Free with Every Kids' Meal

When we hear the term "fast food toys," many of us picture specific favorites. Whether they be the McDonald's Changeables, Burger King's expansive Lord of the Rings figurines, or the Star Wars: Episode I premiums that gripped Taco Bell, KFC, and Pizza Hut simultaneously, chances are high that you have a nostalgic go-to. But why? Perhaps the element of surprise, an unexpected toy accompanying your lunch, delighted you as a child. Maybe you loved the promotion's source material and wanted to collect everything within its domain. Or it could be that this tiny, random plaything intersected with your life at just the inexplicably right moment. Whatever the case may be, toys tucked into kids' meals are designed to be disposable, but many of our experiences prove them to be anything but. While there are many books devoted to cataloguing various fast food promotional products, this is the first to undertake a deep analysis of their cultural impact. By digging deep into kids' meals past and present, this work uncovers the history of their toys. This work guides examines the ways in which these simple prizes interact with societal factors like race, gender, class, and economics by connecting their analyses with the work of top theorists. In so doing, we learn why these allegedly "forgettable" toys embed in memory--not because of the toy at the bottom of a brightly colored food container, but because, there, in the in-between space of toy-and-meal, permanent-and-temporary, meaningless-and-meaningful, we find ourselves.

Jonathan Alexandratos is a New York City-based writer, professor, and toy scholar. They were featured in the Emmy-nominated documentary Billion Dollar Babies: The True Story of the Cabbage Patch Kids and teach at Queensborough Community College and Sarah Lawrence College.