Did I miss the AT-ST's in the Clone Wars? Or is McDonald's reinventing canon?

Fun list, too.

While the #1 worst Happy Meal Prize might be funny, I think it takes away from an otherwise pretty good list that lists legitimate complaints.

The "Doobie" prize should have been an honorable mention. Including it is like including the condom on the burger or the finger tip in the fries as prizes too.

i remember back in the day getting these spaceship-shaped erasers in happy meals. they weren't wrapped in plastic, and got all greasy in the box, so if you tried to use them as they were intended, it just smeared your pencil marks into a gross, irremovable smudge. and that is the worst happy meal prize.

I only used to get taken to Mickey D's once in a while, so I liked to make my happy meals count. Nothing matched the disappointment of opening the box and finding a McDonald's character plastic comb inside. And that was the worst happy meal toy ever.

for any doubters i believe this is what those combs looked like http://cgi.ebay.com/Mint-Set-of-McDonald%27s-Happy-Meal-Combs-1990_W0QQitemZ120395601424QQcmdZViewItem

Maybe 'fro pick is a better description

oh, and there was a span when the happy meal box was the prize again, only this time they were different vacuum-molded flying saucers. you had to put the stickers on yourself, but again it was all covered in grease. i think my parents maybe weren't the greatest and childhood nutrition, now that i think about it. i definitely ate a shitload of mcdonald's growing up.

OH man I had the orange pumpkin-like Halloween pail! I never saw anyone with the green witch pail you have included in the picture.

Come on... Madame Alexader Dolls are awesome in the Happy Meals. The Wizard of Oz ones were done as an offshoot of "Wicked" hitting the number one spot on Broadway..give em a break!

I actually liked the Halloween Happy Meal buckets. They got MUCH more use and play after eating the food inside than all the toys I ever got from McDonald's.

First - EXCELLENT article. I especially enjoyed the aphyxiated mutant monkey baby doll.

Oh, and Mr. C for teh WIN! A McDonalds Fro Pick pretty much wins as the absolute worst piece of crap to foist on some poor kid.

I will say that as far as McDonalds characters go, I did sort of like the "McDonalds Food that Transforms into Robots" prizes. Of course maybe a milkshake that turns into something that looks vaguely like a transformer being a "good" prize simply underscores the whole point of the article.

The only happy meal toys I liked were the transformers ones that turned into food
http://cgi.ebay.com/Lot-10-McDonalds-Happy-Meal-Food-Transformers-Toys_W0QQitemZ360140819599QQcmdZViewItemQQptZFast_Food_Cereal_Premiums?hash=item360140819599&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=72%3A570%7C66%3A2%7C65%3A12%7C39%3A1%7C240%3A1318%7C301%3A1%7C293%3A1%7C294%3A50

or the Looney Tunes toys that you could dress up as DC super heros. Taz was the Flash... I think Daffy was Dr. Light raping some one.

Oh man, hilarious post!!!

The monkey doll from hell should have been number one. I would have screamed my fool head off and thrown that fucker out the window had I opened my box and seen it lurking inside.

Thanks for the laugh!

Hell, I'd chow down that shit to get the winged monkey...

I used to use the happy meal trick or treat pale's for the head of a scarecrow.. That way I could use the pillow case for the candy bag.. Not a terrible McDonald's Happy Meal prize, IMO. However.. I did take my niece and nephew to McDonalds last yearish and she got one of those creepy wizard of oz toys.. I think it still haunts their house.

The Clone Wars bobble head Happy Meal promotion had characters and vehicles from all of the movies. My kid's got a big-headed Wicket on a speeder bike. The Chewbacca in the AT-ST makes sense because it happened in ROTJ.

Still a pretty crappy idea though.

cool post. remember most of those toys. the buckets i found many use for. the e.t poster and Ronald puppet mcds was just doing what they do best show that ronald is their ruler. as for that winged monkey doll the kid who got that proably had nightmares for weeks. not to mention were the workers who put number one in the box smoking the stuff themselves cool list

I'd be happy if McDonald's made the Lego-themed Happy Meals with toys compatible with actual Legos. But that may be just a niche complaint.

LOL we had that exact flying monkey doll at work. Hung it up in a friends office on the ceiling because the damn thing freaked EVERYONE out. LOL good times.

I remember the pails cause our gym teacher's son had cancer and he used it to puke in.

@bobshumway

Ah! Figured it might be something like that. I just never saw the actual promotion when it was out. Thought I remembered Burger King doing a bobble head promotion with the original trilogy, but maybe I'm remembering wrong.

Do you have any idea how much entertainment value you could get freaking people out with that monkey doll? That's not sad--it's inspired.

I remember some of the items.
But I missed alot of them, I grew up in the 90's.
But I remember those Halloween ones.

Sadly the McDonald's in my town closed down, and the closest one is 30 minutes away, I still like getting a toy once in a while, even though I'll be graduating soon.

My mother still has a shit-ton of Madame Alexander dolls that she and my grand mother co-collected when she was in middle school.

Because of this, I know a couple of things about them.

- After a run of a Doll was complete, they would destroy the molds so that it could not have another run.

- The Madame Alexander company was the first to make a "toy" based on a licensed character. As well as the first one based on an actual person.

Okay so that's really all I know, and one of those came from wikipedia, so who knows how accurate my info is. I'm amazed that a company like that would let McD's throw their shit into a grease bucket, and give it to ungrateful children who are most likely going use their still greasy hands to take the toy out of the package, and if they are a boy, blow it up with some kind of low explosive.

Not that I've ever done that, but let's say that my friend and I had squads of army men who never made it back to base.

My worst Happy Meal toy was actually pretty recent (and I'm in my 30s). It's an American Idol fake MP3 player (at least, I think that's what it's supposed to be); A white box with American Idol stickers on it (including a "video screen" which is just a still image). When you press the button, it plays the American Idol "theme" (I use the term loosely, since it's just a weird melange of sound effects anyway, and not a real piece of music).

Look at these crappy things:

http://tinyurl.com/cgx693

The ALL suck, but the "MP3 player" is one of the worst of the bunch. I think the clapper-thing is pretty suck too.

I remember when I was kid, I went ape-shit over those halloween buckets. I drove my parents crazy until I had them all.

Also, I'm pretty sure the "Go-Active" meals the brainchild of Oprah and her gang, which makes them that much worse. When I think of proper diet advice, I think of Oprah.

The coolest Happy meal prizes were the McDonald-Formers or whatever they were called. Robots that transformed into hamburgers and fries and the like. It was the original Aqua Teen Hunger Force.

The happy meal buckets were the best McDonald's toy....ever. I had multiples of each, and remember filling one up, leaving it in the car, and then grabbing an empty. You got tons more candy that way, because all the adults thought you hadn't been successful getting any.

Plus, coming from a poor southern town, those things looked better than our homemade costumes.

Concerning the pot, when I worked in fast food, we actually had someone come through the drive-thru trying to pay for his meal with a small bud.

"I remember the pails cause our gym teacher's son had cancer and he used it to puke in."

Harmlessfun: that is possibly the saddest thing I've ever read. God I'm depressed now. :(

Magical Shrimp: if it makes you feel better, he didn't die from the cancer

God...the pails! [To quote Lovecraft]

I haven't thought about those since—jeez, it has to be 15, 20 years. I still remember getting those.

Also got a lot of use out of 'em. I think some DinoRiders™ used them as emergency shelters and, er, adobe construction molds over a few summers.

I wouldn't be surprised if they're still in the attic, somewhere. I kind of hope they are.

ok so maybe wicked was kicking all kinds of ath on broadway, but how many 8 year olds do you know that pay close attention to broadway, and do you really think the ones that do are eating happy meals on the regular?

99% of everyone probably missed that connection.

Maybe I was just a simple kid, but I really dug those plastic hand puppets. Hours of fun in the back-seat!
Really great article! Thanks.

Are you going to do a list about the toys that came/come with Carl's Junior? Those were some lame ass toys,as Carl Karcher was a cheap SOB who didn't want to pay anything, so as late as 2004 (when my kids stopped getting the kids meal) you could wind up with Flinstone toys or some other cartoon from the 60s.

Anyone else want to commit suicide looking at the Madame Alexander "OZ" Dolls? Talk about depressing nightmares.

I had that E.T. poster up on my wall for years, and the thing had eyes that would follow you around no matter where you went. So I'd be lying in bed, and there'd be this alien penis monster glaring down at me.

There's a few of those Clone Wars things lying around my parents' house from my younger siblings...they're damn creepy. On some of them their heads don't stay upright, so you're left with a giant head in a tiny spaceship lolling to one side and staring at you with those blank, poorly painted eyes.

"Patrick Rennie said:

I'd be happy if McDonald's made the Lego-themed Happy Meals with toys compatible with actual Legos. But that may be just a niche complaint."

I recall when I was a kid they had some actual Legos in their Happy Meals for a while. I got a few I think.

And my 3 year-old son really likes those Clone Wars bobble head things -- though he likes the Bionicle and Transformers: Animated ones more.

Robby DC said:
OH man I had the orange pumpkin-like Halloween pail! I never saw anyone with the green witch pail you have included in the picture.

Not only do I have said pail, I also have a purple one, orange, white, etc. No rememberance of how or when I got them, but they're around my house somewhere-we put them out every year for halloween.

If I did get them from McDonald's, I must've blanked my mind out completely of the ordeal due to how random it would be to get something like that as the prize with NOTHING in it. Really McDonald's, what were you thinking? And I'd like to know what the advertising for that would've been exactly.

I remember, had, and sort of liked #9. Frankly, I miss the McDonaldland crew, and think that the world has become a worse place ever since a bunch of frothing soccer-moms chased all the mascots for cereals and fast food away from innocent childhoods, rather than doing their damn job and being actual parents.

The Halloween pails remind me of the four boats that came out every summer in the 80's. One more shitty Happy Meal "toy" was The Real Ghostbusters School Supplies. Fucking SCHOOL SUPPLIES?! In a Happy Meal? BULLSHIT!

The very first (pre-Star Trek) Happy Meals contained one of four prizes. I forget what the others were, but the cool one was a molded-plastic "wristwatch" with a "secret" compartment where you could stash a stack of four quarters or three Necco wafers. Then you'd snap the lid shut and when you managed to pull it open again, the contents would go flying everywhere. There were multiple colors and one was the same color as Mountain Dew.

Dunno why I mention it. But there doesn't seem to be any reference to it elsewhere on the Internet and that made me sad.

I agree with everything on the list minus the Clone Wars toys. It could have been a lot worse-- we could have got nothing but Clone Wars characters. The fact that they against all reasoning included original trilogy characters makes it a-ok in my book. They even sculpted them in the style of the Clone Wars characters, which while not the best looking animation around, certainly suggests they put effort into their original trilogy offerings.

You left out those horrible toys from The Spiderwick Chronicles. They were a bunch of.....things....creatures, maybe, of some sort with red laser pointer lights in them. The best part is that it encouraged children to look at their toys through a plastic disk and stare at the red laser. Nice.

Here's the transformer things people keep bringing up:

http://cgi.ebay.com/Lot-15-Vtg-McDonalds-Happy-Meal-Toys-Old-Transformers_W0QQitemZ310131229408QQcmdZViewItemQQptZFast_Food_Cereal_Premiums?hash=item310131229408&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=72%3A1205|66%3A2|65%3A12|39%3A1|240%3A1318|301%3A1|293%3A1|294%3A50

I totally forgot about the Ghostbuster school stuff, I would actually to to take the pencil off the thing, so I could just play with the Ghostbuster toy.

Come to think about it where's the best happy meal toys list?

Super Mario 3, Batman the animated series, the Loony Tunes as DC characters, and I was never really in Power Rangers, but those, I think you got a figure and a robot.

Dude,
The halloween pails were awesome and a staple of halloween trick and treating!!! I love those pails i used them for everything and for some reason my french fries tasted better being eaten out of them!!

Nick

I have a Madam Alexander Scarecrow doll sitting on my computer at work. It is one of the creepiest looking things I have ever seen.

I have the french fry transformer. He was always my favorite from McD's. I also like the California Raisins that Hardees gave out, and the Gobots promotion Wendy's did in the early 80's. And Burger King had a really great Inspector Gadget series (based on the cartoon, not the horrible movie).

my favorite was the "Mac Tonight" series of Happy Meal toy check it out...

http://cgi.ebay.com/1990-MCDONALDS-COMPLETE-MAC-TONIGHT-HAPPY-MEAL-SET_W0QQitemZ180340009991QQcmdZViewItemQQptZFast_Food_Cereal_Premiums?hash=item180340009991&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=72%3A1205%7C66%3A2%7C65%3A12%7C39%3A1%7C240%3A1318%7C301%3A1%7C293%3A1%7C294%3A50

God, that blue doll is fucking creepy, I coudn't stop laughing though. Whenever I got the happy meal, I never really paid attention to the toys, I just threw them out the window..and I remember getting that blue doll once..I got nightmares for a week..and I immediatly smashed to on the sidewalk and burned it. Still, it's funny, for some odd reason.

I remember that god awful Ronald McDonald plastic hand glove. The others I dont remember seeing in McDonalds

god i must be old. those are fairly new toys.
when i was little the plastic glove was cool, if you had a bib on as a cape and a burger king crown to go with it,

we got the fro pick, the submarine that you put alkaselzer in.
pull back race cars, stickers.
and the fav. the square thin plastic 45 record that was glued to the happy meal. played Mcdonnalds theme music and such if you didnt touch it with your greasy hands and slice your finger on its edge.

even for a while all you had was the happy meal bag to connect the dots on, or the box that had punchouts where you could take them out the back and use the front of the box as a house. some dolls, some cars etc..

I really need to get my hands on one of the creepy flying monkeys. I've been gaslighting my kids with one for a few months now. They'd throw it away and I'd retrieve it and it would "reappear" somewhere in the house.

They finally had enough the day it arrived in the mail addressed to them. They destroyed it so that it could never reappear.

Or so they think. If I can find one, the fun will start all over again.

Wow, I have or had a few of those toys!! Yeah, there have been some lame ones, especially when I was really little.
I'm surprised you put the pales up there, they at lease served a purpose during Halloween. What should have been up there were the boat or train plastic molds that once made up the prize!! Cheap and flimsy shells that were the box and toy all in one!! You could put stickers on them and weee hours or fun for everyone!!!
Oh and those Transformer toys from a year back or so, sucked donkey balls!! The Changables from when I was a kid rocked!!!