The McDonald's Happy Meal Promo From The '80s That Blows Modern Ones Out Of The Water

"How would your family like to have their next meal in a spaceship?" Spoken in a gentle, deep voice over a sci-fi-inspired musical score, these words opened a McDonald's commercial from 1982 featuring the brand's Spaceship Happy Meal. The meal consisted of a hamburger or cheeseburger, famous golden, crispy fries, and a drink. (Chicken McNuggets didn't debut on the McDonald's menu until the following year). While the contents were fairly standard, this meal's appeal was in the packaging: The food came served in a plastic spaceship available in one of four colors — red, yellow, green, and blue. The spaceship itself was unadorned; however, it came with a sticker sheet featuring McDonald's characters that could be used to decorate your ship.

The origins of the Happy Meal may be murky, but the iconic meal did debut in the U.S. in 1979, so the Spaceship meal was developed in those early years. Over on a Reddit thread about the meal, one commenter reminisced, saying, "McDonald's was so much more fun for kids back then. I wish my kids had the same experience there that I had." And on a Facebook thread on the same topic, one poster wrote, "We '80s kids had it so good. Such happy memories." But don't forget the '90s, either — many of our favorite nostalgic Happy Meal toys hail from that decade! Several people recall using the spaceship as a frisbee, bath toy, or in a sandbox.

Between "Star Wars," "E.T.," and others, there was a lot of excitement around space and pop culture in the early 1980s. Despite being an early iteration, the Spaceship Happy Meal wasn't the first time McDonald's took inspiration from the stars. In 1979, just a few months after the Happy Meal made its national debut, McDonald's teamed up with the Star Trek franchise to use the Happy Meal as a promotion gimmick for "Star Trek: The Motion Picture." While this meal didn't come in a cool spaceship, it did come in a highly detailed cardboard box with a "Star Trek" comic and a collectible "Star Trek" toy. And shortly after the Spaceship Happy Meal, McDonald's included green alien figures known as Astrosniks as the Happy Meal prize. The spaceship container design even made a comeback in 1986, as a "Glo-Tron" version complete with glow-in-the-dark stickers.

While U.S. consumers may not remember this, as it seems to have been released only in international markets, you can find McSpace Rocket Ship toys for sale on eBay. These allowed Happy Meal consumers to collect parts of a spaceship with the goal of eventually collecting each of the four distinct pieces, which could be connected to form a complete rocket. However, these were available in the late 1990s, so they came much later, but they're still an interesting piece of McDonald's nostalgia.