The "meal" is not what makes the Happy Meal happy.
It's all about the toys.
Those glorious, surprisingly well-made and collectible toys.
Most of them were amazing, but some were...disappointing.
Here are some of the best, and worst, Happy Meal toys ever made.
Not only were Hot Wheels some of the first hugely successful Happy Meal toys, they stuck
around.
According to Complex, Hot Wheels showed up around 15 different times in the first 25
years of Happy Meals alone.
"We're here at the McDonald's speedway, where the Hot Wheels are hot, hot, hot!"
For this love affair, Hot Wheels first hooked up with the Happy Meal in 1983, and the first
toys were actually very high-quality, painted metal cars.
In the 90s, they switched to plastic, but kept the coolness.
Nowadays, the Hot Wheels designed for McDonald's are made specifically for the company.
The retro Hot Wheels from 1983 can now be found on eBay for up to $30, and the newer
models come with a variety of tracks in that iconic Hot Wheel orange, including tight turns
and ramps.
When Transformers came on the toy scene in the 1980s, McDonald's made sure to jump on
that morphing-robot bandwagon.
Thus, the McDonald's Happy Meal Food Changeables were born, along with a backstory.
The premise is that the Munchoids are stealing all the Happy Meals from Earth, and the Food
Changeables need to stop them.
The robot named Fry comes up with the clever idea to shrink down and duplicate themselves,
so that everyone will get one in their Happy Meal, and the Munchoids will be defeated.
"In the hands of your innocent children, hot cakes become Robo-Cakes!"
The robots were released several times in the '80s and '90s, and eventually came in
the shapes of different burgers, drinks, fries, chicken McNuggets, ice cream cones, hotcakes,
and the Egg McMuffin.
With a few flips they become little robots with colorful faces.
These were popular enough to inspire a spin-off that featured dinosaurs and the Happy Meal
box itself as a disguise.
There was one time the McDonald's Happy Meal was maybe too good.
In the 1990s, Beanie Babies were all the rage, and McDonald's won the opportunity to collaborate
with Beanie Babies owner Ty Warner to create the McDonald's Happy Meal Teenie Beanies collection
in 1997.
The slightly smaller toys came in the same cute animal shapes with adorable names.
It was pandemonium.
Despite the insanity these tiny collectibles spawned, the Teenie Beanies aren't actually
worth that much today.
A set of 10 mint-in-package Beanies from 1997 cost less than $30 on Amazon.
Just like Hot Wheels, Beanie Babies have stuck around in Happy Meals, but they've evolved
quite a bit.
They're now called Teenie Beanie Boos, and you've probably seen them around without realizing
their famous ancestors.
The 2019 collection came in rainbow colors with a very Lisa Frank-styled color palette.
These 1984 pullback cars might seem simple, but this Happy Meal toy was not only successful
at entertaining kids.
It also introduced them to the fun characters of McDonaldland.
These Happy Meals toys were inspired by the popular Penny Racers.
McDonald's version of the toy was very similar, but they took out the penny component and
added a weight at the back of the car instead.
They also added the toys to an already popular ad campaign.
In the 1970s, McDonald's had devised an advertising campaign known as McDonaldland, which was
a fictional land where Ronald McDonald and his cohort of food-based characters lived.
Some of the most famous characters included the Hamburglar and Birdie the Early Bird,
who was introduced in the 1980s with McDonald's new breakfast menu items.
Some of the most impressive Happy Meal toys have been glorified advertisements for movies.
Such is the case for the Inspector Gadget collection of 1999.
The toys are based on a film featuring Matthew Broderick, in which a security guard is blown
up and then put back together again with various robot features with crime-fighting capabilities.
The genius of the Happy Meal collection was that while each toy could function on its
own, they could also be assembled into a full-sized, working Inspector Gadget action figure.
The toys were also remarkably high quality, with fun creative features and a face that
actually resembles Broderick.
Each individual piece was completed with intricate detail and color, and when they came together
Inspector Gadget's limbs could extend, move around, and turn.
This toy was aggressively cool, especially considering it came free with a meal.
For example, if you pressed down on Inspector Gadget's head, it would cause a spark in the
center of his chest.
His left arm worked as a mini-grabber and his right arm was a spiffy water gun.
His legs, which could extend him to roughly a foot tall, were a snazzy green laser pointer
and a pair of pliers.
Then of course, there was the propeller hat, which sounded like a real life helicopter
when spun.
Similar to Hot Wheels, My Little Pony and the Happy Meal have had a mutually beneficial
relationship for years.
One of the most recognizable McDonald's toys to this day, My Little Pony first debuted
in 1982 and became a Happy Meal Toy in 1985.
The toys spawned an animated series and movie, which boosted the toy's popularity throughout
the 1990s.
The 1997 Happy Meal collection wowed kids with brush-able tails and manes, intricate
decals, and heads that could actually turn.
Although the design of My Little Pony has changed since then, the toy has maintained
huge popularity, with help from its 2010 reboot show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.
The '90s was the decade of the Disney Renaissance, starting with The Little Mermaid in 1989 and
ending with Tarzan in 1999.
Near the end of this era was Hercules, and the Happy Meal figures released in 1997 were
some of the best.
Hercules himself came with a sword and a shield, and his arms could move up and down for real
fighting action.
The purple Hydra was hollow and could be popped open for a secret hiding spot.
Also available were Meg, Pegasus, the Titans, and various gods.
Each figure was extremely detailed and well-painted, and many came with moving parts.
This attention to detail is something you'll also see in other Disney-inspired Happy Meal
figurines, like those made for The Lion King, Mulan, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
The best thing about the McDonald's Happy Meal was the toy, so imagine children's disappointment
when they got a bucket instead.
As an alternative to the traditional Happy Meal box, McDonald's sometimes gave out their
meals in these colorful Halloween-themed pails in the shapes of ghosts, pumpkins, and witches.
They debuted in the Halloween season of 1986, but would stick around until 2016, coming
back each fall.
It seems like a cool idea, but children still expected there to be a toy in the pail, and
there wasn't.
The bucket itself was supposed to be the toy, yet many complained that it was too small
for much use in trick-or-treating.
Over the years, the buckets would change, but they could never get over one major hurdle:
a bucket is not a toy.
Some versions of the bucket, however, did try to spice things up.
The ghost in the 1990 version glowed in the dark, and the 1992 versions had cookie cutter
lids.
Sure, they were festive and fun in their way...but in terms of playability, they fell pretty
flat.
Believe it or not, there are kids who do not like camping.
Camp gear, especially cheaply-made, ugly camp gear, would not have met those children's
expectations of a toy.
Especially not a Happy Meal toy.
But that's what kids got in 1990.
In an effort to tie-in with the fictional Camp McDonaldland, McDonald's Happy Meal included
a set of "camping gear" that would be less than helpful in any real-life camping situations.
There was a plastic frying pan, some plastic utensils, and a small water bottle that didn't
hold much water.
Worst of all might have been the collapsible cup, which barely looked McDonald's-related
until closer inspection.
McDonald's has found a lot of success over the years partnering with Disney on its Happy
Meal toys, but one undeniable failure was the "gold-plated" Little Mermaid figures.
These 1997 toys were clearly meant to be collected, rather than played with.
They were blasted with an inexplicable bronze paint that obscured Ariel's delicate facial
features and made Scuttle look like a bird caught in a nasty oil spill.
Even more confusing, Ursula was the only character who wasn't a proper figurine at all, but rather
an inflatable doll.
She was also the only one that wasn't covered in paint.
All this is in contrast to the earlier 1989 version of The Little Mermaid Happy Meal toys.
These were painted with bright, realistic colors and were meant to be played with in
water, making them a popular bath time toy.
Probably a more apt name for this "toy" would have been the McDonald's Mis-Step.
In an effort to promote healthy lifestyles, McDonald's released a pedometer as its Happy
Meal toy in 2016.
As CNN reports, this decision was controversial from the start, as some nutritionists saw
it as a ploy to divert consumers' attention away from the unhealthy nature of McDonald's
food.
The toy itself wasn't too terrible to look at.
It was designed to look like a watch with brightly-colored neon straps.
They featured a motion-activated light-up band and an activity counter, and overall
they looked pretty cool.
But not only were they a bit misguided in principle, they were also dangerous.
After the Step-It was released, parents began reporting that the watches were causing burns
and skin irritation.
This led to McDonald's issuing a huge recall of the product.
Unfortunately for some, the experience of this terrible toy was already burned into
both skin and memory.
Unlike some of the other items on this list, at least these are actually toys.
They are well-painted, collectible figurines that even come with changeable outfits.
But other than being a highly collectible way to showcase one's love of chicken McNuggets,
these aren't exactly fun to play with.
It all started in 1988 with the original, non-spooky McNugget Buddies, which were anthropomorphic
chicken McNuggets that came with different faces and outfits.
The outfits were interchangeable, giving the McNugget Buddies a kind of Mr. Potato Head
vibe.
They were odd, and clearly a way to advertise a food product, but just clever and silly
enough to become a fairly popular toy that still holds a lot of nostalgic value.
McDonald's even re-released the retro toy in 2019 to celebrate the Happy Meal's 40th
anniversary.
However, while the original McNugget Buddies had endeared themselves to kids in 1988, by
the time McDonald's came out with the Halloween McNugget Buddies in 1993, many of the children
were left confused about what to do with them.
After a five-year hiatus, they were clearly targeting a previous generation of Happy Meal
lovers.
While characters like McNuggula and McBoo Nugget were interesting to unpack and swap
outfits with, without the memory of the original McNugget Buddies, this toy was quickly forgotten
at the bottom of the toy bin.
These are not just ugly, but also kind of terrifying.
Also, since when were sunglasses a toy?
The worst thing about it all was the sheer laziness of slapping a McDonald's character
onto a basic accessory item.
Even worse, kids were expected to act as walking, talking advertisements for the company, without
a proper toy in return.
Although characters like Grimace and the Fry Guys weren't terrible in and of themselves,
this thoughtless use of the characters was insulting to both the Happy Meal legacy and
customers.
This toy makes the list of worst Happy Meal toys because it is on one hand controversial,
and on the other hand, just incredibly annoying.
In 2015, McDonald's released a collection of talking minions, based on the Minions film
from the same year.
One of the Minions fell under particular scrutiny, with many parents claiming they could hear
it saying the F-word.
"What do you think this little Minion toy is saying?"
McDonald's refuted the claim, saying that the Minion was speaking "Minionese," the gibberish
language from the movies that sounds kind of, but not exactly, like real words.
Regardless of whether the Minion is swearing or not, imagine hearing that chatty, distorted
Minion recording over, and over, and over again.
Whether you love it, hate it, or think it may be profane, the caveman-themed minion
lives on in infamy.
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