Look, I can’t help it. There’s lots of McDonald’s everywhere, and if I swing by there around lunch and get a Happy Meal, I get a free Transformers toy I can photograph for the Transformers Wiki. I don’t even want these things. But they come free with food. And nobody else is photographing these things for the wiki.
And they come free with food.
(Now, if I may go off on a tangent about the food, I have to say I’m pleased that Happy Meals now come with both fries AND sliced apples in addition to your entree. You don’t have to choose, you automatically get apples. And the fries now come in this adorably small cardboard container. It’s a very small portion. Adorably small. Like, hit by a shrink ray. Very welcome for a dude who should really be maintaining his diet better.)
I have four of these guys by now, just by luck of the draw, and thankfully getting a different dude every time, but today I’m only going to talk about Ratchet. I just like Ratchet. Plus Ratchet comes with stickers! You know, like the TakaraTomy version of the normal retail version. …does this mean I can start derisively comparing the TakaraTomy version to HappyMeal toys? I won’t. It’s just, well, “like a Happy Meal toy” is a common epithet.
Putting on stickers is fun! …though less fun when the sticker placement directions are printed on the back of the sticker sheet itself. I’m probably old enough and smart enough to figure out where these stickers go unaided, but my paranoid self kept on flipping the sheet around obsessively just to make sure I was getting things right.
The toy’s gimmick is probably the least awesome of the ones I’ve gotten so far. Bumblebee shoots a missile. Knock Out has flip-out hood cannons. Bulkhead shoots discs. Ratchet has a variation of Knockout’s flip-out weaponry, in that it’s spring-loaded but doesn’t fire anything, but it feels more anticlimactic. You reveal the base of the cannon by pushing down on the back of the lever that comprises the roof. Then you press the Autobot symbol on that same roof to make a cannon pop out. The problem is, it’s a very small cannon. It’s not impressive. At first I thought it must be a tiny LED or something because why else would it be so small.
But it’s something to do. And I got to put stickers on it. And it’s Ratchet. And it came with McNuggets.
Ah, Mcnuggets. They’re like cigarettes, but unregulated.
Those little fry containers are one of the most adorable things ever. EVER.
http://www.tfw2005.com/boards/transformers-toy-discussion/568900-quick-fix-prid-ratchets-lack-paint-apps.html this is both relevant to this post and the one before this
Damn, you beat me to it.
Wow, I thought about that, but didn’t think it would work. (Plus I wouldn’t be able to get photos of the actual toy for the wiki.) But… maybe I should get a second one….
I’m considering hunting down two for this very reason.
We recently stopped at a McDonald’s during a road trip and both my boys (obsessed with Transformers) got a Megatron. As they ate (and I waited for my wife to come with our non-McDonald’s food), I figured I’d figure out how to transform them. Little did I know they were non-transformable Transformers. Yeah he shoots a missle and his cannon lights up, but no transformation (even a cheesy one) just seems wrong.
Yeah, I got one of those in a Happy Meal a couple weeks ago. Bit of a disappointment when I found out it didn’t even transform. So they’re as meaningless to me as those Action Masters posers.
Hmm, sliced apple and tiny fries does sound pretty tempting…
Urgh, nevermind, thought McDonalds had a veg option for their kids’ meals, but turns out I was thinking of Burger King. Shame that, I was hoping to get some cheap MLP figs…
The Starscream is actually worse- all that happens is the cockpit canopy pops open to reveal some kind of gun.
Hey, any idea if this Happy Meal Ratchet’s stickers can be used for Revealer Ratchet (after some cutting perhaps)?
Look at the third post from the top.