The Ramblings of Guise Dugal

Recently I had cause to resort to fast food for a few meals and so took the opportunity to check out what was going on in the realms of childrens meals and promotions at both Burger King and McDonalds, both of which are running movie tie-in promotions with their children menus. The two movies up for grabs were Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and Ice Age 3. In a rather interesting coup, the King managed to snag the Transformers tie-in – interesting to me, as I can recall when McDonalds offered the Generation 1 special teams, such as Aerialbots, in the Happy Meals. The clown, meanwhile, was offering out the goods for Ice Age 3.

Burger King has a reputation for adding themed menu items for the adults when they tie-in to most movies, such as the much re-hashed and adored Dark Whopper, and this time would be no different. In the US, it would take the form of the Stackticon, which seems little more than a Bacon Double Cheeseburger: sesame bun, Sweet Baby Ray’s Hot & Spicy BBQ Sauce, 4x bacon, 2x American cheese, 2x hamburger. In the UK we got a version of a previously used mini-Angus 6-pack, this time with three topped in BBQ sauce and an onion ring (similar to the Rodeo Burger) and three with jalapenos and brava sauce, additionally they are running a side Chilli and Cheese Bites (4) and Onion Rings (8) Combo.

The toys are, unfortunately, not the greatest. I ended up with two of the selection, a spring launced Arcee in bike mode and a put-together Constructicon gestalt. Arcee is one of those very standard Hot Wheels-style spring launch toys, even going so far as having the similar style launching garage, they decaled the garage with a molded Autobot symbol and put a sticker of her face on the garage door. The gestalt is several lumps of plastic, most coloured, with peg holes to connect to a grey lump, they don’t however connect perfectly and it’s in no way poseable. In fact, looking in the promo booklet, there are very few things from the Transformers franchise that actually, you know, transform. The bag once again lets the King down, with the typical one side of cool art, one side of selling other burgers and two sides of toys.

I’m not quite sure why Burger King can be so hit and miss with their tie-ins, when they can have the great Batmobile toy for Dark Knight and cool Pokemon tie-ins, but can’t tie-in Transformers with transforming things. I do want to note though, the US website for the promo, http://www.bk.com/transformyourway, is damn cool. It even featured the old school Tech Specs from the Generation 1 toy rang, and you use the red filter to reveal the information just like as a kid.

So, what about the Clown? Well, the first thing to note is that the clown is not bothered by tie-ins for adults, the Happy Meal is kid-orientated and until something comes along that’ll shake that (like Batman Returns did) it’ll be happy to stay that way – McDonalds instead is running a range of “Taste of America” products that are pretty ignorable. The boxes for the Happy Meals are pretty good, with a lot of stuff going on from character information and pictures to two small games (one a counting “which path allows Scratt to collect the most Acorns”, one a “name the characters”), there’s also all manner of pop-out items from Manny’s tusks to cracked ice. There’s also a money-off voucher on each box for Ice Age DVDs and books.

The toys at the moment are quite fitting for the movie, character moulds for ice lollies (popsicles for my American friends), but thats not all, with each mould you get a mini-figure of the character, because to be honest you can’t expect a kid to be overjoyed with something functional when they are sat eating from a colourful box.

The “…For SCIENCE!” bit

Having gotten a popsicle mould, it did only seem fitting to try my hand at popsicle making. The instructions were pretty clear, fill the item with liquid and put in a cold place for several hours. Now, I knew before hand that this was a doomed project for two reasons:
1) Every time I have ever attempted to make popsicles, they’ve never worked, either freezing to the mould or not adhering to the popsicle stick
2) The only liquid close at hand was Ginger Ale, the carbonated drink.

So, I poured the ginger ale in to a glass with vodka and popped in some ice, then I poured some ginger ale into the popsicle mould and put that in the freezer. Whilst it got itself nice and chilly, I consumed my drink, and another after that.

By morning, the popsicle was frozen solid, though it looked less that 100% as it was obvious how thin the mix was. Trying to get the popsicle out caused the popsicle stick to tear free, but I did end up with a ginger flavoured, Sid-shaped ice block, which tasted very nice. In fact, the experiment wasn’t a complete failure as I found out that freezing ginger ale can be a damn good idea to add to drinks.

In my view, the clown seriously beat down the King in this round. Now, I might be slightly biased because I miss old school Transformers and haven’t actually seen Revenge of the Fallen yet, but by similar token I have yet to see any of the Ice Age movies. Going solely on toys, I’d rather hit a McD’s than a BK. Foodwise, I’d rather eat at a BK.