McDonalds Changeables Return!
- Thread starter Donocropolis
- Start date
No, Riker's fake son.
You also don't need to eat there, often they will sell just the toy. I have a ton and a half of different allergies, literally the only thing I can get at McDonalds is a drink. I still had no trouble getting some of the toys for my nephew before.
Well, I visit a McDonald's at least once a week, so I might just work up the nerve to try for these little cuties.
Just let me have a 12-piece nuggets box and a handful of these. Call it an Existential Crisis Meal.
I wish Mcdonalds would just embrace their nostalgia merchandising the way that Starbucks does, and have more higher end stuff available without cutting corners like the new lidless boo buckets. Let us just order a set of the toys in a displayable box!
I have not had that luck with the aforementioned Lil McDonald's restaurant. Mostly due to shipping being obscene.
I just want a little memento of the old style restaurants, as they remind me of when my late mother and I would go through the drive-through and get a drink and a small fry and a box of Chocolatey Chip Cookies for later, among other memories.
Anyway, for those interested in learning more about the original Changeables, I direct you here.
Apparently, none of the originals were ever released in Canada.
I would absolutely bite if they offered grown up happy meals. The only "food" at McDonalds (outside of fries) I am ok with eating is the McChicken Sandwich. (It's not gonna win awards or anything but it's pretty much the only thing on the menu I will do.) If I could get that with a toy that would absolutely be my order.
-ZacWilliam, I don't find McNuggets repulsive but they've also never been my thing. I'll eat one if my kids don't finish their meal but would never order them and I kinda hate everything about McDonalds Burgers.
-ZacWilliam, I don't find McNuggets repulsive but they've also never been my thing. I'll eat one if my kids don't finish their meal but would never order them and I kinda hate everything about McDonalds Burgers.
A warm, fresh McNugget is pretty good. A McNugget more than about 10 minutes old is basically Pla-doh. Their hamburgers are not TERRIBLE, per se, but like, I would put them on the level of school cafeteria hamburgers. If I'm going to pick up a fast food burger, there are 20 better options in town.
I like the updates to the originals! The rest are pretty neat, and I might have to take the kids to get some happy meals for these toys.
Yes, I love that they pretty much did 3 categories:
1: Updates to original 80's robots and 90's dinos
2: New Robots and Dinos in the style of the originals that turn into food/packaging
3: New concept Robots and Dinos that turn into McDonalds equipment (fryer, soda fountain, etc.)
It's all so delightful. I can't wait.
I do wonder how big these are going to be, because there's a sweet spot that Botbots landed in that was compact enough to be cute and clever rather than kinda clunky. And the old Changeables (including the 2020s reissue of the burger) were a out 1.5-2x that rough size.
I do wonder how big these are going to be, because there's a sweet spot that Botbots landed in that was compact enough to be cute and clever rather than kinda clunky. And the old Changeables (including the 2020s reissue of the burger) were a out 1.5-2x that rough size.
McDonalds did at one point in the early 2000s have Happy Meals aimed at older kids, called Mighty Kids Meals. They seemed to be a response to Burger King doing the same with their Kids Meals, which they called Big Kids Meals. These had larger quantities of food in them and, IIRC, cooler toys than those offered in the normal Happy Meals and Kids Meals for younger kids. I remember seeing commercials for the Mighty Kids Meals that offered toys based on Mainframe's Action Man cartoon that aired on Fox Kids.
How can any of us forget? Getting a chance to interact with Kid Vid by itself was worth the price of admission to the Burger King Kids Club!
This stuff mattered. The backlash against it was well intended and correct on many levels, but misguided. This stuff mattered. Our parents didn't know why, but you know, and I know, and that's why.
We do need shared experiences. This seems like a trivial one, but it was one.
We do need shared experiences. This seems like a trivial one, but it was one.
That's one thing that I don't think the high-ups at McDonald's and such understand. You see the "Starbucks-ization" of everything, where all the stores and restaurants are trying to look modern and trendy, resulting in everything looking boring / samey. I'm sure the thinking is that adults don't want to go eat at a place where it looks like a clown exploded, but that's a very short-sighted line of thinking. The reason middle aged people today have a fondness for McDonald's (despite not actually enjoying the food as is evident from conversation IN THIS VERY THREAD!) is because, as children, it was a FUN place to go! By removing the fun, they may get a few more adults, but they are losing the next generation.
Now, that said, I'm not sure if I'm actually on the side of indoctrinating children into loving terrible, unhealthy fast food. But dammit, I can't help it. I still love the IDEA of classic Mickey-D's even if I don't actually like eating there.
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There's something I've been thinking about.
A few months back I went back home for my best friend's wedding.
And I was struck at just how... dull and worn down... places that used to seem exciting were.
I haven't lived there since grad school which was over ten years ago (holy hell I'm old) and maybe I needed to see it again for it to click... but it did. Since then, and coming back to the city I now call home, I've looked around, and I can see the same stuff. I didn't grow up here, but I see the same sorts of things I saw in my home town.
Storefronts that likely used to be busy and full of life now reduced to extreme discount storefronts, if they're lucky to even be open still. Arcades and movie theatres that look barren and neglected but which, probably 30 years ago, were vibrant and exciting.
McDonalds has stripped all the fun out of their locations, now consisting of sterile minimalist interiors where you order from a touch screen.
But hey, at least they still have a sit down option. Pizza Hut, the place to be when I was 10, doesn't even have that anymore. I racked up so much time at the arcade machines at my local Pizza Hut as a kid but now... now it's closed, replaced with a takeout location across the street.
The stuff that defined our childhoods in the 80s and 90s could be crass at times, and were almost universally commercial in nature.
But you know what? They were cheesy, but they represented progress and excitement.
It's been something on my mind since getting back from my friend's wedding.
I didn't want to devolve into "BACK IN MY DAY" mental traps, because sometimes things move on and new stuff isn't bad just because it's not what you're used to.
But the more I've thought about it, the more I've realized that there is something missing that we used to have.
And if that had been replaced with something else just as special that would be one thing. Instead, everything now is overly minimalistic and barren, if it hasn't been shut down completely.
I'm probably still coming off like an old guy complaining, but what you posted got me put these thoughts of mine down for the first time in months.