toy canon #7: did somebody say mcdonalds?
Although she prefers to own fewer possessions now, my mom was a collector for most of her life. In addition to all of her Barbies, she had a hope chest filled with Stark Trek Action Figures and old TV Guides (you know, when they were small rectangular books that actually listed all of the times when shows would air), shelves of books (especially mystery series like Nancy Drew, Trixie Beldon, and the Hardy Boys), a dedicated space in our garage for Pez dispensers and novelty lunch boxes, a small horde of Smurfs figures, and heaps of McDonalds merchandiseâcupboards of cups, Happy Meal boxes nested together like matryoshka dolls, and, of course, the toys.
There was a long, cardboard storage box tucked under my momâs bed that was packed with old McDonalds toys. While Iâm sure the last thing most collectors would want is for their kids to get their grubby little hands on a prized collection, there were some things that she kept off-limits (such as her Barbie dolls) and others that she firmly wanted to share with us (such as the Smurfs and McDonalds toys.) She was happy to watch us squirming and squealing as we rooted through the box to decide which ones to play with for that day. The only caveat we had, at first, was that the toys went back into the box afterwards because they were part of her toys rather than ours. Over time, she relaxed on that rule, but that was a decision she came to on her own because we were getting more joy out of them than she was with them being under her bed.
I donât mean to mention it in every single Toy Canon post I write, but Iâm really thankful that my mom cultivated such a joy for imaginative play in us. Sharing her McDonaldâs toys wasnât the first or only time that she relinquished something she had set aside for the sake of bringing a little joy into our lives. Coloring books she had tucked into the back of the closet for herself. A tall mason jar of buttons her mother had saved over the years that I can still remember the smell of when I close my eyes. I also know there is a lot to be said about how gross the combined marketing of toys and fast food was, especially at the time I was growing up in the 90s-00s, but I genuinely have a lot of fond memories sprawling out on the carpet and playing with my younger brother.
As always, this is not a catalogue of every single Happy Meal Toy that we owned over the years, especially since these were very common to find inside thrift store bundles with things we wanted more. The focus here will be on toys that were featured in more memorable play sessionsâespecially narrative storytelling. Iâm also genuinely surprised that
One of the playsets that I hold most fondly in my memory is the 1980s Fisher Price Sesame Street Fisher set. Iâll write about that in more detail in a later toy canon post, but itâs relevant to highlight here since the main time that I pulled out the Muppet Babies toys were to have them visit their friend, Baby Cookie Monster, at the iconic 123 brownstone apartments. We had all of them, but I mostly remember playing with Kermit and Fozzie since they had an easier time standing upright than the others who made more sense to be attached to their respective vehicles, which I had much less interest in compared to the figures. Kermit was probably the one that I played with the most, since he was one of my favorites from the show, while my younger brother was more likely to play with Fozzie being the jokester that he remains to this day. We had some of the furniture that came with the apartments, but I mostly enjoyed positioning them around the heavily detailed sticker walls or having them hang out on the front steps near Oscar.
We checked out a lot of cartoons on VHS from our local library, including a few episodes of the Potato Heads Kids. It was one of those 80s shows that was developed to sell toys - low budget, simple stories, all the classic silly sound effects of the era. It has been several decades since I watched any of the episodes, but I remember that we laughed so hard at a couple of the scenes. When we played with the toys, we mirrored the personalities that were in the show divvying them up based on who liked the characters or had ideas for how to perform them. My characters included Slick, Potato Dumpling, Tulip, Dimples, and Potato Puff - most of the girls and the British potato with an umbrella. I like Dimples design the most and also enjoyed how giggly she was in the cartoon. For McDonalds toys, these were also pretty good quality, which is part of the reason why we were drawn to them. They might not have sparked as much inventive play as the McNuggets since we had the opportunity to infuse those characters with their own personalities, but I had fun with these silly things.
Fast Food Changeables (1983, 1987, 1989) and McDino Changeables (1991)
We had all of the iterations of the Changeables since this was a series that my mom loved a lot, but the one that I remember playing with the most (aside from just morphing them back and forth as a fidget) were the McDino toys from the 90s. First of all, I was a big fan of dinosaurs thanks, in part, to Jurassic Park, The Land Before Time, Weâre Back: A Dinosaur Story, and Jim Hensonâs Dinosaurs (though I think Disneyâs Dinosaur single-handedly murdered my special interest.) My favorite changeables were the Tri-Shake-Atops, Hot Cakes-O-Dactyl, McNuggets-O-Saurus, and, of course, the Happy Meal-O-Don. They had such friendly, goofy faces and their ability to transform made it fun to imagine them going into hiding in a world where dinosaurs no longer roamed.
The bigger McDonalds mascots didnât interest me much, but I adored the Fry Friends and that carried over into my fondness for the toys. Like the Potato Head Kids, it was fun that they had costumes (hats and legs) that you could swap around for added silliness. My favorites to play with were the one with a teddy bear and night cap and the yellow one with pigtails and roller skates. I thought they were the cutest in the lineup, though I love the shade of purple for the basketball player and the binoculars piece on the adventurer with a little snake friend. I do not remember anything about their personalities, but they were often in play sessions with the McNuggets as fellow mascots with silly costumes.
Halloween McNugget Buddies (1993, 1996)
I loved Halloween so much more as a kid, because there was so much more whimsy involved. Each year, we would take out our humble assembly of decorations (a skeleton, ghost that would make eerie sounds, cobwebs with bats and spiders.) We obviously went door-to-door toting our McDonalds candy buckets (mine was the witch) and then dumped our haul in the front room to do barter and trade. The season also meant it was time for my brother and I to bring out the Chicken McNuggets. Not the older versions that had the weird, puffy rubbery texture, but the ones with cool Halloween costumes you could pop on and off.
From the first Halloween wave, my characters were Pumpkin and Witchieâthe latter of which is still my favorite. I loved her short purple hair and tall pointy hat. She was the leader in the stories we would invent alongside the vampire character who passed from one brother to the next as time passed. In the second wave, I added the Fairy Princess and Purple Tarantula to my roster of characters. Witchie and the Princess would often butt heads about how they wanted things to be done since they were both magical users. Donât they just look like an Elphaba and Glinda pairing? The Tarantula was really fun and goofy in its design. I liked to make it shuffle over the carpet and have a slightly more chaotic, animalistic energy than my other nuggets.
I wasnât a fan of either of the live action Dalmatian movies, but I was obsessed with the original animated movie (sheets, velcro shoes, t-shirts) and gravitated toward the tie-in merchandise that mirrored that style including a Jewel track suit that I remembering wearing on an especially rainy day at school. My third-grade best friend had a big collection of toys that I envied so I was delighted when my mom thrifted me some of the official Mattel figures from 102 (including Oddball, Little Dipper, and Domino) and McDonalds toys.
Itâs hard to recall all of the figures that I owned, especially since I liked looking at some of them (such as the one tucked into a pile of Christmas wreaths), but there are a few that stand out to me. One I know with certainty that I owned and played with often was a sitting dog with a floppy purple beret; in fact, I found it recently in a treasure box of toys. A few others that look familiar: The green holding a green candy cane in his mouth, and the one wearing a British bearskin cap. All of the Dalmatians were brothers and were featured in play sessions alongside my Littlest Pet Shop toys, despite being significantly bigger than them. I had a stronger preference for the articulated Mattel figures, especially since I loved Oddball, but I enough room in my toybox for additional animals.
My parents were fully swept up in the âBeanie Babies will be worth big bucks one dayâ mania of the 90s. They owned bags of Beanie Babies, Teenie Beanie Babies sealed in their McDonalds bags, Beanie Baby trading cards (each slotted securely into a binder.) They took us to Beanie Baby conventions where they could look for rarer toys that they might not stock at our local party supply store (which we would stop by every time my mom went to the bank to make a deposit since it was right next door.) Naturally, I did not care whatsoever about their potential future value: I loved animals and I wanted to play with the cute little animals that were satisfyingly weighted.
At this point, my older brother was feeling a bit old for toys and my younger brother initially wasnât super impressed by them either. That is, until one day, he was watching me play with the Teenie Beanies using a jungle volcano playset we had and I could sense his eyes widening with desire to join in. We split the first series of 10 beanies and it was like a renaissance following the waning interest my siblings had with My Little Pony.
Of the first series, I performed the following characters: Patti the Platypus (a plucky, adventurous girl who often tucked herself up inside a birdâs nest at the top of the mountain and went for a slide down the waterfall), Pinky the Flamingo (a goofy but relatively shy and clumsy girl), Chops the Lamb (a quiet, quirky girl with her head in the clouds), and Quacks/Quackers the Duck (a sporty, boisterous boy who would get into little tiffs with Patti about where they should go.) Eventually, my mom even got me the regular-sized Patti beanie and Paddles, the Pillow Pet-sized platypus. It was so satisfying to stack them on top of one another.
Series two featured a lot of characters that belonged to my younger brother, but I know I kept these ones for myself: Bones the Dog (an all-time favorite for me that I gave a personality similar to Myron from Wayside School - kind of quiet but coming into his shell over time), Doby the Doberman (Bonesâs cooler older brother who would encourage him to overcome his anxieties), Twigs the Giraffe (a slightly awkward girl who was definitely friends with Pinky), and Zip the Cat (a black cat who was way too cool for everyone else - very similar to Cat from Little Bear.) In fact, Iâm pretty confident that I bought Zip with my own money at one of the Beanie Baby conventions. Unlike the original release, my parents didnât want to shell out money on multiple Happy Meals to collect them all, but we did acquire them over time via thrift stores. But when I saw Zip, she was so special to me as the first teenie cat with her little green eyes and white mittens. If I couldn't have a real cat, she was the next best thing.
At this point, our cast was getting too big for for the original playset on its own. It was time to expand. We still had many of our other Fisher Price sets, which we would occasionally fish out the closet and assemble into a large arena to explore, but our favorite game was to have the teenies explore the house. Not a toy house, but our house. They would start off in our bedroom, naturally, and the end goal would typically be the front room downstairs. As beanies of small stature, this would be a multi-day adventure requiring acquisition of shelter (cupboards, tables), navigating difficult terrain (scaling the second story banister, carpeted stairs, dusty corners), and a strict buddy system to ensure that nobody got separated.
In series three, I added Spunky the Cocker Spaniel (personality unfortunately not known), Nuts the Squirrel (a close friend of Quackers who was bursting with energy), and Chip the Cat (Zipâs slightly more chill sister was always at her side.) Our exploration sessions started to also incorporate the McNugget Buddies who could also add a splash of magical assistance. This twist on our original Halloween tradition gave way to our favorite holiday twist on this game: Climbing the Christmas Tree.
Series four brought in my biggest wave of characters since the first launch: Slither the Snake (who could assist people to get into small spaces and tight corners), Flip the Cat (the most prim and proper of the three cat sisters), Dotty the Dalmatian (personality not known, but a friend of Bones and Doby), Flitter the Butterfly (didnât play with them so much as admire their pretty design), Neon the Seahorse (a wide-eyed full of curiosity), Sting the Stingray (another adventurer to join Pattiâs ranks, but he was obviously of more versed in our underwater areas), Springy the Bunny (no recollection of playing with her), Goochy the Jellyfish (he was a silly boy to match his goofy expression), and my two favorites who I brought with me when I moved into my own apartment: Bronty the Brontosaurus and Steg the Stegosaurus. They were two dinosaur best friends who were always at the very end of the trail trying to catch up. Bronty had a slow as molasses voice and walked at a snailâs pace, calling back to his friend âCâmon Stegâ to keep going one step at a time. Steg was a silent character, but actually much faster than Bronty; he intentionally walked slower so that his buddy wouldnât be alone.
When I was a kid, I read a Little Golden Book called The Cat That Climbed the Christmas Tree. As you can imagine, our holiday game involved a long trek that culminated at our own family tree with beanies resting in the folds of the skirt, climbing up the fake branches, making small talk with all of our favorite ornaments, and marveling at the glowing, multi-colored lights. We played this every year together as soon as the tree was up and decorated, the dinosaurs arriving last but with no less joy. I donât even know what any of them did when their journey was over, because their arrival wasnât the important part.
It goes without saying, but the Teenie Beanie Babies were by far my favorite McDonalds toys of all time. They fit neatly into the palm of my hand, made a satisfying sound as the tiny beads in their bodies moved around, and they sparked my imagination just as much as my other most treasured toys. I have a basket of all my favorites to this day.
Furby (1999, 2000), Poo-Chi Pets (2001) and Robo-Chi (2002)
In 1998, my dad bought an original black and white Furby (apparently referred to as the Skunk variant.) I cannot stress this enough, but this toy was his. It stayed in his room on his book shelf. He often flipped it upside down to wake it up, causing all those animatronic clicks to sound, annoying my mom immensely. He would quote its most frequent statements ad nauseam around the house: âKaa way-lo koko.â Unlike other people, I donât have any trauma memories from being scared of Furby - even when it seemed to survive many a dead battery, and I also donât feel super strongly about them being either creepy or cute. But I donât have fond nostalgia for them either.
After the McDonalds release with the fully plastic Furbies, they popped up in thrift shop grab bags so we naturally ended up with a small horde. They were neat little things, but they didnât really inspire me all that much. However, I was super into virtual pets more broadly: Tamagotchi and Neopets (which also had their own McDonalds line of plush dolls but I didnât play with them) were the two biggest, but I also played on a lot of smaller sites and was obsessed with the Yoshi browser pet tie-in Nintendo released to market Yoshiâs Story. In the midst of this fixation was the Sega Robo-Chi pets, including Poo-Chi, Meow-Chi, and Chirpy-Chi (my personal favorite.)
Unfortunately, I canât find an image of all the variants for the McDonalds releases, but I know that we thrifted a couple of each one. They had different wind-up or magnetized features, which was a neat little gimmick to mirror the battery-operated full-sized counterparts. Since this was the tailend of our dedication to playing with toys, I donât remember that much about assigning personalities or storylines to them.
Thank you for reading! Ęáľá´ĽáľĘ
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