DCAU Merch: "B:TAS" Happy Meal boxes (1993) and "Batman Forever" mugs from McDonald's!

[about_faces]

While I'm older and wiser enough to know that McDonald's is shit that will kill me, I still have a great deal of fondness for the Happy Meal toys I had collected over the years as a kid growing up in the 90's. Of course, when it comes to which line of tie-in toys were my favorites, you can probably guess:

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Comments

[akselavshalom]

As a kid born in '93 growing up with some of this, I feel the nostalgic flashback.
And speaking of flashbacks: Poision Ivy plus baseball glove ecuals this: http://about-faces.livejournal.com/57400.html

[psychopathicus]

Yeah, that's one of the more insidious things about those places - they do give away such cool little trinkets. Personally, I loathe fast food and always have - I got a nasty case of food poisoning from a Burger King burger once - but I do remember being very envious when I'd go over to a friend's house and they'd have all those nifty plastic doodads lying around.
Nice artwork, I agree, but hoo boy, are those terrible puzzles. I'm not exactly what you'd call a stickler for such things, but when I can figure something out in literally ten seconds or less, then it's too freakin' easy. I know these are intended for kids, but come on. I don't know if you ever read Cricket Magazine when you were younger, but I had a subscription for years, and every single month they featured puzzles that were harder than that - and this was a publication whose target audience began at roughly the third grade! How stupid did McDonalds think we were

[mothy_van_cleer]

Harvey's off-model appearance on his own box (seriously, his chin is way too square) reminds me somewhat of Andy Clarke's artwork for that one issue of Joker's Asylum. And if he was able to invent a ray that turns things backward and upside-down, why couldn't he build a go-kart with a more obvious "two" theme? The logical hurdles required to grasp even a rudimentary intellectual understanding of the absurd reality presented by this decades-old, cheese-scented cardboard box are too great for me, I fear.

Maybe it's just the fact that I'm now a Dad and therefore terminally uncool, but I am such a sucker for horrible puns like that.

It also helps you be mature enough to ignore the obvious innuendo of the sentence "Two-Face gave Catwoman a pearl necklace".

Yes, I am seriously calling these boxes less stupid than Hush.

Poison Ivy, at the very least, seems to have a reason for being there.

[psychopathicus]

Well, given that the go-kart in question is designed to flip upside-down and look completely different, I'd say it fits his theme pretty well. Hell, I could see wacky '50's Harvey wielding a ray like that, and if he did, well, a go-kart like that would be just good accessorizing.
I seriously would like to punch whoever came up with that term. I mean, a pearl necklace is an actual, physical thing that used to be able to be taken at face value, but now it's also this freaky sex thing. I'm not a prude or anything, but must innuendo be everywhere? Isn't society obsessed enough with sex as it is? Can't we take a break? Gawds!
Anyway, A: the box was made before the term became popular (as far as I know, anyway), and B: the sentence "Two-Face gave Catwoman a pearl necklace" does not in fact appear on it anywhere that I can see. In fact, what he does give her is a whole lot of random jewelry; she's the one who picks out the "Purrrr-ls".

[mothy_van_cleer]

[psychopathicus]

Well, it is.

[abqreviews]

"All the cats from the city's richest people"

Considering what a powerful weapon cats can be in the wrong hands, I'd say they made a wiser choice in stealing cats rather than mud pies and forty cakes.

It could be because I avoid fast food like the plague, but I never knew any of this stuff existed. All I knew about Batman and McDonalds was the Batman Returns Happy Meal controversy.

>Sadly, I have been hesitant to use the mugs ever since those stories broke out about lead being found in pretty much all McDonald's glasses ever made. Does that extend to the Batman Forever glasses too, or just the glasses that had paint on them? I haven't been able to find out either way, but better safe than sorry.

I guess the odds of getting lead poisoning from those glasses are....

*Puts on sunglasses*

50/50.

[psychopathicus]

Could you elaborate on the controversy in question? I may have heard about it, but nothing's coming to mind.

[mothy_van_cleer]

The Happy Meal tie-in for Batman Returns was pulled before it could hit shelves, largely due to criticism by that the film contained just a bit too much sexual content (i.e., a woman in a skin-tight leather catsuit giving herself a tongue-bath) and disturbing/macabre imagery (i.e., a fat deformed guy in Victorian underpants bleeding copiously from the mouth before dying) to be deemed "suitable for all ages".

[psychopathicus]

Oh, yeah - I might have heard about that; I'm not sure. It's interesting, because one thing I have heard is that the official merchandising for the movie drastically toned down the Burton-ness, at least in terms of toys and stuff. I've never seen a Batman Returns Penguin figure, for instance, that looks anything like the DeVito version - it's just a standard Penguin that could have come from any time period. So if the Happy Meals were yanked, that would seem to indicate one of two things - A: it was a simple overreaction to the grotesqueries of the movie, not taking into account the toys' more innocent nature, or B: the Happy Meal versions actually did stick closer to the movie designs than the others. Hmm... I don't suppose anyone's ever posted any pictures of what this tie-in stuff actually looked like, have they?

[barcavolio]

Oh, McDonalds. And I'm tempted to agree with you that the story in the puzzles is far better than Hush.

Also, I appreciate that they spelled out the pun of "Tuesday" in the joke. I'm sure that no kids would have gotten it on their own.

I don't know if these were sold in the UK, but over here we tend to pronounce "Tuesday" as "Choose-day", which I suppose adds another layer to the pun, but ensures I can never make that joke out loud :/