Reviving premiums

[CherryPizza]

So, while we spend another thread speculating about the possibility of McDonald's having movie-themed Happy Meal toys, another much deeper issue surfaces:

It's been acknowledged that the Disney/McDonald's arranged marriage was anulled by the fact that McDonald's can't pull off the 'wholesome family outing' image that was so heavily pimped in the 70s and 80s. It's understandable, with health and obesity concerns now being rife. However, as we've also mentioned, kill fast food toys and you kill budget-conscious collectors. So, it's time to speculate: where else could these cheap little toys make an appearance?

While toys and fast food are always going to be a match made in a marketing exec's wet dreams, there must be other places that can benefit from using toys to lure in kids (Hmmmm, that sentence sounds really creepy in a Hansel and Gretel way). Personally, I think it's time to take a page out of the history books.

I grew up in Adelaide, Australia. Even as kids, we knew that we were in the backwaters of Australian capital cities. However, one thing that the city did well was having mute animal characters for children's television. The local bank did wonders for getting the kids lured into the bank's fold by giving away free plastic money boxes in the shapes of those characters (for those keeping score, their names were Humphrey and Fat Cat). In the days where more and more people are staying out of bank branches and doing their banking online, would the promise of little toys get parents taking their kids into branches and doing their business in person?

In a year when Borders has closed physical stores across the world in favour of online shopping, could the surviving book shops maybe consider having free figurines for kids whose parents make purchases in-store? If the kids in The Brady Bunch could spend an entire episode fighting over who gets to claim the trading stamps from their housekeeper's shopping expeditions, maybe an idea like this is crazy enough to work.

BTW, do American cereal boxes still contain the obligatory free gift, or are those days long gone?

 

[beaker]

Yeah I'm really starting to hate this period we're now in. While it's great to have youtube and other online means to promote creative works without needing money to promote and a company...so many other things suck. Noone is into collecting cds or physical media. Internet/texting have turned people into horrible spellers and using a very curt halted way of speaking. The whole "multitasking" of laptops/ipod/ipad/texting seems to be compartmentalizing people's brains.

And now everything is dead that I grew up on. Physical music? Gone. Video stores? Gone. Arcades? Gone. Saturday Morning Cartoons? Gone.
Even toys...here action figures are now very small yet the price is as high as ever. A thin magazine is $7.

Now I'm a pretty far left radical liberal, but I can't stand this pushy overbearing big brother/big sister stuff done under the auspices of "health" and "saving the environment". I'm in San Francisco a lot, and they've outright banned happy meals.
I grew up loving happy meal toys, even tho I didnt eat em' that much. (I always paid separately for the toys)

It's funny, now and then I spend hours on ebay looking for 1950's-1990's fast food/bank/company mascot toys and other ephemera. Yeah banks used to give away some pretty cool stuff. Heck in the 60's and 70's Jim Henson even made stuff for em. The first ever muppet figure toys came out in the 1950's when you sent in proof of purchase of Wiltkins coffee...a good 50 years before Palisades.

And sadly, cereal boxes stopped having toys back in the 1990's. My whole 80's was filled with going to garage sales and thrift stores looking for advertising toys and oddball stuff. Back then it was like that stuff was everywhere. And ugh...yeah the book stores are going bye bye too.

I'm jealous you're in Australia! I so wish I could be there instead of Ameridumb.

 

[CherryPizza]

George Orwell may never have predicted mobile phones... but text message language is pretty **** close to NewSpeak in so many ways.

And, yeah, I'm all for health and saving the environment... but not when those terms are used as euphemisms for wiping the egg off the government's collective face.

 

[CherryPizza]

My post was auto-censored when I was talking about arbitrarily-stilted language. How profound.

 

[Drtooth]

And now everything is dead that I grew up on. Physical music? Gone. Video stores? Gone. Arcades? Gone. Saturday Morning Cartoons? Gone.
Even toys...here action figures are now very small yet the price is as high as ever. A thin magazine is $7.

Now I'm a pretty far left radical liberal, but I can't stand this pushy overbearing big brother/big sister stuff done under the auspices of "health" and "saving the environment". I'm in San Francisco a lot, and they've outright banned happy meals.
I grew up loving happy meal toys, even tho I didnt eat em' that much. (I always paid separately for the toys)

The thing that really bugs me is when everyone from every time period claims their Saturday Morning was all that, and how cartoons can't measure up and blah blah blah... I'm the one that says, "Where are these cartoons you speak of?" Saturday morning is a mess of infomercials and terrible FCC regulation lipservice. Unless you have cable, there's no cartoons on anymore. Even This TV, which had some very good stuff, changed it's line up (I bet Cookie Jar is behind this) to decidedly inferior garbage like Emily of the New Moon and Doodlebops. No Sonic the Hedgehog, No Inspector Gadget. I am LOVING stuff like Adventure Time, Regular Show, Mad, and some of the DC comics action cartoons... but, that's it. I'm sick of having to go on the internet to watch cartoons. There IS no Saturday Morning...

I'm pretty much left of center, but I'm a hardcore Ron Paul-esque libertarian "government hands off" person when it comes to childhood. I hate these parental mobs that consist of hack pediatrician and or Child psychologist that wants to put "took down big company" on their resume so they can charge whatever the heck they want and sell books, upper class Whole Foods shopping yuppie scum with scrawny children who don't even watch TV, and irresponsible, lazy parents that treat their kids like Eric Cartman and blame everyone but themselves for their underparenting for their kids being screwed up. They pool all their wasted money and time together to badger small goverments to ban things to spoil it for everyone else because they don't like it. We shouldn't have to smuggle in collectible figures like they were drugs. How's THAT going to stop kids from being fat? Especially since I barely ever SEE kids get Kid's meals anymore, and get the friggin' Big Mac meal. THAT'S the problem.

The Child Obesity crap is a media outlet scam. There IS something wrong, but it's more to do with our "everything at the click of a mouse" instant gratification, take recess and gym away from kids so they can do better on standardized tests, quick fix, and if it isn't quick enough, panic culture.

And sadly, cereal boxes stopped having toys back in the 1990's. My whole 80's was filled with going to garage sales and thrift stores looking for advertising toys and oddball stuff. Back then it was like that stuff was everywhere. And ugh...yeah the book stores are going bye bye too.

Actually...
.

But General Mills is pretty much the only ones that do it.

They also had some stupid flying disk launchers for Kung Fu Panda.

I wonder if that has anything to do with parental groups at all... I'm wondering if the cereal companies are just cheap. Kelloggs had stupid point code internet crap for Cars 2... and even then it was for 5 bucks off gas (yeay! A whole half gallon and all it took was 5 large boxes of frosted flakes).

I hate the lack of book stores. I mean, how poorly managed was Borders? I don't totally buy the kindle crap... I hate the thing with a passion... let's kill all print media and all, but it was clearly mismanagement and stupidity that caused them to tank. And at the very least Books a Million, which WAS supposed to buy them up and rescue them, changed its mind. Apparently a few million dollars is worth more than saving several hundred thousand jobs, and letting more money than that come back into them in time. I love these poorly run businesses, run by idiot kids of rich parents.

 

[beaker]

Yeah I get excited by physical magazines and books. I have a hatred already of Apple the company, so I don't want any of that ipad stuff either.

It's funny how it's the Democrats who are always trying to push this stuff...wanting to outlaw certain movies, music, video games. Wanting to ban male circumcision and happy meals in San Francisco. Wanting to pass a new smog bill which would hurt poor motorists. Just a bunch of baloney

Well pretty much, I feel bad for people not old enough to have enjoyed the 1980's and early 90's. That's why countless girls I know 18-24 are obsessed with all the 80's shows/cartoons/games/music/etc.