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New Article: McDonald’s Halloween Happy Meals Tribute!

Here's a new article covering some of McDonald's best Halloween Happy Meals, including a quick look at what dey got goin on this year. Several old favorites are covered -- spooky McNuggets, costumed McDonaldland figures, treat certificates, and yes, my personal favorite, the holy "McBoo Trick-Or-Treat Pails." I loved those things; they're actually one of the things I always kept on my mind to review for this October. Finally, the day has come. And now I'm glad it's over. Now I can put away that small part of me who constantly nagged every nerve in my body to write about McBoo pails. It's over, it's finally over. Happy Halloween. Updating the Countdown in a few minutes...

Posted by Matt on 10/23/2003. E-mail me!



Discussion Thread: 78 comments

I seem to remember on year when the McBoo pails came out (maybe teh first year?) that there wasn’t a witch or a ghost, but rather just 3 different pumpkins, that had different faces. I just remember having 2 different pumpkin pails, one with a "scary menacing face" and another with a "goofy crazy face" and that I kept Legos in both of them when not in use for candy.
I thought the ghost and witch came out later. I remember being disappointed because I never got either of them.

Chestnuts roasted by BaronVonHotPants @ 10/23/2003 1:51 PM

Ha, I love it! We still have the McNugget halloween figures. My wife puts them out every year for decoration.

Chestnuts roasted by MrChuckles @ 10/23/2003 1:53 PM

Baron — the three McBoos I mentioned initially are all dated 1986. You’re partly right though, as I have other pumpkins with assorted faces from the same year, just a little later than 86.

Chestnuts roasted by Matt @ 10/23/2003 1:57 PM

Yep, Monster Squad is a great flick. Very quotable. I think I’ll go quote it to some of my co-workers now.

Chestnuts roasted by AlfonsoTheBat @ 10/23/2003 3:13 PM

Mama always said "there’s a lot you can tell about a person by their Happy Meal". Where they goin. Where they been. If I think back real hard I can remember my very first Happy Meal. I’m pretty sure the year wasn’t 1677, because we moved to Memphis in 1978 and the Happy Meal had just come out when my sister and I spent a week with my Grandmother. Grandmother had a surprise for us too! She and her siter were driving 100 miles to Nashville to spend all freaking day at the palm reader and why not bring along the 5 and 11 year olds who are staying with you. "It’ll be like goin to the beauty parlor only less fun!" Anyway, I got my much anticipated first Happy Meal that day and the prizes weren’t exactly the gold plated Darda Demon’s and 12" Mallibu Skipper’s that the commercial suggested we might get. My prize was a fake fucking watch. I think the face may have opened up to reveal a secret compartment that might contain a flea or a crushed baby aspirin. It was the kind of crap that I was accustomed to receiving by the metric buttload at 10 different Mardi-Gras parades every year when we lived in New Orleans. Needless to say, the prize left a bit to be desired, but ohhh the jokes and word search made up for it. For about a minute.

Anyway, the best Happy Meal toys ever were the mini stompers.

Chestnuts roasted by klatubaradanikto @ 10/23/2003 3:42 PM

I recently came across my origional Mc Boo pail. It was one of the 3 pumpkin types; the classic jack o lantern face. And what was inside all these years???? MY M.U.S.C.L.E MEN COLLECTION! How’s that for rokken?.

Chestnuts roasted by Copie Boy @ 10/23/2003 3:43 PM

These things rocked, i used to snatch them out of my neighbors yard when he left them out over night never had the witch one though. The poor chinchilla you should have gotten the $500 parrot instead.

Chestnuts roasted by Byrd_man @ 10/23/2003 4:18 PM

no more chinchilla…this makes me terribly sad, matt. I hope it isn’t your death-like grip on creatures (like the fish) that caused its untimely end.
on topic..I remember those pails quite fondly. didn’t the ghost glow in the dark, perhaps? I never had one, but I’m sure my friends did.
hooray mcdonalds.

Chestnuts roasted by candice @ 10/23/2003 4:53 PM

Ah, the pails. Actually, the first year McD’s did that, it was 3 pumpkins with different faces on them. McBoo was one. McPun’kin was another; he had your standard smiling jack-o-lantern face. The third was McGoblin, who had an evil glare in his eye & a scary, jagged smile not unlike the one Violet drew on the back of Charlie Brown’s melon. A few years later they decided to make the lineup McPun’kin, McWitch, & McGhost. And yes, that was its name. McGhost.

P.S. Matt, if you can find a video called "The Night Dracula Saved The World," you must watch & review it. It also aired on the Disney Channel as "The Halloween That Almost Wasn’t"

P.P.S. I have Monster Squad on DVD. :)

Chestnuts roasted by Mike Fireball @ 10/23/2003 6:04 PM

Check out our review of the latest stretchy toys here http://www.MillionairePlayboy.com/toys/mcstretch.php
Cool, loved seeing the toys of the past again.
Keep it up Matt.

Chestnuts roasted by Googler @ 10/23/2003 6:20 PM

Hiya Mike :D

I just checked again, and the mystery continues — the three main pails from the article are all dated 1986, but I also have a fourth pumpkin pail with a different mug, also dated 86. Then there’s yet another pumpkin pail, and another ghost (the ones with the cookie cutter tops), and these are dated 1991. Is it possible that McD’s would’ve released three pumpkin pails plus a ghost and a witch in the same year? Only in a perfect world: someone must’ve forgotten to update the copyright dates.

Incidentally, there’s allegedly a commercial that gave live to the McBoo — I’ve only got a wav file of it somewhere, so I don’t know what he looked like.

Chestnuts roasted by Matt @ 10/23/2003 6:20 PM

As the case with playmobil, they usually don’t update the copyright on the mold if all they’re changing is the paint…it costs money to change the molds that the plastic is printed on… so they just pour up more, and change the decale or stamp or whatever

Googler

Chestnuts roasted by Googler @ 10/23/2003 6:30 PM

Already showed this to Matt. For the rest of you kids, here’s the other two pumpkin McBoo’s:

http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~fk4a-myst/can/1986/can-8601.htm

Chestnuts roasted by Mike Fireball @ 10/23/2003 6:35 PM

My condolences Matt, on the passing of the chinchilla. Will you be getting a surrogate?

I always used a store-bought jack-o-lantern pail for getting candy. We had about four of them and when one was filled, we just got another. I always laughed at the McDonalds pails I guess because I was a damn nazi child who thought kids were poor cheap skates if they couldn’t afford a real recepticle. If you are one of those kids I secretly mocked, my appologies. I was pretty misguided as a kid. I guess that’s what happens to you when you’re not allowed to watch horror movies growing up. (I’ll never give up that bitterness from my parents. They’ve turned me into a horror addict now.)

Chestnuts roasted by inkmage @ 10/23/2003 6:41 PM

Yes, apparently, McBoo’s (the pumpkins) got a few years all to themselves, with Witchy and Ghosty being added in ’89. I would’ve been 9…sounds about right to me. While searching around, I came across multiple variations on all three. These pails got around.

Chestnuts roasted by Matt @ 10/23/2003 6:45 PM

Ink: no more chinchillas for me. My last one was just too off the wall to replace. I know a few people with chinchillas, and none of them acted anything like mine. This thing was a puppy trapped in a rat’s body. I’ve got no idea how/why it died — the only theory we had was that it overate after its normal post-cage-cleaning food-dish-fill ritual. It was not a happy day in McDonaldland.

Chestnuts roasted by Matt @ 10/23/2003 6:47 PM

Noooooo! The Chilly died! That was the cutest rodent ever. I’m sad now. ;_;

Chestnuts roasted by Lucky Cat @ 10/23/2003 6:49 PM

Well…the Siamese Fighting Ninja Fish and the hermet crabs live on, at least. Maybe Chin sent his spirit to one of ‘em.

Chestnuts roasted by Matt @ 10/23/2003 6:50 PM

The ghost definately glowed in the dark. Those things were the only things me and my sis and my cuz would go trick or treating with. We usually had to stop to drop some off, but that’s why you start on one side of the neighborhood and double back.

Chestnuts roasted by TOP1214 @ 10/23/2003 7:15 PM

Ahh, I used to have one of those pails. It was the witch, I think. Probably had the ghost, also. Heck I think I had all three. ‘Course, I have no idea where they are now. But they are still cool!

Chestnuts roasted by Paul Ortego @ 10/23/2003 8:14 PM

First of all, I’m sorry about the death of your chinchilla. I know that sounds weird, but my family’s lost everything from sea monkeys to cats and I know it can be hard when a pet, or anyone we were close to, dies.

I think we still have about half the toys and items mentioned in the article. My sisters and I didn’t use the McBoo pails for carrying candy. Even then, we could tell they’d never hold our entire trick-or-treating haul. Mom used McPun’kin and McGhost (I don’t remember if we ever got McWitch) for decoration, and I believe she still has McPun’kin.

We had three or four of the McNugget dress-up characters. I know we had the mummy and at least two of the vampire. My youngest sister was still little enough in the mid-90s that she could collect McDonald’s toys. She got the Birdie and Grimace dress-ups, and I’ve seen both in my brother’s room, so it’s probably fair to assume that they were among the many toys he inherited from her when she decided she’d outgrown such diversions. Where they are now is beyond me. I don’t know if Mom finally declared them "collectables" (as she did with the McBoo pails) and rounded them up for Halloween decor, or if they’re still lost in the black void of my brother’s room.

Chestnuts roasted by starwenn @ 10/23/2003 9:36 PM

Those buckets were a big thing in school for me. The cool thing to do was to bring your lunch in them around halloween time. Matt you forgot about the Mc Donalds glow in the dark bags that came out in the early 90s. My mom hated when kids came to our house with the cookie cutter ones because the tootsie pops never fit through the little hole.

Chestnuts roasted by pikachulover @ 10/23/2003 9:53 PM

You rock, Matt. The background is a bit dark, and there’s not enough contrast to read the content. Maybe it’s my browser, I dunno. Anyway, this is a really small thing compared to all the fun I’ve had reading your articles. It’s a strange combination of fanboy geekdom and magical genius. Yeah… something like that.

Chestnuts roasted by Hope @ 10/24/2003 2:04 AM

Gee, Matt. Sorry to hear about Chinny.

Not to be macabre or anything, but I’ve occasionally wondered what you high-falootin’ city folk do with your dead pets? Granted, a chinchilla doesn’t really require more than a one-gallon Hefty freezer bag and a dumpster (or a ‘McBoo’ halloween pail for added ceremony), but what about a beloved cat or dog?

Chestnuts roasted by Inky @ 10/24/2003 2:34 AM

When I was little one time we made a scarecrow out of some old clothes stuffed with leaves. The absolute coolest thing about it, though, was that we made his head one of those pumpkin pails, and my dad wired it up to an outside light and stuck a lightbulb in it so that his head glowed. It was amazing.

Chestnuts roasted by youjik33 @ 10/24/2003 12:09 PM

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This entry was posted on Thursday, October 23rd, 2003 at 1:37 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.