Neopets McDonald's 2004 Happy Meal Plushies: When A Hobby Turns Into An Addiction
Written: Apr 17 '08 (Updated Apr 17 '08)
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Pros: 15 pets plus bonus Neo item, well made plushies, great for Neopet fans.
Cons: Limited number of each color, Mc Donald's exclusive.
The Bottom Line: If you missed out on the 2004 Neopet collection you can still get them online but you will be paying through the nose for authentic plushies.
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| Freak369's Full Review: Neopets 2004 Mcdonalds 16 Piece Happy Meal Sealed ... |
Preface: If you aren't into Neopets or collecting Kids Meal toys chances are this review will not make any sense to you. It includes information about the 2004 and 2005 Neopet plushie event and toys in the children's meals.
Mc Donald's. You either love them or hate them. For me it is a place to hit for cheap double cheeseburgers [minus the bun] and Kids Meal toys. When we lived in San Diego I had a really sweet set up. I was friends with people at Taco Bell, KFC, Mc Donald's and Burger King. That lead to a lot of free toys or the chance to buy them for about .30 cents a piece. When Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and KFC all had the Star Wars toys I was like a pig in slop. Each of the franchises had different toys so I was sort of the middle man. I'd get the toys from all three places, swap them around and everyone was happy, especially me because I took my share before anything got divided up. The same thing happened with the left over Neopet plushies from the 2004 promo. Sure, we ate a lot of Kids Meals but I ended up with a ton that were going to [gasp] be thrown out. The price? 2 gold Pokemon cards [Burger King] and one set of the Taco Bell Star Wars toys.
Neopets McDonald's 2004 Happy Meal Plushie Collection
Here is the short review:
1. These were never sold in a set so this listing is for something that someone was selling on eBay and it got translated into an actual product / sellable item.
2. These were never offered as a set to anyone unless you worked for Neopets or Viacom [the now-part owners of the company].
3. Unless you know the details of the 2004 and 2005 set, buying them or bidding on them at an auction could be a complete rip off. I have provided links to both of the collections and the checklists from the Neopet website so you can see exactly which species were in each series.
4. Anyone that tells you they have an officially packaged set of all the 2004 or 2005 Neopets is lying; there were never complete sets created because there were at least four to five variations of each species released.
Ok, now that the main points are out of the way, here is the verbose version.
Before the Kids Meal's included mini versions of Neopet plushies there was already a presence of Mc Donald's items at the site. When the partnership between the two dissolved any Mc Donald's food items you had in your inventory were converted. The Chicken Mc Nuggets were changed to the Grilled Chicken Sandwich as well as the rest of the food items that were once high sellers at the site. These included the following McDonald's foods: Apple Dippers, Chocolate Milk, Fries, Hamburger, Happy Meal, Beverage and of course the already mentioned Chicken Mc Nuggets. There were also Dollar Menu items but I didn't have any in my inventory so I have no idea what the new names were for them.
What happened between the two companies to cause the riff? No one knows and if they do, they aren’t talking. There were two promotions for the Kids Meals featuring Neopet items. One was held in 2004 and the second in 2005. Both of them featured miniature versions of the Neopet species and were packaged with trading cards and plastic backpack tags. Now, this is where it gets extremely interesting; unless you really know your sets you are going to get ripped off if you are going to buy these online. The 2004 set came with a trading card but there was no plastic backpack tag with them, the 2005 ones were the only ones that came with these. Both series had small star shaped paper labels on them [usually on the ear] that listed what the species and variety was. Yellow Lupe, Yellow Blumaroo, Green Quiggle etc.
The quality of the plushies was a lot better than I expected and I knew that I would be hitting Mc D's often to try and get some of the rarer types of variations like Starry and Checkered. Some locations released them in the order that they were instructed to release them in and others ignored protocol and just grabbed random boxes. Some were packaged in see through bags while others weren't; obviously if they did them all in see through bags people would be pestering the front end wait staff to swap them for pets or variations that they didn’t have. Once you opened the bag that was it, just like the Scratchcard Kiosk at the site, it's lucky dip and you have to deal with what you end up getting.
The 2004 collection contains the following species [in the order they were released by McDonald's and Neopets]: Scorchio, Lupe, Aisha, Chomby, JubJub, Blumaroo, Moehog, Random Special Plushie [this could be a Nova, Super Nova, Egg or Starry Paint Brush], Ixi, Techo, Wocky, Quiggle, Shoyru, Grundo, Uni and the [at the time] new Yurble.
The 2005 collection consists of the following species [in the order they were released by McDonald's and Neopets]: Bruce, Kiko, Flotsam, Kacheek, Poogle, Kougra, Gelert, Mynci, Kyrii, Meerca , Grarrl and Pteri.
With the 2005 collection there were plastic backpack clips or tags attached to the plushies. These were randomly picked and attached so they did not match the species of the plushie. They were the PetPet species of the site and featured an image of the PetPet on one side and the Neopet logo on the other. They are, in alphabetical order: Anubis, Babaa, Doglefox, Faellie, Feepit, Gruslen, Harris, Hasee, Kadoatie, Kookith, Mazzew, Meepit, Meowclops, Miamouse, Noil, Ona, Pawkeet, Pupplyblew, Raindorf, Slorg, Snarhook, Snowickle, Symol, Warf.
If it wasn't bad enough that we had to hit Mc Donald's over and over, there were also the daily prices at the website. These included some very cool things like "Cloud Ixi Plushie", "Blue Techo Plushie", "Green Blumaroo Plushie" and "Starry Paint Brush Plushie". Of course the one that had everyone talking was the "Plushie Nova Avatar" that you received when you visited the special link. This promotion ran at the website from May 28, 2004 to June 24, 2004 with the last item being that very cool "Starry Paint Brush Plushie". This was a nice tie in that offered kids and adults a nice little kick but helped stir the pot and provide some advertising for Mc Donald's as well as getting kids jacked up to try and collect all of the different species.
What were the best looking plushies from the 2004 collection? Everyone is going to have their own favorites but mine were the Shadow Aisha, all of the Grundos, White Lupe, Starry Quiggle and both the Scorchio and Shoyru, Shadow Techo and the Speckled Negg. The 2004 plushies all had small tags on their bottoms, sort of like the way that the Beanie Babies were tagged; that is one way to tell the two years apart but if you are getting authentic items that are still in mint condition the presence or absence of a plastic backpack tag should be the best quickest way to tell.
These were never sold in stores so putting a price on them is almost impossible. I have seen sets selling for as much as a hundred dollars but 90% of them were incorrectly listing the species so that lead me to believe that the sellers had absolutely no clue that there were two different promotions. Individually the Starry, Shadow and special items do sell for more than the common colored ones but there is no way I would ever pay more than two dollars a piece for them regardless of how cool they looked or how badly I needed them to complete the series. When we were getting the Kids Meals they were $1.99 each [more for the chicken nuggets and cheeseburgers] so I basically paid two dollars for each of them not including the ones that I traded for or got for free.
Other Neopet & Mc Donald's Items
There was a game that you could play before and during the promotion when both companies were still on good terms. There were special Mc Donald's food items that you could get at the site too [cyber, not real world of course]. The game doesn't load anymore but you can still check out the front page and information about it here:
www.neopets.com/games/mcdonalds2_sg.phtml
If you are a plushie collector and want to see all the different styles that were available and use the checklist you can find that page here:
www.neopets.com/happymeal/checklist.phtml
To see only the 2004 list:
www.neopets.com/mcd/checklist.phtml?promo=1
To see only the 2005 list:
www.neopets.com/mcd/checklist.phtml?promo=4
If you collected the plushies then you also probably ended up with a lot of the trading cards that were packaged with them. There are a total of fifteen to the series and if you aren't sure if you have them all or are missing a few but are unsure about the names, check out this page at the site to see the complete list:
www.neopets.com/cards
The Bottom Line
I was not alone in my quest to collect as many plushies as I could before the promotion was over. We would hit two different Mc Donald's and see what number they were on and along the way we started seeing the same people over and over. That lead to us swapping mobile numbers so we could eliminate a little running around. Jani and Kelly eventually became my Neo cohorts in crime and we all ended up swapping our duplicates. Even though the brood were way out of the "cute and fun" side of Neopets by that point they were still active at the site and didn't pass up a single Kids meal I bought.
The 2004 collection was nice but it wasn't any better or worse than the 2005 set. Both of them offered fans of the site the chance to get mini versions of plushies based on the species of the site. Sure it was a slick promotion that benefited both companies but it was a lot of fun. If you are going to try to collect this set or the 2005 assortment my only advice is know the sets and if a deal sounds too good to be true, it probably is!
As always, thanks for the visit…
~^V^~ Freak ~^V^~
© 2008 Freak369
Neopets, Neopets Official Magazine, Deluxe World Meridell Game, Deluxe World Faerie Land Game, Talking Shoyru Plushie, Talking Uni Plushie, Mutant Kacheek Interactive Game, Krawk Island Pocket Neopet, Neopets Islandberry Crunch Cereal, Red Shoyru NeoPen, Pirate Blumaroo Plushie, Purple Grundo Plushie, Hasee PetPet Plushie, Neopet Notebooks, Neopet Binder & Folder Set, Aisha Sticker Set
Neopet Scams, Hacks, Cheats & Darkside of Neopia
The Neopets Primer: Getting Stared On That First Million!
Neopet Foods: From Budget To Gourmet & Everything In Between
Making The Most of The "Neopets 2007 Advent Calendar"
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): see review
Type of Toy: Stuffed Toy
Age Range of Child: Whole Family
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