The “Happy Birthday Happy Meal” promotion was a massive 1994 ad campaign celebrating the 15th anniversary of the Happy Meal. It featured 15 characters that had been included in previous toy collections, such as Looney Tunes, Muppet Babies, and The Little Mermaid. Think of it as The Avengers of fast food tie-ins.

What made these extra neat was that they were vehicles that could be connected together to form a train. And each one did something different when rolled along. Barbie twirled! The Hot Wheels car (wait, is that a “character”?) did loops! E.T.’s head bobbed up and down! And speaking of E.T., he was by far the hardest one to find, for whatever reason. Probably because many kids in 1994 had no idea who “E.T.” was (or maybe I just didn’t).

Now it happens that I have a weirdly specific memory associated with these. On December 10th (the day the last episode of Garfield and Friends premiered on CBS), my parents took me to McDonald’s to get one of these before we waited in the parking lot to pick up a carryout pizza from a local place. And our car completely broke down. We were stuck there for hours, eating pizza we had intended to take home while I played with the toy I had gotten that day. Keep in mind this was before cell phones. I’m not even sure how my father contacted AAA to save us.

Have a great night, y’all! Now here’s an unrelated commercial where Ronald taunted a child on her birthday with the promise of things that float.