Happy Meal, Happy Finds

 

Just a few weeks ago, I was in heavy need of a thrifting adventure and I decided that while I probably should have spent the evening at the gym, catch up on shows and movie I’m behind on, or even meal prep, the idea of rifling through second hand garbage was the thing that would get me out of my funk. A  temporary funk, but still a funk. Not a Funk like the great Terry Funk but…ok, fine you get the point…

So I stopped into my local thrift store. Nothing too exciting, just typical yard sale fodder. A lot of kitschy stuff, a pair of Vans that were just one size below me, and lots of John Wayne vhs. Kinda defeated as I had zero interest in any of it(minus those Vans! Curses!) but thankfully my mood perked up when I wandered over to the toy section and found some bags of random action figures. Right on top of the toy shelf was a bag filled with fast food toys and inside the bag were Dr Mindbender and RamMan Happy Meal figures! 

For those who may not remember pre-MCU and Big Bang Theory geek fandom, the early 2000s were overtaken by 80s nostalgia and lots of our favorite properties were being revived and GI Joe and He-Man were just two of those heavy hitters that got a Y2K makeover. Merchandising, new cartoons and yes…NEW TOYS! Some of these characters haven’t been seen on toy shelves in a very long time, so as someone who was already a very nostalgic and sentimental person at an early age, to see them get new life was very exciting. And while MOTU and Joe didn’t last as long as we would’ve hoped at the time, they bounced back later. One of the most overlooked aspect of both lines was the fact that they both got Happy Meal Toys! He-Man in 2003 and GI Joe in 2004. 

You have to also remember, when I was a kid, these were the kind of things I’d dream of! Usually the kids meals toys weren’t action figures but windup cars, doorknobs hangers, and even bike accessories. Maybe someday soon I’ll gush about my beloved Galaxy Rangers license plate from Roy Rogers but not now. To see two properties that I loved since I was a kid and never gave up on even when they weren’t cool anymore get cool shrunken down action figures in the early 2000s was everything I could’ve asked for. In the case of MOTU, these figures offered by McDonalds seem to be the actual 200X molds but shrunken down. The cool thing about RamMan is if you push his body down, he kinda jerks and rocks his head and arms down, re-enacting his ramming feature. It also kind of has a WWF Hasbro feel to it too. So there’s just endless nostalgia in this one figure.

Then we have GI Joe. These weren’t mind blowing figures, more or less something you’d find in a dollar store now, but for the time, getting a figure like this was pretty cool. This was from the Valor vs Venom era which was the big attempt to revive GI Joe and even giving us a new animated movie that introduced Venomous Maximus, who I still think is an underrated character and hope we get a Classified figure someday. Dr Mindbender was one of the 4 figures offered in the Happy Meal and I think this is still a cool design for him. 

All in all, it was a day worthy of getting off my butt and heading out for a little while. I know a lot of people have given up on thrifting due to resellers and over the top thrifting fanatics but I don’t think I’ll ever give up on it. Sure, I’m not gonna go in and find a MIB Slime Pit playset but the excitement of what could or could not be there will always intrigue me. And these days, we can use all the distractions and silly little adventures we can get. So don’t give up! Don’t go to the thrift store thinking you’re gonna pay rent this month, but think of all the mystery finds that await you! 

-Chad