Top Five Favorite Fast Food Toys

Five Best Fast Food Toys or Your Childhood in a Grease-Covered Box

I guess I could have gone for the stronger alliteration and titled this post "Five Favorite Fast Food Figurines" but I think we can all agree that would be too much. Recently on the OA forum there has been a lot of talk about fast food toys from the past. Members have been listing off their favorites and basically just reminiscing. There's nothing wrong with a little nostalgia, right?

Anyway, today's top five list concerns my personal favorite fast food toys of all time. Let's do this.

5. Alf Puppets (1988)- In the interest of full disclosure, I have to admit that I never owned any of these. Of course, that doesn't make them any less bad ass. These Alf puppets came from Burger King in the late eighties, and I can't think of a better way for a child to spend his days than sticking his hand up Alf's ass and making him talk. There were a few variations, one had Alf with an apron and chef's hat, another had him with a guitar, and he was dressed as a baseball player in yet another variation. It seems Alf really gets around.

4. McDonalds "Changeables" - Imagine, if you will, a cross pollination of Transformers and fast food. Ah, yes, wouldn't that be a perfect world? Luckily McDonalds was way ahead of you and put these bad boys into Happy Meals all across the country in the late-eighties. There were eight figures in all ranging from hamburgers to ice cream cones, and each one would transform into (what I assume to be) evil creatures bent on world domination - one over weight child at a time. Don't believe me? Click here and see for yourself.


3. McNugget Buddies Halloween (1993) - There have been many incarnations of the McNugget Buddies over the years, but I really want to focus on the 1993 Halloween figures. Halloween at Mcdonalds has always held a special place in my heart, I remember using the Halloween pails that held my delicious October Happy Meals not just for trick or treating, but even as a lunch box for the rest of the year! And these little guys - pretty much ripoffs of the Potato Head Kids - were devilishly fun. They were plastic Chicken McNuggets that you could dress up as Frankenstein's monster, Dracula, a ghost, a witch, a pumpkin, or a mummy. If that doesn't catch your fancy, check out this fantastically macabre commercial for them here.

2. Looney Tunes/DC Super Heroes (1992) - What an awesome idea for a set, and I say that with little to no irony. You take Looney Tunes characters, which are great, and mix them with DC Super Heroes, which are also great, and you've got one hell of a product. The set is a standard PVC set that includes inarticulate versions of Daffy Duck as Batman, Bugs Bunny as Super-Man, Porky Pig as Wonder Woman, and Taz as The Flash. Of course, each one has their own play on the super hero names, but I just don't happen to have those. The coolest part of this set? You could actually alternate the characters between their secret identities and their super hero costumes (the costume was simply two pieces of plastic that snapped around the figure). How great is that? Check out the commercial here.

1. Muppet Babies (1987) - Released in Happy Meals from Mcdonalds in 1987, these little PVC toys included Kermit riding a skateboard, Miss Piggy in a car, Gonzo on a Big Wheel, and Fozzy on a hobby horse. A great, if small, set that came out at the height of the Muppet Babies popularity. When these came out I was only a few years old, but I held on to them for years. Just look how happy these little youngsters are playing with their new Muppet Baby toys here.