Oh, McDonald's. Where all of our sugary, salty, fat-laden dreams come true. Although they've made efforts to rebrand as health conscious, they're not fooling anyone, are they? They're unhealthy as all heck and don't get me wrong, there's a place for that. When you're a kid and you go there, the food tastes like the best stuff you've ever eaten, ambrosia from the cartoonish gods. Going back there as an adult is slightly less magical, partially because your taste buds have matured beyond only sensing sweet, salty, fatty, and more fat, and partially because you can no longer get Happy Meals without looking like a weirdo.

When you're a kid, Happy Meals are everything you want in one package: tasty food and an awesome toy. At least, a toy that should be awesome, but sometimes really isn't. It's a bit like Kinder Surprise eggs. Sometimes you get awesome little figurines or cool little helicopters, other times you get... I don't know, a skateboard for a little dog doll, or a weird sculpture. It seems like sometimes these companies just buy up skiploads of offcuts from toy factories and tip them into their products. This article is dedicated to those kinds of toys that McDonald's have put out over the years. Whether a bit odd, creepy, poorly designed, or just plain terrible, you'll find them all on here. I apologize in advance if I ruin any cherished childhood memories for you.

29 Michael Jordan Fitness Fun

An early attempt at reducing the damage caused by all their fries, Michael Jordan Fitness Fun was a set of truly awful fitness equipment. This stopwatch was… well, it was a stopwatch. It barely functioned, counting to just 30 seconds, so if you wanted to do any real exercise with it, its applications were hugely limited. Other bits and pieces included a jump rope that probably broke on your third jump and a football that was too small to be of any actual use.

28 Sky Dancers

When these worked, they were really cool, launching majestically into the air. The problem was that the budget ones issued by McDonald's couldn’t really stand on their launcher properly, meaning they couldn’t launch properly. This led to them basically being pointless, and, due to their frankly ugly looks, they were promptly hidden away in cupboards and never played with again. A sad way for a cool toy to be remembered, to be honest with you.

27 Night At The Museum 3 3D Viewer

Aw heck yeah, now we're getting into the good stuff. Night At The Museum 3 is an entertaining enough romp, the geometric counterpart to this toy. Even using the word toy feels insulting, so let's call it a tool. This tool was essentially a viewfinder. Kids would put cards into it, which would then show a janky "3D" version of a scene from the film. How long do you think this kept little Johnny entertained? Five seconds? A minute? One thing is for sure, it would be in the trash before the day was out.

26 A Bendy Ronald McDonald

Do you remember that scene in the original Nightmare on Elm Street where Freddy's arms get super long, and it's super creepy? Cross Freddy with Pennywise, and you have the monstrous hybrid represented in this toy. Released in 1996, this Ronald McDonald doll was highly flexible, bendy, and posable. The main use of this, at least in my mind? Scaring the bejeezus out of younger relatives. A "fun" toy that seems destined to go the Chuckie route, I bet this scarred a fair few kids.

25 The 101 Dalmatian Toys

What better way to celebrate 101 Dalmatians than with 101 toys? Erm, I can think of quite a few better ways, if I'm honest. Spreading the promotion out across 101 toys means that completing the collection would require one of a few different things. You'd need a ton of money, or a pool of people all attempting to complete the same collection, or one person vowing to eat their way through 101 Happy Meals without succumbing to heart failure. Just a bad idea that led to incalculable amounts of frustration.

24 A Toothbrush And Toothpaste

There is only one circumstance where this would be a really nice gesture: there are a ton of less fortunate kids who get fed at McDonald's and whose parents might not have toothpaste in the house. That being said, giving out one tube and a toothbrush, while a nice gesture of goodwill, is just that, a gesture. It's not going to change anything. McDonald's are a company that could fund actual change if they wanted, making this something of an insult.

23 The Airport Toys

Open up your Happy Meal box and play with a set of plane and helicopter toys! Sounds great right? If they weren’t so cheap, it would have been grand. These things were the cheapest bits of plastic that you ever did see. Released back in 1986, you could fold out your Happy Meal box to make an airport and then play at air traffic control, until the toys broke while you were building them, or the greasy cardboard of the playset caused a fire.

22 Gardening Toys

At British seaside resorts, you often come across shops selling vast assortments of plastic tools. Buckets and spades, plastic spatulas, and these godawful gardening toys. What you're supposed to do with them at the beach is beyond me. Apparently, McDonald's bought a bunch of stuff in bulk from these shops and then decided to distribute them to the children of other nations. What kind of kid is going to be excited to get a tiny plastic pitchfork in their Happy Meal?

21 The ET Poster Reissue

I never lived through ET mania. I can't ponder what attracted the world to this odd-looking beast. What I do know, however, is that while this poster would have been nice to have in 1984, having it in 1986 when it was bafflingly reissued by McDonald's would not have been so nice. Let's even leave aside the fact that it would be creased awfully and covered in grease. I want you to imagine McDonald's for some reason giving out a poster for Kung Fu Panda 3 today. It wouldn't work, would it? Neither did this.

20 The American Idol MP3 Player

Ah, American Idol. The domain of terrible cover bands, and schoolteachers ernestly warbling out love songs. As a tie in, McDonalds decided to give away these MP3 players. Yeah, technically, they were fully functional MP3 players. Fully functional MP3 players that were arbitrarily restricted to one song, the American Idol theme. That odd techno beat, you know the one. A single button soundboard that sounded out the buzzer from America's Got Talent would have been better, and a lot more honest.

19 Ronald McDonald Mask

Oh boy. Did you think we were done with the creepy Ronald McDonald stuff? Guess again! This cardboard mask, depicting Ronald McDonald in full makeup (or is that just his skin?), was released back in 1974. I'm sure they'd do a better job of it these days, but apparently back then the only Ronald McDonald available was the creepy version. Somewhat darkly, this was released when John Wayne Gacy was dressing up as Pogo The Clown. A pretty dark coincidence.

18 Mattel Barbies

Wow, Mattel actually giving away barbies as part of a Happy Meal? Surely these would be remembered super fondly by just about every little girl from the period? You really would think so, wouldn't you? Apparently, Mattel, or McDonald's, forgot what the fun of a doll was. That you can move them, and pose them, and that they can actually be played with. These dolls? They couldn't be moved, rendering them, effectively, plastic ornaments. I don't know about you, but if I'd got one of these in my Happy Meal, I would have been sorely disappointed.

17 McDonalds Letterland Stationery

Nothing says fun like stationery, does it? Normally fans of stationery are people in their middle years, not kids. It was given out in 1974, and like the mask we mentioned earlier, it shows that early Happy Meal toys were by far the worst ones to have been made. The stationary is made up of some sheets of paper with Ronald leering out at you as you write. There are some little fuzz balls at the bottom of the sheet, and a few seals to accompany your corporate-branded letter.

16 Ronald McDonald Plastic Glove Puppet

As pointless as the salad glove sang about by AJJ, this thing is allegedly a puppet. I don't believe it, I'll be honest with you. It looks like something an unfortunate McDonald's staff member would wear while cleaning out the grease traps. It is very possibly the lowest-effort 'toy' on this list. It's not formed into the shape of a glove, or indeed, any recognizable part of the body. Basically, you're just getting a piece of barely-formed plastic with a picture of Ronald McDonald or Grimace on it. Whoop-de-doo!

15 The Tickle Feather Sponge

It's very hard to classify this as a toy. Are kids really struggling to find ways to tickle someone? Obviously, cartoons often use a feather as a tool for tickling, but come on, no one needs a feather to accomplish the job.

Really, this has to be someone working at McDonald's who thought it would be cute to make a sponge version of a tickle feather, but never quite a got a chance to see the finished product before telling production to mass produce it.

14 The Goat Who Ate Everything

A book about healthy eating as part of a Happy Meal. Please, let me rephrase that, a book about healthy eating being given out by one of the unhealthiest fast food restaurants around. There's a certain amount of hilarity that can be gained from watching McDonalds' PR trying to frantically rebrand the company, but as a gift in a Happy Meal, really? Surely McDonald's knew that if these kids took the book's advice on board, they'd be cutting into their future profits?

13 Their Awful Video Games

Ever go and browse on AliExpress? You can find countless examples of cheap, tacky game emulator boxes being sold as their own consoles. It's strongly illegal, but for some reason, continues to this day. McDonald's once did something similar. It wasn't, I should stress, illegal, as it was an official partnership with Sega, but oh boy were the games just as bad. They were rubbish little mini-games, in terrible plastic consoles, that felt cheap, looked cheap, and played terribly.

12 These Creepy Dinosaurs Toys

Did you watch Dinosaurs? I don't blame you if you didn't. A truly terrible sitcom released in the '90s, it featured puppet dinosaurs and was a family show that aimed to be something like The Flintstones, but a few hundred million years earlier. McDonald's, as part of a promotional effort, gave out these creepy plastic dinosaurs in their happy meals. Their teeth are the creepiest part, I think. They melt into each other to create a weird grin.

11 Clone Wars Bobbleheads

I'm going to preempt this by saying that yes, I am going to complain about scale on some bobbleheads. Why? Well, because unlike with traditional bobbleheads, where you have a regular sized body below the head, these Clone Wars bobbleheads feature a variety of vehicles. As such, their scale is baffling.

Take a look at Chewie, for example. Sure, the face is actually pretty nicely done, but it's the fact he's popping out of an AT-AT that'ts smaller than his head that bothers me. It looks like a bizarre experiment gone wrong.

10 Happy Goggles

This one is actually a pretty super idea. You'd fold up your Happy Meal box to make a cardboard viewer. You could then slot in a smartphone, and have your very own makeshift VR headset. That's pretty cool, and ideas like it have proven to be pretty good before.

There's one problem with it, though. You have to want to put a greasy box next to your face and keep it there for a whole lot of time. Surely this is just a recipe for acne, more than anything?