Transformers Artifact of the Week: Transformers: Generation One McDonald’s Happy Meal Box

In 1985 McDonald’s restaurants in the St. Louis area had Transformers and My Little Pony Happy Meal toys.  Why were they only released in St. Louis?  The only answer I’ve ever seen was that it was a test issue, but why, I’ve never known.  According to this site, this was a test of having two separate series of toys, one for boys and one for girls.

Recently I acquired one of the Holy Grails of my want list, a Happy Meal box from the 1985 Transformers McDonald’s promotion.

How I found this was pretty much dumb luck.  One of my many followed eBay searches is for Transformers McDonald’s toys.  Mainly I’m looking for the few toys from the 1985 promotion that I don’t have (More on the toys below) as well as store displays for more recent Transformers series.  As I was paging down the listing, I just caught something out of the corner of my eye.  I was within a hair’s breadth of missing it.  I paged up to find a set of 2008 Transformers Animated McDonalds toys, and in the corner of the picture was this 1985 Happy Meal box.  I kind of thought I was seeing things, but I wasn’t.  $30 ($13 of which was shipping) is a lot for six TF McDonald’s Animated toys in my opinion, but it’s crazy cheap for a 1985 Transformers McDonald’s box in amazing condition.  I couldn’t buy it fast enough.

Before I get to the toys, I have one other artifact from the 1985 promotion that I picked up quite a few years ago.

This is a table top add for the promotion.  It’s just folded cardboard that stands up.  These things probably have a name, but I’m not sure what it is.  I don’t have a picture of the MLP from the reverse side, and can’t put my hands on it at the moment.

Each toy came packed with the above catalog with an offer to buy an Omnibot Overdrive.  I’m not sure why he was the only Omnibot available.

The box and advertisement are probably better than the toys.  They did not transform, and were pretty small, about the size of a G1 Minibot.  Between the ones in my collection and from talking to other collectors, I believe each toy was available in seven different color schemes, each of which included two colors.  However, I have been unable to confirm the existence of a teal and black Cliffjumper.  Bumblebee and Cliffjumper share the same color schemes as do Gears and Brawn, so logically, a teal and black Cliffjumper should exist because a Bumblebee exists.  It remains to be seen if that’s true.  I have all but the teal ones.  Pics are linked below.

Bumblebee

Black / Blue
Black / Green
Black / Red
Black / Teal
Black / Purple
Black / Yellow
Blue / Pink

Cliffjumper

Black / Blue
Black / Green
Black / Red
Black / Teal
Black / Purple
Black / Yellow
Blue / Pink

Brawn

Blue / Green
Blue / Red
Blue / Yellow
Green / Red
Green / Yellow
Red / Yellow
Teal / Yellow

Gears

Blue / Green
Blue / Red
Blue / Yellow
Green / Red
Green / Yellow
Red / Yellow
Teal / Yellow

As always, you can find over 14,000 Transformers merchandise items and collectibles at TFMuseum.com.  I have just done a major update, including a new format for listings that will hopefully make it more readable.

Thanks for reading!