Changeables are go!

GO TO MCDONALD'S!

Star Wish

McDonald's, 1986

Hello Halloween

For some reason, fast food just goes with Halloween. McDonald's, the epitome of fast food, has always been right there each spooky season. The shake machine may never work, but they got your back for an awesome Halloween Happy Meal. This one is particular... dang, it's pretty cool. Hello Kitty and her gang are impossible not to love and these little figures are ready to go trick or treating. I don't have any jokes... this is pretty great.

Spooky Summer~ A Friend in Big Red Shoes

Summer is a Spooky Season.

Spooky Summer~Don't order the Grimace Shake

This all started yesterday. I’m still in shock. Traumatized, even. Me and my friends went to McDonald’s. A little backstory, me and my friends just graduated college. It was hell. But we always loved McDonald’s. So we figured we should go. After all, we wanted to try the new Grimace Shake.

So we pull up to the first window, and grab our Grimace Meal. The meal itself, was fine. But the shake… After my friend, Kayla, tasted it. She was fine. We hung out for an hour. Kayla, and the rest of my friend group were staying the night at James’ place. I love James. He’s my best friend. I declined. I was way to damn tired to do anything.

I went home, and passed out. It was 1:00 AM, where it happened. 25 missed calls. 101 missed texts. “What the hell?!” I shouted. I looked at the voice messages James sent me. “Holy shit! David! Please help! He’s here! Oh shit! He’s coming!” It was followed by static, and screaming. “David! Grimace! He’s real. No! Leave me alone!” No more messages. Nothing. I contacted everyone else. They didn’t answer. I put on the news. “5 dead teens were found brutally murdered.” My heart sank. Grimace…did he really? Now, here we are. I’m still in shock. As I’m writing this, I feel Grimace watching me. Stalking me. He’s coming for me! Please! Send help! Help me! Grimace is a monster! He needs to be stopped! Whatever you do, don’t order the Grimace Shake!

source

Big Mac Masters

I like McDonald's for the most part. I say most part because there's been times that I didn't care so much for it, but I do like it. Always have. For some reason, I'm extremely fond of their Beast Wars Happy Meals. I like kids meal toys as is, they're fun. Aside from those wonderful Beast Wars Happy Meal toys, there's been some pretty neat Transformers items from McDonald's. Today I feel like talking about the Foodstrap figures. 

These Foodstrap figures were fairly simple little toys of McDonald's food (with straps, get it?). By pushing a button, a Transformers character would pop out of the food. Just a little silly toy, ideal for a fast food promotion. What made them extra neat though was the integration of them into a regular Transformers toy. If you had a Transformers Chronicle Optimus Prime, there was a specific storage compartment in the trailer for these little toys. That's an odd feature... but a cool one.

McDonald's can even kill a star

McCursed: Feeding On Filth

There was a time when McDonald's made an attempt to be a clean and pleasant place to eat. In doing so they employed the used of demonic creatures who ate the filth of the customers. Often McDonald's would implore customers to throw away their trash in the wastebaskets to keep the restaurant clean. Even producing another subliminal message filled advertisement encouraging you to do so. Unfortunately these trash demons were truly greedy abominations and began consuming everything deemed dirty. After the introduction of the McDonald Land Play Place ball pits containing copious amounts of fecal matter, children started disappearing. The blood deal that begat McDonald's upon the world wrought about the consumption of the very children the product was sold too. Never doubt why the smile Ronald put on was red.

McDamned

When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the Earth.

McBoo To You

In the glory days of McDonald's, Ronald rung in the holidays usually with some sort of great Happy Meal promotion. The most famous McD's Halloween promotion would the the various trick or treat pails that were practically an annual tradition. For a few years tacking their commercials onto the 'Scared Silly' spot was another tradition as you'll find various editions paired with that classic bit. 
 
While the obvious intention was to use these trick or treating, they usually became various storage containers. Crayons and other school supplies were a popular use. McGoblin was home to many a Battle Beast in his day in my bedroom. They had a lot of uses, except for actual trick or treating as they were pretty small. 

My cousin generally used them along with his sisters. I'll never forget the Halloween where he was VERY jealous of my Paas make up kit werewolf costume. Dude was a bed sheet ghost with some cold cream on his face. Not even Kooky Spooks and a robe as the official Halloween costume. His McBoo pail got hard spiked into somebodies yard during a temper tantrum after the third time tripping over that sheet.

I Miss Batmania

If you Google Batmania, you'll get a million results including a Wikipedia entry on a fanzine probably written by said fanzine creator. Though for an entire generation of folks, Batmania specifically refers to the media blitz surrounding the 1989 Batman movie. Toys, games, fast food tie ins, it's the kind of thing I love. It continued for each Batman movie up until 1997's Batman Forever.

Following Batman movies had various tie ins and stuff, but not the awesome craziness of a Batman cheeseburger at McDonald's (back when you wanted to eat there). While which series of Batman movies are 'the best' is often debated in nerd circles, I'm pretty biased to this era. Not just for the Batmania, because dude, I love those movies.

Commandrons Will Keep You Up At Night

These day's I can't even get a milkshake from McDonald's, let alone more than one ketchup packet for my large order of fries. I don't know what's going on over there... but I hardly go any more. Though back in the day it was a pretty awesome place. It's be pretty great to get a new set of Commandrons from Mc'D's... yeah, among other things.

An Animated Happy Meal toy

I kinda wish I had gotten more of the Transformers Animated Happy Meal toys when they were out. I got a few, but not all. They were probably the last of the transforming kids meal toys available, and not too badly done either. Not that I've minded the non-transforming ones much. Just, it was nice to get a fully functional Transformers with those tiny boxes of fries and baggie of mutant apples.

Makudonarudo: Chōjin Masutāfōsu

Everybody always say's McBoo Pails when the words Halloween and McDonald's are combined. That and gift certificates for soft serve cones that they never redeemed. Though really, McDonald's has offered a plethora of Halloween fun way past simple trick or treat buckets. I'd also like to take a second to express my extreme jealousy of customers of McDonald's in Japan and their gold mine of Halloween themed special edition foods. Just Google it and see what you're missing out on.

Fortunately I was able to find both commercials edited together as it was a two part special event. Ronald didn't know what to be for Halloween, which played into the second part. Not only was 1995 two years until the milkshake machine worked last, but also the year of the 'costume' figures. Ronald, Grimace, Birdie, and Hamburgler (on parole) with removable Halloween costumes. Each pvc figurine had a removable costume that snapped over the figure. Also available apparently was some tapes. I guess the had some ZZ Top songs or something on them.

Ronald and the gang could in a second... wait no... you know where I'm going with this. Because you saw the picture and you already thought about it. You said McDonald's Pretenders. Because that's exactly what they were. McDonald's Pretenders.

Aside from the genius of McDonald's Pretenders, I've got to give the marketing department kudos for the mystery of Ronald's costume. The two part costume tied into the in store poster with Ronald not wearing his Pretender Shell... costume, but also asking what he was going to be. The surprise unveiled as you opened the Happy Meal box. What do you know? Ronald went trick or treating as Frankenstein! Though, we all know what Ronald was really up to on Halloween.

Seen and not Hurt

Nothing say's it's Halloween like local businesses giving out treat bags and reflective safety strips/stickers. Of course they never give out bags with the safety reflective crap printed on them, you get one or the other. Something to carry around all those Tootsie Rolls you're going to throw away in or a magic sticker that somehow will keep crazy Mr. Harmon from running you over in his beat up La Baron. In the early 70's McDonald's gave out cuffs, not strips/stickers for this very purpose. Called the Safety Cuffs, Ronald let your parents know you'll be safe as long as your rocking these stupid looking things. Did you catch the little bit Ronald said at the end of the commercial? I've seen this commercial for years thanks to my ridiculous habit of watching old Halloween commercials all year and just recently realized he said 'children should be seen and not hurt'. It's even printed on the cuffs.

For the longest I thought he said 'seen and not heard', which just made no sense. I mean, if you can't see them trick or treating, I hope you can hear their screams before you commit vehicular manslaughter Mr. Harmon. Anyone else find it fishy so many adults are just driving around carelessly on the one night they know children will be out and in the streets. Oh sure, tonight's the night the headlights just don't work, right. It's cause of this bullshit that Dracula had to wear that crap.

Probably shouldn't trust Ronald entirely too much either.

Armada of cheeseburgers

Sometimes you can't place exactly why you like something, you just do and that's that. I know why I like Transformers Armada. It was a really fun Transformers toy line with big chunky robots that were full of character and fun gimmicks that introduced Mini-Cons. Mini-Cons are tiny Transformers that at the time seemed like a return to Micromasters with a plethora of creative alt modes. The Mini-Cons usually triggered the larger robots gimmicks, but also would interact with the toys in other ways as well. Add to the fact that they'd occasionally homage past gimmicks like Targetmasters. With the variety of ways to buy and collect them, and Mini-Cons were a hit on their own outside of the hit line they were birthed from.

Critics of the line often complain that Armada was Hasbro copying Pokemon, and that's a fair comparison. In the cartoon, the Transformers were hunting Mini-Cons and an overall 'catch them all' vibe was all over. Hasbro has followed trends with their products multiple times before (I mean Micromasters... ) and that's pretty much how the business of selling things to children goes.

I love a good tie in promotion, this is well known to readers of this site. I don't make it a secret and wallow in it's excesses. So when a Transformers Happy Meal tied into Armada came around, you know I was had before hello. Before I go any further, let me talk about the above commercial for said Happy Meal. I'm so freaking happy over the original animation that's amazingly toy accurate. Yes, the toys were not the best looking things ever, but McDonald's was not one bit ashamed of that and took time to animate them in action.

This is the best picture I could find, thank you dml44833, whomever you are

Big Bad Beetleborgs Metallix Happy Meal

Ronald McDonalds Ice Skates for Christmas

McDonald's Star Wish Christmas

McDonald's Beast Wars

It put a smile on

Often I'll mention how the McDonald's Beast Wars Happy Meal is one of my favorite things in my Transformers fandom and get a smile and nod in response. It's just one of those things that gets dismissed easily by a lot of folks. I guess it's hard for some people to take something as basic as a Happy Meal as something that would mean something. Regardless, it's always been something that meant a lot to me and I thought it would be a good time to divulge into that.

After all, it's my site.