August 2013 Fast Food Toys Round-up

toys

August 19, 2013 - Earlier this month, the boy got a Smurfs toy at McDonald's and loved it so much that he asked us to get him a set online, meaning from eBay. As you can see from the picture above, we did. All 16 of them. That's a lot of Smurfs! What amuses me about this is that he has no interest in the Smurfs movie, the Smurfs cartoon, or even a Smurfs book that I showed him at the library. (You know to click "read more" if you are seeing this on the front page, right?)

toys

As we mentioned last month, Kellogg's cereals have codes which can be redeemed for a Monsters University pillowcase. Our pillowcase arrived in the mail even before we had eaten through all of the cereal that we had bought for the codes. It is a very nice, 3-D plush pillowcase that fits a standard size bed pillow. The picture above shows it unstuffed and unsullied (ha!) by cat hair. The promotion says it runs through December 31, 2013, so you still have lots of time to collect the four codes needed to get the pillowcase.

Let's see what's out there in restaurants this month!

A quick check of the web sites for the more popular fast food restaurants reveals the following:

- Taco Bell is phasing out Kids Meals and their Kids Menu. Most of the items will still be available on their regular menu, but will no longer be marketed as for kids, so really the only difference is that the toys are gone.

- McDonald's has The Smurfs 2 toys in their Happy Meals, with Justice and Power Rangers MegaForce shown as the next promotions. I've never been much of a Power Rangers fan, but I was floored to see that when you collect all six of the Power Rangers toys, you can connect them to build a MegaZord.

- Burger King has Care Bears and Beyblade toys in their Kids Meals, with (are you sitting down???) The Simpsons toys coming soon.

- Sonic has Kidz Bop toys in their Wacky Pack meals.

- Carl's Jr. and Hardee's have Funbrain toys, with Despicable Me 2 toys coming in early October. I know, I know, they were just at McDonald's last month. I'm honestly eager to see how they compare. Yes, I'm certain that we'll be getting them and will have pictures to share.

- Subway Kids Meals have Gravity Falls drawstring backpacks.

No changes from last month at these restaurants:

- The Wendy's web site, continues to vex me - I still can't find the toys on the new version of the site. Since last month, I did try the bacon cheeseburger on a pretzel bun, and it was fabulous. Well, fabulous for fast food.

- Like Wendy's, Arby's has revamped their web site and it doesn't seem to show the toy anymore.

- The Chick-fil-A site lists Martha Speaks sticker books as the goodies in their Kid's Meals. The "kids under 3" item appears to be a board book.