Outrageous Kids Meal Toys

When it comes to licensing, the big boys tend to get the best deals. McDonalds and Burger King get the big movies and hot toys, leaving the scraps for the competition. Case in point: Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter. This disturbing wind-up toy was produced for Subway before the nature show host's untimely death, and it reminds us of nothing more than a man trying to copulate with a giant lizard in defiance of God's law.

We're going to step back into the mists of time for this one, possibly the lamest Happy Meal toy of all time. "Glove Puppets" were basically plastic bags with pictures printed on them, usually of Ronald, Grimace, or one of his coterie of merchandising mascots. Aside from the utter lameness of getting a plastic bag as a toy (not to mention the choking hazard), they didn't even work like hand puppets should - attempting to use your hand to make Ronald "talk" would just make him do his best imitation of someone getting shot in the stomach.

We all know who Grigori Rasputin was, right? If not, he was the towering Russian mystic who cast his spell on the last days of the Russian tsars. He was brutally killed during the Bolshevik revolution and was also, for some reason, cast as the villain in the Don Bluth animated movie Anastasia, which got a set of Burger King kids meal tie-in toys. Rasputin's death is one of the most hideous in history - he was poisoned, shot, stabbed, beaten, and finally thrown into a river. After his body was recovered, his enormous penis was preserved in a jar. So this "Fall-Apart Rasputin," who can shed arms and head, is pretty bizarre. Even more so is the odd, vaguely dong-like decoration hanging from his neck. Hm....

This is stretching the definition of "toy" to the absolute limit. White Castle has always been the bargain basement of fast food restaurants, so it's no surprise that their kids meals come with some pretty ghetto stuff. Probably the weirdest thing they ever tried to use as a giveaway was grape-flavored Hammerman toothpaste. Based on the short-lived (and terrible) MC Hammer cartoon, this goop would rot your teeth like the show would rot your mind. Who wants to think about dental hygiene when they eat at White Castle?