Visit Scary-Crayon's
Cafepress store! We have
t-shirts for humans, too.
Click above to donate to
Scary-Crayon with PayPal!
terrible2z.comMIKEYSTMNT.COM
Pop ArenaSinFest
Alligator JuiceRandom Action Hour
The Star Wars Action Figure TheaterCrown Combo
Articulated DiscussionDork Dimension
Cool Toy ReviewInterrobang Studios
xkcdBled Out Onto A Page
BogleechBootleg Toys: The Undiscovered Playthings
Infinite HollywoodTwisted Kaiju Theater
Snipe Hunt MediaThe Technodrome
iLL WiLL PreSSqwantz.com - daily dinosaur comics
Encyclopedia ObscuraCulture Freak
Platypus ComixX-Entertainment
Wesoteric...
Linking to Scary-Crayon?
Feel free to use a button!
Scary-Crayon Button 3; 88 x 31Scary-Crayon got to cool off.
A Scary-Crayon link button from tOkKa!Link to Scary-Crayon with Suuuupa Mutation!
Link to Scary-Crayon with Suuuupa Mutation!Link to Scary-Crayon with Suuuupa Mutation!
Link to Scary-Crayon with Suuuupa Mutation!Link to Scary-Crayon with Suuuupa Mutation!
Scary-Crayon Button 1; 88 x 31Scary-Crayon Button 3; 88 x 31
Adorable!
The Scary-Crayon index, article archive listings, and official blog are powered by WordPress.
it's SCARY-CRAYON's BLOG!
''Blogs are not frogs.''
July 29, 2008
A Haiku and a Happy Meal toy!

Yes! First up, A Crayon Haiku #81 — which features a figure from a set that I bought waaaay back during my stint at KB Toys (I think that was in 2000?) and just got around to opening. Kinda crazy, isn’t it? This was from the period just prior to the advent of Marvel Legends, where ToyBiz seemed a bit pressed for ideas and started releasing all kinds of wacky versions of characters. I don’t have any of the Monster Armor X-Men, but those were also pretty insane.

So the main feature of the day is a review of the “Transformers Animated” McDonald’s Happy Meal Lugnut… which also contains brief reviews of three of the other TFA figurines as well as a healthy heap of speculation concerning these guys’ obvious inferiority when compared to other Happy Meal toys. Hasbro is sinister indeed!

With this article, you might also notice that I’m trying out yet another javascript image viewer thingy: Shadowbox. It’s definitely got more features than Lightbox, and I love that it displays a list of numbers that’ll let you skip to images in a given set, but as always your input will be appreciated. It might be a little difficult to assess the value of the gallery list given that the sets in the Lugnut piece are limited to two images (though if you think I should start having the galleries consist of all images in an article, let me know), so I’ve implemented Shadowbox on the Mai & Chun-Li review given its larger galleries in places. Assuming there are no strong objections, I’ll probably end up going back and replacing Lightbox with Shadowbox in all of the previous Lightbox articles!

In other news, if you’re interested in reading my work elsewhere, I’ve got two guest reviews up on Superarticulated: one of The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian Aslan figure and another of the Target exclusive Marvel Legends Movie Hulk. Not that you should only visit SA to read my stuff, though, as the site has all kinds of fantastic action figure news and reviews! So yes, do check it out.

Next time, the MADBALLS return to Scary-Crayon. Stay tuned! :mrgreen:

-posted by Wes | 4:27 pm | Comments (9)
9 Comments »
  • Rha says:
    July 29, 2008 at 5:25 pm

    Wow… If I had known MickeyD’s was putting craptastic transformers in their happy meals i would have run right out and snagged a few!

    I have almost every one of those old-school transformable menu item figs in your pic. Man I loved those things as a kid! I liked the later dinosaur ones too, but they made little sense to me. The backyard fights between my mcdonalds transformers and my battle beasts were epic.

    do you remember the summer when they did boats? like, the happy meal box itself was a plastic boat that snapped open to reveal your burger and fries and chicken nuggets and what-not. those were the best ever. because you could stash your other happy meal toys and gi joes and the aforementioned battle beasts inside and send them off on harrowing adventures at sea (in the pool). Inevitably great waves would capsize the boats and then underwater chaos would ensue… I’m rambling. I have not idea what my point is. Other than that happy meal toys pull out the geeky nostalgia in me.

    Reply
  • Rha says:
    July 29, 2008 at 5:27 pm

    and, oh yeah, shadowbox is looking tight. way better than my own half-assed installation of it. i wish i had your stick-to-it-tiveness.

    Reply
  • Wes says:
    July 30, 2008 at 5:01 am

    Those Happy Meal transforming toys were definitely among the best kids’ meal toys ever — if not among the best transforming robots period. Certainly not in terms of size or complexity, but there’s something just awesomely wacky (or wackily awesome) about robots transforming into food items! The only thing comparable is robots transforming into dinosaurs, so I can see why McDonald’s thought it might be cool to have dinosaurs transforming into food. I admittedly thought it was pretty cool too, though you’re right that it didn’t make a whole lot of sense. Perhaps the food items gained life through contact with the Allspark and tried to transform into the most threatening things they could think of to avoid being eaten?

    And I must have missed the boat promotion! I don’t recall that at all — the closest things I can think of are the beach pails and shovels and Halloween treat buckets. The boat thing does sound awesome, though… even if I would never have taken my toys to the pool.

    Glad you approve of the Shadowbox setup, but I’m not sure you should be wishing for my stubbornness and obsessive persistence when it comes to relatively trivial things! Would you believe I’m still tinkering with it? Ugh.

    Reply
  • Rha says:
    July 30, 2008 at 8:43 am

    I feel I really need to share with you the awesomeness of the happy meal boats. apparently they were from 86. I don’t know how old you are. maybe that was before your time. anyways…

    linky

    linky

    linky

    Reply
  • Wes says:
    July 30, 2008 at 4:49 pm

    86, eh? That explains it — I was in Germany at the time! We got lots of Kinder Eggs over there, but not so much with the Happy Meals. Anyway, those boats rock! Few things in this world are as cool as tiny boats with Grimace and McNugget people molded into their decks.

    Reply
  • Clown Prince of Crime says:
    July 31, 2008 at 7:38 am

    Woah, Lugnut is barely recognizable in robot form. Anywho, nice review, Wes! Ah, I remember those Tiny Toon Adventure cars! It was pretty cool how they were essentially, like, two toys in one. I think I tried to get extras of some of them so that I could have characters interact that otherwise couldn’t due to sharing the same car.

    And I totally missed the boat on this Transformers Happy Meal. Seriously, how long did it last and how come I haven’t seen any commercials for it on TV? When you said that you remember these promotions lasting longer when you were a kid… I got to thinking that I remember them lasting longer, too. Though even when I was a kid, they didn’t last long enough for me to snag a complete set. When I was little, it was mostly because of how much of a hassle it was to convince my parents to buy me a Happy Meal. Nowadays, the hassle is the promotions don’t last long enough and I can’t find a McDonald’s that actually has ALL of the toys that I want.

    I specifically said McDonald’s, but in reality I mean this with all fast food chains that do the Kid’s Meal thing (like Burger King, Wendy’s, Jack in the Box, etc.).

    On a slightly different tangent, I’ve seen pictures of Legends Class Bumblebee. He, indeed, looks pretty sweet. As seen in the following link: http://img145.imageshack.us/im.....tfacj7.jpg

    Reply
  • Wes says:
    July 31, 2008 at 8:03 am

    We did the same thing with the Tiny Toons cars — I think I did end up with two of each so that the entire gang (or at least the ones that got Happy Meal toys) could be present at any given time. 🙂 As far as the promotion goes, it apparently started on July 5th… so it looks like it got three weeks, tops. That’s totally lame!

    And yep, that’s the Bumblebee I’m waiting for! I usually don’t go for legends figures at all (I do have one of the movie 2-packs, but that was really just to satisfy my curiosity), but the size totally makes sense for Bumblebee. And if he’s good, I may end up with a tiny Cliffjumper as well! Not to mention Waspinator…

    Of course, it’s entirely possible that my enthusiasm will have waned by the time they’re released. 🙂

    Reply
  • Albert says:
    August 1, 2008 at 2:56 pm

    That Batman looks too good to be a Happy Meal toy.

    Reply
  • Wes says:
    August 1, 2008 at 3:14 pm

    Ah, but he is! That Batman’s actually appeared on the site before, btw — I used him back in the 2005 Dusty Plastic HELL Halloween comic. The Dracula in that comic was a kids’ meal toy (albeit one from Burger King) as well! :mrgreen:

    Reply
Leave a Reply...

Back to Scary-Crayon!
Copyright © 2003-2024 Scary-Crayon. All rights reserved.