Fraggle Rock Happy Meal Toys (1988)

Dance your cares away! Worries for another da-a-ay!

(Be honest, you just sang that, didn't you?)

Almost from the time the Fraggles first hit television screens in 1983, they were incredibly popular. The adorable puppets^*, infectious music, and whimsical stories became "must-see" viewing for many of my generation (perhaps despite being available only on HBO, then still only a cable service that subscribers had to pay to receive).

The original Fraggle Rock series ended in 1987, but thankfully, that wasn't the end. An animated version of Fraggle Rock aired on NBC later that year. Sadly, it only lasted for a few months, but McDonald's released a set of four Happy Meal toys clearly intended to serve as publicity for the cartoon (even though it must have already stopped airing original episodes by the time the Happy Meal toys actually came out).

In keeping with a common trend of Happy Meal toys of the era, rather than creating figurines of the popular Fraggle characters, vehicles were created in which one or more Fraggles would be depicted. In keeping with the aesthetic of the Fraggle Rock franchise, these vehicles were hollowed-out vegetables with mushroom caps for wheels, with the appropriately-colored Fraggle inside. Thus (in order from left to right), we see Gobo driving a carrot, Red driving a radish, Mokey driving an eggplant, and Wembley driving a cucumber with Boober in the back seat.

Although there are quite a few collectors of Happy Meal toys out there, and the Fraggles remain popular to this day (in part due to the reboot series, Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock, now available on Apple TV+), I have not found these toys particularly expensive to pick up, easily grabbing the whole set at once at a local retro store. eBay also always has some on sale, although you'll likely pay more just to cover shipping. They're a nice piece of nostalgia for anyone interested.

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^*The Fraggles were still featured as "Jim Henson's Muppets" during Fraggle Rock's original run, but after the purchase of the (other) Muppets by the Walt Disney Company, the Jim Henson Company retained the rights to the Fraggles, and thus the Fraggles could no longer be referred to as "Muppets."