Raving Toy Maniac

September 6, 2012 - The boy scored just one additional McDonald's SpongeBob SquarePants toy last month. Don't feel bad for him, though, as he hit the jackpot in the form of the K'NEX Angry Birds sets during a trip to Toys'R'Us. So he's getting new toys... he's just not eating fast food to "earn" them.

Let's see what's out there in restaurants this month!

A quick check of the web sites for the more popular fast food restaurants reveals the following:

- Wendy's Kids Meals have Where's Waldo toys, with Animal Planet items coming soon.

- McDonald's has Power Rangers Super Samurai and "Hello. I'm Julius!" (by Paul Frank) in their Happy Meals, with Hotel Transylvania shown as the next promotion.

- Subway Kids Meals have reusable lunch sacks. The sacks now feature Frankenweenie.

- Sonic has slide-out books with a focus on science and nature.

- The Arby's web site shows "Re-Arrangers" toys, with "Apples to Apples" card decks coming soon.

- Taco Bell has "Creature Craft" kits. The 'kids under 3' item appears to be a Wow Wow Wubbzy book.

No changes from last month at three restaurants:

- Burger King shows the same promo as last month - Discovery Kids toys, with something from Mattel coming soon. ("Coming soon" probably means "the day after this is posted.")

- Carl's Jr. and Hardee's have The Pirates! Band of Misfits toys, with Scribblenauts Unlimited shown as arriving on November 5th at Hardee's and November 7th at Carl's Jr.

- The Chick-fil-A site still does not show which (if any) toy they are offering in their kids meals. They used to have a schedule posted, hopefully it will return. The site shows that they offer "Buddy Fruits Pure Blended Fruit To Go applesauce" in the kids meals - we just bought a few of those at the grocery store, and they are a fairly entertaining way to get a kid to eat applesauce. Basically it is a squeeze pouch with a screw-off lid, so it's like drinking the applesauce. Not a toy, but still fun.