Favorite Kids Meal Promotions

[Powder]

Thinking back, there were quite a lot of fast food toys that I really loved, with plenty of play value, detailed sculpts/paint jobs, & enjoyable action features. These are some of the ones that stand out in my memory after all these years.

BK's Universal Monsters. Such dope sculpts, & they had neon green LED's in them, very rad.


BK's Jackie Chan Adventures figures. I absolutely adored this show, but as far as I know, it never had any actual toys. These filled that gap in my collection just fine. I played the sh*t out of them, seriously.


BK's Men In Black line. They did two separate waves, but the one I liked most included this thing, it's a spinning top UFO. You'd blow into it & set it down, then it'd whistle & whir about. There were two, the one pictured below, & the one I had (which is harder to find a picture of) that was grey with a light green creature inside, one that resembled the more traditional "grey" aliendesign. They had slimed agents, memory wiping devices, various inter-dimensional beasts, cool stuff.


BK's Pokemon series, my all time favorite of theirs. I had most of what you see pictured here, including the vac-metal chrome Pokeballs with gold plated cards. This stuff was badass. I used most of these pieces with my regular Tomy collection, some of the figures they included with their kids meals were of a more accurate scale to the otherwise awkwardly sized official stuff.


Taco Bell's Crash Bandicoot/Spyro The Dragon set. I had Crash Bandicoot figures, but they were so top heavy & flimsy that they'd never stand up & broke after a week or two. So it was nice to have a solid mini figure of the Playstation mascot that I didn't have to worry about. Spyro was a favorite of mine as well, I really dug these.


McDonald's Dinosaurs. Absolutely fantastic sculpt work on these. This was another show that to my knowledge didn't have toys (if it did, they weren't on my radar) so it was a great set to have. Pretty comprehensive, too!


McDonald's Halloween Chicken Nuggets. No list of this nature would be complete without them. This particular wave was my favorite, or at least, the neon-green haired dude was my #1 & as such I remember these best of all.


Of course, let's not forgot that the BK Kid's Club had TMNT tapes. Those may be the greatest of all. I guess I have a bias towards their goods, ultimately. I ate there more than most other places in the mid to late 90's, & they no doubt had the best toys, at least I think so.

[Etsyturtle2]

The super Mario 3 McDonald's line. They are kinda cool for Nintendo collectors. I think they're cool because there was rarely merchandise then for Mario as much as there is now. And if you look closely, bowser is a recoloring of his tv show counterpart.

[Jester]

If I could find these

And they were too expensive I would totally buy them for my son.

[snake]

Bk had awesome indiana jones toys back in 2009 or so

[Storm Eagle]

Probably the Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue promotion from 2000, since restaurants in select states also offered a video. My state didn't seem to be one of them, but someone from another state hooked me up. It would be available in general retail a year later though.

[Zak The Neutrino]

Originally Posted by Jester

If I could find these
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com...a23181de3d.jpg
And they were too expensive I would totally buy them for my son.

I remember these! I had them to at one time.

[precision]

In the early 90s McDonalds had transforming toys that were food products that turned into dinosaurs. I still kept a few from my childhood. I never had the ice cream or the fry toys but the three on the right I still have today. If I were to buy one now it would be the pterodactyl hotcake one.

[Walkabout]

#1 for me would definitely be Muppet Babies, closely followed by Duck Tales a little later.
I had all those, and a few of the transforming burgers and fries etc.

What I really loved were those wire frame Pizza Hut Martians and their little flying saucers from the mid 80's.

[sdp]

some of these are very nostalgic, Pokemon on Burger King in 1999 is probably the best promotion any kids meal has ever had, quote me on that. I'll add a few myself:


Burger King's Lion King toys were simply amazing, great sculpt, articulation and quality paint application. These were actually better than any real Lion King toys that were out at the time.

Spoiler:

Power Rangers the Movie figures by McDonalds were great as well, articulated, looked like the movie counterparts (unlike the actual movie figures) and came with a mini zord!

Spoiler:

These were the only muppet baby toys I ever saw and they were happy meal toys

Spoiler:

Another cartoon that didn't really get toys was Bobby's world but thanks to a McDonalds promotion we got them and they got the concept of the show.

Spoiler:

Sonic LCD games, I was already a teenager but had to go to McDonalds to pick these up. Sure they were super simple but to have a video game on a kids meal was just awesome.

Spoiler:

And finally a favorite of mine:



Remember when the actual mascots of the restaurants were iconic or recognized enough that they would get their own sets of toys. McDonalds had that and BK used to have that as well. Here we had the awesome BK Kids Meal Club gang, in this version they were based off the popular troll dolls AND glow in the dark, can't get more 90s than these figures!

[MikeandRaph87]

I remember a few of these. I ha the transforming McNuggets and drink. It was an odd promotion so it sticks out in memory even though I as very young. I also recall the Disney's Dinosaurs. I know I have/had the Bobby's World scuba mask toy too. I cant remember the year, I want to say 1993, but I got the whole set of these:



I could not find an image, but this is the 15h anniversary of the Happy Meal promotion from 1994. It had various different characters that connected to each other in a parade-like line.


Anyone remember this? Pok'emon: The First Movie promotion that had all 151 Pok'emon and you did did not know what you would get week to week and the hard set you could buy as uncut pages?

[sdp]

Yeah Powder mentioned Pokemon and I called it the best kids meal figures ever made and I doubt anyone can mention one that was better. The stars aligned all perfectly. Pokemon was at the peak of the fad and the first movie had just come out, and we get this gigantic promotion, this wasn't a collect the 6 different figures promotion, they went all out. They had 57 figures, has that ever been done before? I doubt it. That meant that most likely your favorite Pokemon was there. They were separated in different categories and each of these categories could've easily been a kids meal promotion you had the "launchers" and the "tops" which are your usual kids meal staples. Then you had the water launchers which were already of a much higher quality than normal kids meal toys with great sculpts and paint applications. The bean bags were pretty damn good for the time. The light-ups were also very well made and finally we had the key chains which in my opinion were the best, these were easily better than most toys out there at the time. There was also only 1 talking figure which was of course Pikachu the "secret" rare. But there were other "secret" figures which were Mew and Mewtwo. The sculpts and paint apps were like no other kids figures ever and since. They were also in blind bags so you didn't know what you would get until you opened the bag and each one came with a plastic Pokeball with the exception of Mew and Mewtwo, which the first came with a pink powerball and mewtwo in his lab capsule.

Spoiler:

Not only that but BK went all out, that poster that you see above that shows all the figures was given away for free, and also they had a "trading" night once a week where you could go and trade figures with other kids and the place would be full of kids and get rid of repeat figures you may have had or just trade something for something else. They also had for a small extra cost 6 "gold" Pokemon cards which came in a very nice PokeBall. I also forgot to mention each figure included had a Pokemon card so we had all(or most) Pokemon in (cheap) card form which was another thing to collect in each blind bag.

Spoiler:

I'm not sure how successful this was, I would guess very because of all the people flocking to BK but it was never attempted in this scale ever again so who knows. I know they had to recall the Pokeballs because a toddler suffocated from it not sure if that had anything to do with it or maybe the figures and producing so many of them was really not very cost effective but I don't really know. Later Pokemon promotions on BK were nothing but a shadow of their former selves. I remember we had some game boys for the release of Gold and Silver and for the second Pokemon movie which was a year after the original promotion which were supposed to be 3D Pokemon cards.

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

Trying to think of anything similar I remembered another great Kids Meal promotion but it doesn't quite get to the level of Pokemon did and it was for the last Star Wars movie, episode III. Also by Burger King and it spanned all of the SW saga, not just Episode III. There were 32 figures which one of them was a "secret" figure. And that was Anakin who can transform into Vader. The figures were not stuck in a blind bag and you could see which one you were getting. Here you also had different types of figures all which had a SD style. You had space ships, water squirters, wind up figures best one being Han Solo since it included his carbonite stuck version, some that had something inside but I never owned any of them since they looked terrible and the best were some small plushies which were super cute and amazing.

Spoiler:

[The Deadman]

I remember having Sonic, Tails and Knuckles and could never get Robotnik. Made me a sad child in those days.

[Toitlefan]

Those transforming McDonald's meals were definitely my fave. Next in line though was these guys. Looney Tunes superheros with removable costumes.

[turtle1237]

Have the complete Fraggle Rock BK toy cars.

Being the Fraggle fan I am, I glad I have em.

[ABrown]

Originally Posted by Jester

If I could find these
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com...a23181de3d.jpg
And they were too expensive I would totally buy them for my son.

Ya know, I think I had those when I was a kid.

Originally Posted by precision

In the early 90s McDonalds had transforming toys that were food products that turned into dinosaurs. I still kept a few from my childhood. I never had the ice cream or the fry toys but the three on the right I still have today. If I were to buy one now it would be the pterodactyl hotcake one.


http://www.thorndon.co.nz/thorndon/mcdinochange.jpg

Now I KNOW that I had those as a kid. Those were awsome.

[GoGreenMachine2014]

My favorite Happy Meal promotions were the Inspector Gadget from McDonalds in 1999 and the 23kt Gold Plated Pokemon The First Movie cards frok BK also in 1999

[Utrommaniac]

The Tarzan collection!

Back in the late 90's when they would have toys that fit together.
We would go there a lot and do toy trades until we had a complete set

The Tarzan set was no exception.

We even had the full Inspector Gadget toy from the movie, but that was all I really seemed to care for in regards to it.

[billbot85]

Originally Posted by Toitlefan

Those transforming McDonald's meals were definitely my fave. Next in line though was these guys. Looney Tunes superheros with removable costumes.

I loved these as well, I had Bugs and Daffy!

[turtle1237]

Originally Posted by Utrommaniac

The Tarzan collection!

Back in the late 90's when they would have toys that fit together.
We would go there a lot and do toy trades until we had a complete set
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/1Y67tBmpJoI/maxresdefault.jpg
The Tarzan set was no exception.

We even had the full Inspector Gadget toy from the movie, but that was all I really seemed to care for in regards to it.

Hated the Gadget toy. Only got legs and a head. It was dumb that each Gadget Toy was a piece of Gadget.

What you miss arm day, your out of luck lol. You really had to luck out to get Gadget complete. Why cant they release that toy complete in stand of hunting for body parts?

[thundermaster612]

Each McDonalds Bionicle line was pretty good. My favorite was the Mctoran/Tohunga that you could get. Best Happy Meal toys ever. Especially since they are canon and exclusive sets.