McFurby’s
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The Furby toy craze hit American children like an atomic bomb in 1998. Sold as the first “intelligent” robot toy, Furbys could make rudimentary facial expressions and have pseudo conversations with people and other Furbys. They were also programmed to move from speaking Furbish to English over time.
Their McDonald’s Happy Meal counterparts were, expectedly, far less sophisticated. The line featured 8 series of small plastic Furby, each having a unique feature such as being able to blink or flap its ears. With 10 variations per series, that meant there were 80 unique Furbys to collect for the most fanatical Furbophile.
McNugget Buddies
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The McNugget Buddies made their Happy Meal debut in 1988, with new sets being released a handful of times in the early to mid-1990s. Each toy consisted of a plastic anthropomorphized McNugget with outfits and removable accessories that could be mixed and matched across the line. The original line featured outfits based on jobs, but the Halloween Buddies with their spooky costumes are among the most popular among collectors.
McNugget Buddies had nostalgic staying power. Not only were they brought back for a limited run in 2023 (designed by Kerwin Frost) but they’ve also been given the Funko POP! treatment.
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers (1995)
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It certainly was morphin time in the summer of 1995.
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie hit theaters in June of 1995 and as expected McDonald’s was ready to pounce on the mania to move some hamburgers. The Happy Meal toy line featured toys like the “Powermorpher Buckle” an “Alien Detector” and a “Power Siren.”
There was also a second deluxe line that had to be purchased separately. Each included one of the six colorful Power Rangers in addition to their respective Ninjazords (which was a bit of a spoiler).
Cool to be sure, but not on the same level as the “Power Coin Pack” pog set that McDonald’s dropped the year before. Those Power Disc slammers were rad as heck.
Super Mario Bros. 3
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The marketing blitz for the release of Super Mario Bros. 3 on the original Nintendo Entertainment System in the United States was intense. In addition to inescapable print and TV ads, the game was also heavily featured in the 1989 film The Wizard.
Naturally, McDonald’s got in on the action and released a line of four Happy Meal toys, each with its unique action. Raccoon Mario was spring launched, the Goomba could backflip, Luigi was on a pull-back racing cloud and the Koopa Troopa could hop across the dinner table. Other Mario tie-in toys would come later, but none were as imaginative as this original line.
Teenie Beanie Babies
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If you didn’t live through it you’ll never fully understand how folks just went BANANAS for Ty Beanie Babies in the 1990s.
McDonald’s first released “Teenie Beanie Babies” in 1997, with a fresh line each year to follow through 2000. These were smaller versions of classic Beanie Babies, and collectors ate these up with the same voracious appetite as they did their full-sized brethren. McDonald’s moved close to 100 million miniature plushes in less than a month.
Unfortunately for the diehards, Teenie Beanie Babies did not appreciate, with most able to be found on eBay for less than a dollar.
101 Dalmatians
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Disney released the live-action remake of their classic animated film 101 Dalmatians in theaters in the summer of 1996. In a brilliant bit of marketing, the devious minds behind McDonald’s Happy Meal toys decided to release a line that included 101 unique collectible figurines as well as a neat black and white spotted case. The small plastic pups are obnoxiously cute, especially the one with the little cowboy hat.
A complete set of these PVC figurines with an official display box in decent condition can fetch as much as $150 on eBay. Don’t forget the certificate of authenticity.
Barbie/Hot Wheels
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Mattel has partnered with McDonald’s frequently to promote their toy lines, and their pairing of Hot Wheels and Barbie is a Happy Meal institution. Hot Wheels have been included in giveaways since the 1980s, though in the 1990s the cars tended to be plastic variants instead of diecast originals.
Barbie popped up in Happy Meal boxes for the first time in 1990, with smaller all-plastic versions of their full-sized line of dolls. The game was changed in 1992 when the miniature Barbies included actual stylable hair.
Both Mattel lines have proven incredibly popular with collectors due to the limited nature of Happy Meal toy releases.
Inspector Gadget
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This might be the only time that a movie tie-in Happy Meal toy is actually better than the movie that inspired it.
As part of the marketing blitz around the 1999 release of the live-action Inspector Gadget movie, McDonald’s put out a line of 8 collectible toys. While each toy had some fun functionality on its own, if you managed to collect them all you could put them together to construct a complete Inspector Gadget action figure of your very own. While it probably isn’t the healthiest choice for a single kid to have 8 Happy Meals in the release window, sometimes sacrifices must be made for the greater good.
Boo Buckets
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So these aren’t technically a toy, but they came with your Happy Meal so we’re going to count them.
McDonald’s first released their Halloween buckets in 1986 with three spooky face variants on the classic McPumpkin. Though they were on the small side, they did the job of holding your Halloween haul well enough (though the real pros stuck to the classic pillow case). Through the 90s McDonald’s would release new versions, adding the McBoo and McWitch buckets and including gimmicks like lids that doubled as cookie cutters or making them from glow-in-the-dark plastic.
The buckets returned in the 2020s, though the designs lack some of the charm of those first few lines in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
McDonald’s Changeables
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McDonald’s Changeables are unquestionably the GOAT Happy Meal toy line. Piggybacking on the massive popularity of Transformers in the 1980s the fast food titan released its first line of transforming robot toys in 1987. The gimmick, of course, is that instead of turning into cars or planes the robots turned into popular items on the McDonald’s menu.
They would follow up with two more lines in 1989 and 1990, with the third and final line being special “McDino” Changeable — because what kid wouldn’t want a Quarter Pounder with Cheese-O-Saur?
The toys were shockingly well made and felt like real action figures, even if the concept was a little…out there.
