Free Inside Specially Marked Boxes Vol. 3 - McDonald’s Young Astronauts Premiums!

In this edition, I stray from the cereal aisle to those other boxes that contained free, plastic toys that we all wanted so badly - the McDonald's Happy Meal.

I now have in my possession a nearly complete set of the 1986 Young Astronauts premiums. Cheap plastic spaceships I loved as a kid and for some reason (the brain is a mysterious thing) I needed to have again. Let's take a look...

As a kid I had three of these hollow spacecraft: the shuttle orbiter, the Apollo module and the mysterious Argo. But, like most of my childhood toys, all three were lost somewhere along the way. Now, through serendipity and eBay, they are mine once again and it makes me happy (the brain is an enigma). Let's start with the Apollo module...

I found this toy at a thrift store and despite its sad condition, I was glad to have it back. As you can see, it's just an Apollo module, molded in gray plastic with stickers. These toys were apparently made by Monogram Models for McDonald's and the Apollo module was the closest of the bunch to an actual model as it needed to be assembled (all two parts of it). Once you snapped the two halves together you could apply the stickers following the instructions on the back of the sticker sheet. I currently only have one half of the module...

I was a huge space geek in the 80's. I wanted to be an astronaut. I loved the movie "Space Camp" ("Jinx put Max in space!"). I subscribed to "Odyssey" magazine. In 6th grade I did a presentation on the Apollo program and this little toy was the only Apollo item I owned. It was simple, but it was a fairly accurate and well sculpted rendition of the storied craft.

Why did I want to be an astronaut? Short answer - the space shuttle orbiter. The orbiter was COOL. It wasn't a rocket, it was a freakin' space plane. It was an honest to goodness spaceship right out of sci-fi. On the shortlist of most awesome vehicles, the shuttle orbiter was right up there with the F-14 Tomcat and the Stealth Bomber. And the McDonald's space shuttle orbiter was my first shuttle toy...

Again, a simple, hollow toy with some stickers. It is a single piece and has much less sculpted detail than any of the other toys in the set, but there is some detailing and what's there is pretty true to life. I also did a 6th grade presentation on the shuttle program and its history (the Dyna-Soars!) and this was the first of many shuttle toys to follow.

I picked up both shuttles and all the other toys pictured in this post (except the Apollo module) in an eBay lot. I'd often look for Young Astronaut toys and when I saw a lot that had multiples of three of them, PLUS a ton of other old premiums PLUS (for some odd reason) the front end of the Mega Force Statofortress (which I was missing) I eagerly pounced.

The previous two toys were real world vehicles that I was very familiar with. The third of toys I owned as a kid was always very mysterious to me as it was not any vehicle I had ever seen (not even in the pages of "Odyssey"). It was a this hunk of red plastic named Argo...

In my young mind, "Argo" was obviously a cargo vehicle (I hadn't yet heard of the sailing ship from mythology). The sculpted detail is quite nice and the stickers greatly add to its appeal. It's a neat little ship that I loved flying around. 

Thanks to my eBay lot, I now the official story behind the vehicle. In addition to the two samples shown above, the lot also contained a still sealed example complete with sticker/fact/instruction sheet.

According to this sheet..

"Like a car, Argo will carry four passengers over the planet surface at speeds of 50-100 m.p.h. Unlike a car, Argo will have no wheels, as it is a hovercraft type vehicle. Argo will be used for planet exploration and mining operations."

So apparently it's not a very large vehicle if it only carries four people. More of a futuristic SUV than a real spaceship. It's is interesting how the sheet refers to the vehicle in the future tense as though it was on a drawing board somewhere intended for production in the future. I wonder what the basis of the design was? Is this just something the folks at Monogram dreamed up?

The last of the Young Astrounauts series is another futuristic vehicle. I did not have this one as a child but now I have two. Behold, the Cirrus!

The Cirrus appears to be some type of VTOL craft, but without the sticker sheet for this one I don't know what the official story is. It is an interesting little craft that, if it were bigger, would have looked at home in any number of 80's toy lines. I don't think the stickers work quite as well on the Cirrus as they do on the Argo (but I have no idea if the stickers have been properly applied on these examples). The ship also seems a bit flat but it's still a neat little chunk of plastic. Again I wonder what the story is behind the design of this craft.

So there you have it - McDonald's Young Astrounauts toys from 1986 in all their glory (or half-glory in the case of the Apollo module). Sweet little bits of plastic that came free with burgers (or nuggets) and fries.