Garfield: The Movie opened on this day 20 years ago. The Bill Murray film is widely considered to be the greatest cinematic achievement of all time (so much so that the late Roger Ebert wrote “Murray’s voice-over work finds the right balance for Garfield — between smugness and uncertainty, between affection and detachment, between jealousy and a grudging ability to see the other point of view”). In fact, many people–including, I’m assuming, Roger Ebert–privately proclaimed it to be even better than Citizen Kane, and hey, when you consider that Citizen Kane never had any toys at Wendy’s but Garfield: The Movie did, who am I to argue?

Now, as with the Wendy’s promotion for Quest for Camelot, I didn’t get any of these. I never ate at Wendy’s much growing up, as the one we had here seemed to always serve their fries kind of…soggy. Also, I don’t think I knew these existed when they were new (insert the usual “but maybe Scrat will someday get them on eBay” line here). And, for whatever reason, the commercial for these toys has been quite elusive to find online. I’ve been looking for it for ages with no luck, but it seems as though someone finally granted my wish by uploading it to YouTube…a few weeks ago, just in time for tonight’s header. The Lord works in mysterious ways.

All of these look so sweet, even if things like a Garfield alarm clock which seems to function as a Magic 8 ball don’t really make much sense. Like, there’s even a toy for “Garfield’s shades” which he only ever wore on the film’s marketing material. He never at any point wears them during the movie, probably because they don’t manufacture sunglasses for eyes that large.

Have a lasagna night, y’all!