McDonald’s and the Muppets go way back. Their relationship started in 1981 with collectible glasses and posters for The Great Muppet Caper. Of course most kids of the 80s will remember the Muppet Christmas Carol plushies, and perhaps one of the most beloved of Muppets tie-in products were the Muppet Babies Happy Meal toys from 1987.
But there’s one series of Happy Meal Muppets toys that have mostly been forgotten, tied to a series of Muppet books that have mostly been forgotten – the 1989 McDonald’s tie-in with Muppet Kids.
The Inspiration
In case you weren’t alive at the time, Muppet Babies was an animated series that ran on CBS from 1984 until 1990 for a total of 107 episodes. The show was a spin-off of a dream sequence from the 1984 film, The Muppets Take Manhattan, in which Piggy imagines what it would have been like if she and Kermit had known each other when they were children.
The show took place inside a nursery where baby versions of Kermit, Miss Piggy, Gonzo, Fozzie, Rowlf, Animal, Scooter, and his twin sister created for the show, Skeeter, would use their imaginations to act out adventures. Some of the most memorable episodes featured adventures based on popular movies, like Star Wars and The Wizard of Oz.
The show was a huge success and inspired quite a few cartoons featuring kid versions of previously adult/teen protagonists, like The Flintstone Kids, A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, and Tom & Jerry Kids, among many others.
Not to be outdone by their imitators, in 1990, Henson released a new series of books, Muppet Kids, that aged up the Muppet Babies into pre-teen youngsters. The character designs were essentially the same with a few tweaks here and there, like Piggy swapping out her pink, frilly dress for a pair of pink overalls, and Kermit sporting a sideways baseball cap.
The stories in the Muppet Kids books were meant to address things that were a bit more mature than your typical Little Golden Book for toddlers, like what to do if you get lost, coping with jealousy in a friendship, and how to deal with being nervous.
Thirty-six original stories were printed over the course of the books’ seven-year run. The Kid iterations of the characters have popped up every now and then in Muppet media, but for the most part, they are a product of the 90s.
The Happy Meal
As a tie-in to the books, Henson teamed up with McDonald’s to release a Muppet Kids Happy Meal that featured Kermit, Piggy, Gonzo, and Fozzie riding on tricycles.
These were reminiscent of the 1987 toys, and the later 1990 toys, which featured Muppet Baby characters riding various forms of transportation, including Piggy on a tricycle.
The thing that made these bikes special from other Happy Meal Muppet toys is that the bikes came apart into three pieces – the front wheel and handlebars, the bike frame, and the rear wheels.
By doing so, you could combine the four to form a train of tricycles.
While Kermit and Fozzie got pretty basic designs, Piggy and Gonzo each had a little personality added to their bikes – Piggy’s had a poodle on the back and Gonzo’s had a chicken (which, now that I think about it, is kind of the equivalent of sexy lady mudflaps for him…).
There were two boxes for these Happy Meals – one decorated to look like a school and the other like the Kids’ club house – both filled with little activities and jokes.
(Images courtesy of Muppet.Fandom.com)
Only In Missourah
As with a lot of McDonald’s marketing campaigns, the Muppet Kids’ tie-in was first tested at a regional level, specifically surrounding Springfield, Missouri, according to “Friend of the Blog” and McDonald’s expert, Consumer TC.
During my pop culture research, I’ve noticed that a lot of McDonald’s marketing tests occurred in Missouri during the 80s and 90s, most famously the Transformers Happy Meal. The Transformers toys that were released in the St. Louis-area didn’t transform, so they never made it out of Missouri and have since become highly sought-after oddities for collectors.
I’m assuming that the demographics of the state at the time, as well as a central location in the country, must have made it a great testing ground to see what might work on a national level.
Unfortunately, much like the Transformers toys, the Muppet Kids Happy Meals didn’t make it out of Missouri, either. The Muppet Kids are definitely a rare find nowadays, but I don’t think you’d see them selling on eBay for $50+ for each character like you would the Transformers.
My Review
I kind of understand why they didn’t make it out of the test phase. Personally, I don’t think these are very well designed. The sculpts of the figures and even the bikes themselves are great. I especially like the little touches of Piggy and her poodle and Gonzo and his chicken on the back. The problem comes with the construction of the toys and, most importantly, how they connect.
As I said, the toys come in three parts – handlebars/front wheel, bike frame, and back wheels. The front wheel attaches to the frame with a plastic peg that slots into a hole in the handlebars. The frame then snaps onto the axle of the back wheels.
Here’s a breakdown of Kermit’s bike. You can see the tab at the top of the bike frame that plugs into the hole in the handlebars. And then you can see the bike frame attaches to the axel on the back.
The bike frame also comes with a tab on the bottom of the front so the clamp on the back of a frame that would normally attach to the axle can be slotted into the front of another frame. (I know, that’s confusing, but a picture speaks a thousand words).
This allows kids to connect all of the seats together with a single front wheel and back wheel at each end of the train.
This works fine from an engineering standpoint, but the “clamps” that attach to the bike sections/axle are so stiff that it would be very easy for a kid to break it, either trying to take it apart or put it together. And if the kid hopped up on McDonaldland cookies doesn’t break the toy, he’s probably going to lose one of the three sections before long, leaving him with just parts of a useless toy.
Now that being said, McDonald’s did wind up using this same design for a different Happy Meal toy that reached a nationwide audience. In 1991, two years after the Muppet Kids never left Missouri, Ronald and his McDonaldland friends could be found riding bikes that are basically the same, minus the poodle and chicken customizations that were made for the Muppet Kids. I don’t know if these are beloved toys like Kermit on a skateboard, but they at least made it out to kids across the country.
Closing Thoughts
While I normally post about my fun pop culture finds, these toys are going into my wife’s Muppet collection. But I thought they were an interesting enough find to post about them here. They may not be my favorite Happy Meal toys, but they’re a fun peek into a past that only a small percentage of people got to experience.
