In celebration of summertime, or something, we made mudslides last night. I don’t think I’ve ever had one before, so I don’t need to keep up any street cred: YES, we used the lame Kahlua mudslide mix instead of getting real cream.
I’ve always wanted an excuse to buy a bottle of Kahlua liquor. Growing up, we always had a bottle of that shit in the house, and it was my favorite thing to hold and caress whenever my parents weren’t home. No, I didn’t drink it. I just sort of knew through watching sitcoms that raiding the liquor cabinet was one of the fun things to do when you were left alone, so that’s what I did. I raided the liquor cabinet and…held the bottles for a few minutes. I always thought that the little pendant thing on each Kahlua bottle would’ve made a fine award for whichever of my action figures finished the 50 yard dash quickest.
Anyway, the mudslides were good. My secret ingredient was cinnamon.
Now, the Megaparty rolls along with a blog-only continuation of the Five Random ’80s Toys article. I would’ve added these to the article itself, but then I would’ve had to change the logo to “Seven Random ’80s Toys.” That just sounds clunky.
First up, Army Ants! I’ve written about these dudes before, but not since 2002, and it’s not like you can find the article in which they’re covered without the help of a detective. Army Ants were the second attempt from Hasbro to grab a piece of Mattel’s impossibly huge M.U.S.C.L.E. pie. (I threw a M.U.S.C.L.E. figure in the photo to give you a sense of scale.) Hasbro’s first attempt was Battle Beasts, which fared much better than these guys. The world at large may not have had any special love for little anty warriors with rubber asses, but I sure did.
No more italicized words, I promise. The premise of the Army Ants line was a simple one: You had orange Army Ants and blue Army Ants, and they were constantly at war. I could only ever find the orange figures as a child. Blue ants were always sold out. I’m pretty sure I shed tears of frustration at least once over that, because if kids can stand unified behind any one single mantra, it’s this: “Blue is cooler than orange.”
What made Army Ants standout from competing lines was the fact that they were the only toys in history that came with removable asses. The bulbous, rubber rears popped right off the figures and rarely found their way back, because the life of a child is hectic one, and kids couldn’t be bothered looking under the couch cushions for rubber ant asses when there was so much else left on their to-do lists.
The Army Ants line was extremely short-lived. Hasbro never could do much about Mattel’s M.U.S.C.L.E. dynasty, but even in failure, their attempts shined.
As for the second toy…
Looks like the tongue-in-cheek Burger King “Creepy King” campaign has finally tapered off, and it’s pretty funny that half the audience never knew that the King had actually been around for decades. While beginning as an animated character, the “Magical Burger King” became a live action character in direct response to the many funny faces in McDonaldLand. In the old commercials, the King was just a regular guy in a royal costume. Stupid, but not creepy.
Aside from a bunch of plastic hand puppets, there was very little Magical Burger King merchandise. Still, I think the gigantic doll above, made by Knickerbocker in 1980, more than makes up for the lack of volume.
The doll doubled as a miniature magic kit. There was the “Magic Scarf Trick,” where a blue scarf transforms into green scarf and everyone applauds. Then there’s the “Disappearing Hamburger Trick,” which was only important because it meant that one of the doll’s accessories was an awesome prop hamburger. Made out of foam! Yes! When I’m done writing this, the doll goes back in storage, but the foam hamburger stays with me.
Hmmm…now that I look at the foamboiga more closely, I can’t help but notice that it’s the same exact size as one of the two tiny burgers that came packaged together in Burger King’s old “Burger Buddies” campaign…which in itself was a spinoff of the “Burger Bundle” campaign. Only difference was that the Burger Bundle came with an extra burger. How many times can I use the word “burger” in a single paragraph? Let me escape by way of grainy images:
Now that my foam burger reminds me of Burger Buddies, I love it even more. I was just going to stick it on one of my trophy shelves…but now it must become our dining room table centerpiece. Finally, friends can visit us again. I’ve finally found the right conversational piece.
I don’t believe that kids adored the Magical Burger King enough to sleep with the doll version of him at night, but on the other hand, they probably liked him enough to wear the included Magical Burger King Ring. For such a stupid doll, this thing had the greatest accessories in toy history.
Posted by Matt. E-mail me!
….geez, it’s gonna be a long/weird day
Ghosted by 
.
I had that doll since I was a kid, and yes..I actually did sleep with it. But it wasn’t like that at all. I wasn’t intentionally sleeping with it. My mom used to pile all the stuff toys and animals on the bed before I fell asleep so I had “all my friends” with me. The BK was always there – he was pretty flamboyant if I remember, not anything like Mr. Creepy we now know from the commercials.