The promotional toy that is packaged with every McDonald’s Happy Meal has become a fun collectable and I have a few available in my Sirocco’s Curios store.
Just for fun, here is a bit of history. McDonald’s began as the Airdrome in 1937 as hamburger and BBQ carhop restaurant in California. Recognizing that most of the profits came from selling the hamburgers, the owners eliminated the carhops, made the restaurant self serve and streamlined the menu to just hamburgers, french fries and shakes. That was in 1948 and the streamlined version has been wildly successful.
It is interesting that since that time the restaurant has been moving back toward what it started out as, a full service restaurant with many menu items. You can now dine in or dine out. They expanded the menu to include a breakfast menu in 1971, and salads a bit later.
Finally, McDonald’s created the Happy Meal in 1979. The special boxed meal was produced and marketed towards children and each meal included a small toy. The toys were usually part of a marketing tie-in to a popular film or toy-line. To mention a few, there was the Barbie collection, a legos collection, hot wheels, Pinocchio and many more. Over the years there have been hundreds of collections and thousands of individual toys. Needless to say there are those who want collect those toys.
I came across two grocery bags full of the toys still in their unopened plastic bag in my garage and I have begun listing them my store. Here are two of the Madame Alexander dolls from the Wizard of OZ (2007). Take a look but come back frequently as I will be listing many more.
(Update 3/20/2012) The Wizard of OZ item has sold but you might want to look at this other Madame Alexander Item.
Sirocco's Curios 