Happy Meals are great for one reason; they have boys and girls toys. My question is where are the “boys” toys for this latest set of toys based off of the ubiquitous American Idol (AI)? The current offerings of a microphone, hand clapper, sunglasses, and fake ipod are pretty lame.

I’m sorry McDonalds but you guys really missed the mark with this one. My son could care less about American Idol gear because he’s a boy. It is widely known that the target demographic for AI is young girls. My 3 year old son could care less about that show.

The last round of Happy Meal toys were great, they included boys toys like Ninja Turtles which my son loved. He didn’t even watch TMNT before getting his first turtle action figure and it didn’t matter because boys understand action figures. Boys don’t understand lame stuff like microphones and fake ipods.

I don’t know if other parents had this fantasy growing up, but I always envisioned my (future) kids playing with the toys I kept from my childhood. Don’t ask me why I thought this but I had an opportunity to put this to the test the other day.

My 3 year old son had two of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from the last McDonald’s Happy Meal toy line. He took them to day care the other day and came home with only one. He was a little upset so I remembered that I had several original TMNT’s in the package from the last time the were popular. Yes, I did do a small bit of toy collecting in my youth. I quickly checked Ebay to see if I was about to destroy hundreds of dollars of precious mint condition toys. Fortunately old TMNT’s, still in the package, are pretty much worthless.

I then went into my small stash of unopened action figures (don’t be impressed the stash is pretty pathetic) and presented two TMNT figures to my son. His response to Daddy’s selflessly offering toys from his childhood to him? “Um….lets see what else you have daddy.” Hmmm…..”That’s all Daddy has.” My son then proceeded upstairs to continue watching his Diego DVD.

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Ever go to the local Target looking for a toy only to find a ton of the one you already have, that your kid is not playing with anyway? This typically happens with the “hot new toy” or item in a line of toys relating to a hit movie, Cars (from Pixar) being a prime example.

While researching cool websites for toys I found this post on a site called ToyBender.com. It is basically a blog written by a toy collector. The blogger is a male who collects, from what I can tell, action figures ranging in price from retail to obscene. He also posts neat classic ads for toys like commercial and comic book ads.

He recently posted an article called “Toy Collecting is for Losers: Defending Toy Collecting.” The article is about how toy collectors are not all like the 40 Year Old Virgin. Ok, that’s fine. I believe him even though ALL the toy collectors I have ever met are in fact freaks who do still live with their parents. However, given the size of the toy collecting industry I can believe that there are some socially, well-adjusted toy collectors.
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