Free with Every Kids’ Meal

When we hear the term “fast food toys,” many of us picture specific favorites. Whether they be the McDonald’s Changeables, Burger King’s expansive Lord of the Rings figurines, or the Star Wars: Episode I premiums that gripped Taco Bell, KFC, and Pizza Hut simultaneously, chances are high that you have a nostalgic go-to. But why? Perhaps the element of surprise, an unexpected toy accompanying your lunch, delighted you as a child. Maybe you loved the promotion’s source material and wanted to collect everything within its domain. Or it could be that this tiny, random plaything intersected with your life at just the inexplicably right moment. Whatever the case may be, toys tucked into kids’ meals are designed to be disposable, but many of our experiences prove them to be anything but.
While there are many books devoted to cataloguing various fast food promotional products, this is the first to undertake a deep analysis of their cultural impact. By digging deep into kids’ meals past and present, this work uncovers the history of their toys. This work guides examines the ways in which these simple prizes interact with societal factors like race, gender, class, and economics by connecting their analyses with the work of top theorists. In so doing, we learn why these allegedly “forgettable” toys embed in memory—not because of the toy at the bottom of a brightly colored food container, but because, there, in the in-between space of toy-and-meal, permanent-and-temporary, meaningless-and-meaningful, we find ourselves.

Jonathan Alexandratos is a New York City-based writer, professor, and toy scholar. They were featured in the Emmy-nominated documentary Billion Dollar Babies: The True Story of the Cabbage Patch Kids and teach at Queensborough Community College and Sarah Lawrence College.

Jonathan Alexandratos
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages:
Bibliographic Info: ca. 5 photos, notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2025
pISBN: 978-1-4766-8876-3
eISBN: 978-1-4766-5552-9
Imprint: McFarland

• “While some work in qualitative fields may have incorporated or referenced fast food toys in studies, this is the first book to centrally address the multivalent cultural meanings of the fast food toy. As such, it brings together topics of great relevance across multiple fields, such as toy studies (an area of growth, currently), media industries, and fan studies. Although its focus is on toys, it also models a rich material history of fast food ephemera more broadly. Alexandratos’ expertise on this topic is evident, and their personal connection to the subject matter threaded throughout brings a level of detail and seriousness to a topic that is meaningful to many, but that is often overlooked. Contextualizing fast food toys within a longer historical genealogy of toys-with-food (from the king cake and the fortune cookie to Cracker Jacks to cereal boxes) this book offers a thorough exploration of these toys as a cultural phenomenon.”—Meredith A. Bak, associate professor, Childhood Studies, Rutgers University–Camden

• “Because of their inherent ambiguity, food toys serve many constituencies, from the corporations that produce them, to the personnel who deliver them, the (mostly) adults who purchase them, and the (mostly) children and young people who play with or collect them. The author examines these trinkets in terms of race, gender, health and obesity, and their role in creating the fast food experience, a form of immersive theatre. Free with Every Kids’ Meal shows the many ways in which toys intersect with social and political issues, both in the past and today. [The book is] a well-informed guide to the multidimensional space in which meal toys exist.”—Jeffrey H. Goldstein, professor, Institute for Cultural Inquiry, Utrecht University