Arctic Circle's Square Pumpkin 2019

They're back again this year!  Not sure how many years they have done the Square Pumpkin, but we're talking 35+ years now!  I really wish they would run a new local commercial.  TV is all but dead these days.  Arctic Circle has ditched the "Square Pumpkin" title it seems, and now just offers a spooky Halloween themed kids meal box.  It's not as cool as in years past, but I'll take it.  The food is the same, the only difference is the box, and the annual Halloween "flashlights".  Gotta keep them safe for Tricks and Treats! 

This boy is also obsessed with cheese burgers right now! 

Milen got the Franky, and Ava got the Eyeball.  The flashlights don't change much from year to year, but they are a fun little tradition.  One year they had robot flashlights, which was stranger than aliens for Halloween.  Like I said, I'll take it.  (They're better than the flashlights featured in the above commercial .  I wish I knew when that commercial aired.  I wanna say late 90's, early 2000's?)  McDonald's is lame now and doesn't offer Halloween Happy Meals, and BK is totally out to lunch when it comes to their kid's meals.  The Burger King Kid's Club is dead.

Milen got creative with the lights and used them to light up the ghost shelf

Anyways, I got my usual Pumpkin Pie shake.  This time I added chocolate, which made it kind of taste like pumpkin chocolate chip cookie ice cream.  And for some reason they topped it off with a Nilla Waffer.

Any other Utahns out there?  What do you think of the Square Pumpkin meals?  If you're not from Utah, do you have any local eateries that offer Halloween themed kids meals?  If you do know of any other fast food joints with halloween offerings this year then please let me know!  and show me pictures!


Past Square Pumpkins:

1981 Square Pumpkin!!! <--AWESOME 80's Halloween commercial!!!
2009 Square Pumpkin
2012 Square Pumpkin?
2013 Square Pumpkin
2015 Square Pumpkin

My Top 10 Fast Food Toys

Recently I have been thinking about all my favorite fast food toys from the past.  Here are my personal top 10 favorites:

10.  Hardee's Halloween Smooshies

Hardee's had some real winners!  I still have all the Halloween Smooshies, but all the bases the little plushies came in are now all long since lost.  The Surfing Pizza has a nice review HERE.

9. Hardee's California Raisins Series 1-5

My Dad collected a ton of these and I remember playing with them all the time.  Hardee's released 5 sets, including a set of plush raisins!  They were a perfect tie-in with their cinnamon raisin biscuits, and the commercial if perfect!

8. Wendy's Playskool Definitely Dinosaurs

Almost everyone had these kicking around the house, even if you don't remember where they came from. I still have quite a few and they have held up after all these years and my kids play with them today. Check out Katrina's Toy Blog for more info on the definitely Dinosaurs toy line.  I can't believe how many color variants Wendy's released!

7. McDonald's Batman The Animated Series and Batman Returns

Finally, McDonald's  made the list (it's really unavoidable) I'm clumping these 2 batman themes together because the awesome little cars go together so perfectly. 

6. McDonald's Fast Macs & Mickey's Birthday Land Racers

These are just classic!  Like number 7 on the list, these are actually 2 toy lines, but they together perfectly.  I played with these little cars for hours.  Maybe my Dad should've kept them locked up in a case like the dad in the commercial, because us kids eventual wore them out.

5. McDonald's Super Mario 3

Nintendo & McDonald's go together like fries and and a shake!

4. Jack-in-the-Box & Burger King Universal Monsters

These were almost on par with toys you could find at the toy store! I didn't even know about the Jack-in-the-Box Monsters until I saw the fun little video below

3. McDonald's McDino & McRobot Changeables

These are at the top of the list for most fast food toy fans, and I can see why.  I still have some of the Dinos kicking around.  I love that the McRobot commercial used hand-drawn animation, perfectly knocking off the Transformers.

2. SubwayABC's Bump in The Night

Who'd a thunk Subway of all places would make the list!  No offense to anyone that likes Subway's current "toys", but I think it's all pretty lame now.  I loved the claymation Bump in the Night cartoon series, but somehow I missed out on these.  Probably because Subway wasn't really known for kids meal toys.  Maybe some day I will buy these.  Then Bumpy, Squishington, Molly, and Destructo too, can have wonderful adventures while I'm away.

Source

1. Burger King & KFC Micro Machines Z-Bots

It's no secret that I love Z-Bots, and when I found out Burger King had Z-Bots, well, The Burger King Kids Club was the clear winner of the kids meal wars in my eyes.  I found out several years later KFC also had Z-Bots Linkbots, so I thought I'd throw that in.  The KFC Linkbots are pretty ugly, but they're Z-Bots and pretty rare, so I want them too!

What are your favorite fast food toys?  Did they make my personal favorites list?  Am I missing out on an amazing fast food toy premium?  Tell me in the comments below!

Pop Culture League Challenge: Here Comes Halloween! - 2016 Halloween Toys in Review

Pop Culture League Challenge: Here comes Halloween!

Last week, the League was all about fears and frights, and we’re going to wrap up the Halloween theme this week with one last topic. This week’s challenge to the Pop Culture League is…

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Here comes Halloween!

It’s the most wonderful time of the year.

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The League is always open to new members! Got a blog? Write a post in response to the weekly challenge, and you’ll be included. It’s that easy!

Once you put up a post on your site add a comment below with the URL. Try to incorporate at least three of your fellow League members’ links (but more would be great!) into the article you wrote, or you can also link to them on social media.

By cross-posting like this, we will help each other out by sending new readers to each other’s sites. Have fun!

(Wondering what the heck this is all about? We’re recruiting for this loose-knit, rag tag crew! Here are the details for contributing to The League.)

This will likely be my last post for a while.  I wanted to post every day in October, but alas, I'm too dag gum busy!  To wrap up the final Pop Cultue League challenge for Halloween I thought I would share my thought on 2016's Halloween toy must haves.

LEGO Series 16

There were 3 must have's from LEGO Series 16, and I finally found the ones I was looking for:

Cyborg Woman, Devil Boy, and Vamp Boy

Imaginext Series 7

Fisher Price Imaginext really knocked it out of the park again! I really want almost all of these, but two of them are way too good to pass up for sure, Pumpkin Ghost, and A FREAKING GHOSTBUSTER!!!!

Check out that PKE Reader!

Awesome Proton Pack!

Playmobil Mystery Fi?ures series 10

THE STILT GHOST!!!  Halloween 2016's unofficial mascot!  Just look at him!

Stilt Ghost

Isn't he glorious!?  The only really Halloweeny figures, unless you count the cool wizard and the new robot, which was included in my submission for Day 24 of the #Miniween2016 challenge on Instagram.

Mechanical Monstrosity

When I first tried to put this guy together his arm shot off and I couldn't find it for weeks!

Hot Wheels 2016 Halloween Cars

Normally Mattel's Hot Wheels releases 5 special Kroger/Fred Meyer exclusive Halloween versions of their vehicles, and sometimes Target also has their own exclusives.  This year we saw 8 new Halloween cars!  Check them out!

Bone Shaker, this one has seen may Halloween versions.  I like the spectral wheels

Audacious

Deora II, my favorite this year!

16 Angels

Ryura LX

Dieselboy

Blvd. Bruiser & Vandetta

McDonald's The Great Pumpkin

             

             

That pretty much covers the 2016 Halloween toy high lights.  Did I miss something good? What toys did you pick up?

Halloween cometh for these Pop Culture League members as well:

Retro Ramblings 2016 Halloween Special

Alexis' Universe is Halloween

What Halloween means to Mr. Smith

Cassie Winters says Christmas is better

2 Minute Toy Break for Halloween Memories

The Toy Box, This Is Halloween!

20 Years Before 2000, Halloween 1988

Jamie is focused on Halloween

AFB rocks out to Halloween

Green Plastic Squirt Gun: Simple Things

AEIOUWhy: 2016 in Halloween country, Salem!

Cool and Collected: Making contact at Cox Farms Fall Festival

Arctic Circle's Square Pumpkin 2015

Arctic Circle is a burger and shake joint originating in Midvale, Utah. There were 66 restaurants as of July 2015, with about a third owned by the main company and two-thirds by franchisees, in Utah, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming. About 50% of the restaurants are located in Utah.  Their pumpkin shakes are to die for (way better than McDonald's!) and they are always fully stocked with that tasty Utahan staple, fry sauce (I should hope so, because they invented it).  They even claim to be the burger chain to invent and first to sell the kids' meals.  

Okay, so what if they invented it, McDonald's, Burger King, and others have better toys (though most fast food toys are total crap these days)!  Arctic Circle only releases toys during Easter and Halloween and boy have the toys become super lame (or have they been lame all along and I just got older?)! As a 30-something man child I am really TO'd, because it would be cool to have easy access to a cool, almost exclusively Utah kids meal toy!  Sadly they have really sold out the past few years with horribly forgettable and breakable flashlights. Bah! 

Ultra cheese!

Despite this huge short coming Arctic Circle has awesome "Square Pumpkin" meals for the kiddos, and super durpy cheese-filled commercials! (Sadly I could not find the original 1981 Square Pumpkin commercial. If only I had recorded it onto a VHS tape!)

Back when Arctic Circle offered more frequent Kids Meal toys

Barley moved today? Eat at Arctic Circle!


THE SQUARE PUMPKIN 2015

I knew this year would be flashlights again, but when decided to check it out anyway.  Lately Ava has been totally obsessed with flashlights! She wanted a Skeleton, but she was happy with the Haglight that came with her chicken rings (yeah, chicken comes in ring-form here).

So, from black A1 Whopper buns, to all day breakfast at McDonald's, this year's October fast food offerings is one for the books!

Tonight's Feature: Mar's Attacks!

Box of Awesome Episode 2: GPK

I recently brought home an amazing toy haul from Capitol City Antique Mall. One of the vendors has a huge wooden chest stuffed full and everything is 50 cents. Usually there isn't much of note inside, but one day I came in and they were restocking and they had several boxes full of junk and I went a little crazy. I have decided to break up the madness into little themed episodes. Since this month is GPK, let's see what GPK junk I found:

There were only 2 GPK items in the bin o' junk, but they're real winners! 

 First up we have an absolute master piece. It's Mona Loser, a Garbage Pail Kids Pop-Up Toy by Imperial Toys!

Just perfect!

 At first I passed over the garbage pail and snatch up Mona. I later realized that they're a set and went back for the pail. The spring mechanism is missing and so is the lid, but she still looks just as lovely as ever outside of her trashy home.

Next, Garbage Pail Kids Stick-Ons!!! It's a real shame the stickers got a bit scrambled, because I would have liked to keep this sealed. Still, a great find for 50 cents! Let's zoom in.

From left to right: Nasty Nick, Adam Bomb (of course), Ailin' Al, Weird Wendy, Unstitched Mitch, & Brett Sweat

 From left to right: Ancient Annie, Schizo Fran, Nutty Nicole, & Bye Bye Bobby

  From left to right: Pegleg Peter, Foul Phil, Bent Ben (behind Schizo Fran), & Brainy Brian

  From left to right: Michelle Muck, Art Gallery, Mixed-Up Mitch, & Sara Slime

From left to right: Ashcan Andy (R2-D2), Potty Scotty, Muggin' Megan, Messy Tesie, and Sumo Sid

The back of the back gave me several ideas to get started. I think these would make the perfect magnets. Just add some adhesive magnet sheets from the craft store and viola! 

Now who wants a GPK Sticker/Magnet for Valentine's Day?

UPDATE:

I carefully removed the staples and straightened the stickers that were out of place. Surprisingly they are still quite sticky. 

I believe I should return these to the package and save them for future posterity. 

Mason's Toy World, Coming to YouTube!

I have been itching to start a toy variety/review channel on YouTube and I was finally able to get together with my brother-in-law and our good friend Dan Smith. My brother-in-law, Brad, is an entrepreneur specializing in film, so the footage he shot looks great! The only catch is he doesn't have time to edit. So it is up to me, a rank amateur, to edit the first episode, and probably every future episode. 

It took hours, but I finally cobbled together just the intro video. I hope you enjoy this sneak peek into my Toy World. Please tell me what you think, I am open to critiques, pointers, tips, etc.

Creepmas Day 11: Creepy Cruisers- Chillin' With Mac Tonight!

I found this little gem for 50 cents at none other than Capital City Antique Mall. It's Bill Elliot's Ford Taurus Mac Tonight stock car. I realize it's a bit of a stretch considering the Mac Tonight stock car a member of the Creepy Cruiser family, but hey Mac's head is a cresent moon and Strongbad was Mac Tonight for Halloween, so there! Also, I once owned a Ford Taurus. I never thought it would make a good racing car, but what do I know?

Anyways, Mac Tonight was one of the 4 boys Happy Meal toys, circa 1998, back when fast food toys were still pretty neat. There are stickers or "decals", it has a cheaper plastic body, and the windows are tinted to the extreme, but it still makes for a very nice cheap toy (oxymoron?). We are bombarded by some lovely ads including McDonalds, Coca-Cola, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, Super Motel 8, 76 Gasoline, NASCAR, Plasti-Kote spray paint, Ford, and 2 more logos I will need a magnifying glass to read.

That's all for tonight, this daddy's beat! Dang cold bug.