Okay, the Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers didn't have toys, but we had Kid's Meals! In the fall when the show came out, the old roast beef/fast food chain, Roy Rodgers, began promoting the Galaxy Rangers with kids meal packaging and "toys." It wasn't until recently I figured out why Roy Rodgers was so open to a sci-fi cartoon show promotion. You have to remember, Roy Rodgers was a famous movie cowboy. And we were a western in space! Do you see it now?
The first week they served the food put in plastic clamshells designed to look (kinda) like the space crafts on the show. The blue one was the Inceptor. The grey one, the Commander. The green one was the Iron Falcon, the bad guys' ship. Each came with stickers so you could put the various details on the ships; stripes, decals, people in the windows, etc (I only put the stickers on the green one, I dunno why. Ruin collector value?). Rawlins and I worked in lower Manhattan at this time and there was an actual Roy Rodgers restraint by us. We would meet for lunch and each order the kids meals, so we could start collecting the pieces for ourselves (and maybe raise awareness?). And yes, we were the only people in lower Manhattan ordering kids meals. Then in the evenings, I'd drive to the one by my house and get dinner there way too often to get more stuff.
I have several of each, but only 1 gray top. It's an even number of tops and bottoms, so I don't know what happened there.
The first week they served the food put in plastic clamshells designed to look (kinda) like the space crafts on the show. The blue one was the Inceptor. The grey one, the Commander. The green one was the Iron Falcon, the bad guys' ship. Each came with stickers so you could put the various details on the ships; stripes, decals, people in the windows, etc (I only put the stickers on the green one, I dunno why. Ruin collector value?). Rawlins and I worked in lower Manhattan at this time and there was an actual Roy Rodgers restraint by us. We would meet for lunch and each order the kids meals, so we could start collecting the pieces for ourselves (and maybe raise awareness?). And yes, we were the only people in lower Manhattan ordering kids meals. Then in the evenings, I'd drive to the one by my house and get dinner there way too often to get more stuff.
I have several of each, but only 1 gray top. It's an even number of tops and bottoms, so I don't know what happened there.
After the clamshell boxes, Roy Rogers reverted to the classic kid's meal boxes, folded cardboard, with each box representing an episode of the show. I was thrilled that one of my episodes was used for a box (Space Moby) and that I made sure I got several. I pressed one flat and framed it. It hangs on my wall to this day. There was artwork, a plot summary, a game or two and a fun fact. The promotion continued for a while, I remember. Longer than one would think. Roy Rodgers wasn't in the league of McDonald's or even Burger King, so they didn't seem in a rush to end the promotion. You'll notice some of the boxes start to feature a lot of pumpkins. It was because we're into October now and Halloween was coming!
It was the toy aspect of the kids meal that started getting lame. Sure, we had glow-in-the-dark license plates for bikes and plastic whistles (whistles??? There wasn't a single whistle in the show!) but then the prizes got chintzy. Everything was cardboard. There was a cardboard game, "Destination Earth" that your punched out and assembled. There were cardboard figures of the characters that you punched out and assembled. There was a cardboard slideshow that you punched out and assembled. Frankly, they were a pain and never quite held together. I only opened one or two at most just to see. They were disappointing.
There's a few pictures of the Phoenix Command Center Slide show above. It was a cardboard punch out, where you would fold tab A into slot B, and origami the whole thing until you got a consol where you slid a paper strip through the slots and then followed the story in the center monitor.
And, just for you, I recreated a slide show version of the strip below. Note, the strip fed the story as you pulled the strip to the right. The below set up runs the story left to right. And I couldn't enlarge them to much, they got distorted. It's really small art work on the strip.
Back in the 80s, everyone was concerned about razors in apples or LSD gumballs at Halloween. To address that amazingly fiction problem, the fast food chains began selling food coupons that you could hand out to trick-or-treaters and they could redeem them for ice cream or fries or a hamburger with LSD. RR did their version that year, featuring GR on the cover of the booklet! I kept the cover and used the coupons. It was for charity!
When we were invited to appear on the GR DVD extras, I choose for us to display my souvenirs from Roy Rodgers, it was a good a hook as any to get on air! I still feel like I have to apologize to John for just talking so much on this.
