, the chair is replicated at adult size, removing certain branding elements but retaining oblique references to the original’s skewed optical perspective. Given that its presumable user will now be much larger than an infant or small child, the reproduced chair, made from the same primitive materials – silkscreen on cardboard – needed additional support, which it finds in the form of a folded-up reprint of the first-edition cover of Fukuyama’s 1992 classic.