When Kid’s Meals came with records

Good morning! This week in demolition, we don’t really have any demolitions. With Winter Store Uri, City of Houston permitting offices were closed most of the week so only 2 new permits were issued. Both small houses with nothing very significant about them. However just because we don’t have a demolition post doesn’t mean we can’t have Monday content! So today I want to show you one of the cooler items in my collection of the “Houston Retail Museum”. This is one of my original Jack in the Box comic and flexi-disc stories. The stories, songs, and voice acting were all written and performed mostly by Paul Winchell, who was already famous for providing the voices to multiple animals in Disney’s version of Winnie the Pooh, including both Tigger and Winnie himself. These were given out during the early 1970s, and there were three total stories. First was “Why a House Makes Noise?” second was “Where Oil Comes From!” Finally, we have “How Pain Helps Us”.

The disc was a flexi-disc which was a thin plastic disc that could be played on a standard record player with the help of a coin to prevent it from slipping. The record not only included Paul Winchell reading and singing, but sound effects, and full musical backing. Why describe it though when you can listen!

A scan of the back cover, the page images are embedded with the video.

Well, what did you think? It was no demolition post, and if you’ve read this far let me know you still want the demo posts because I’m starting to feel they don’t fit well with the otherwise retail theme. (I ain’t no Swamplot.) Anyways, this was quite the production, and not something you’d expect to see in a modern-day kids meal. I’m not from the era this represents. I’m much more familiar with the idea of paying for a cassette and small story book in addition to a kid’s meal. So while it may not blown Marvel and D.C. away this comic wasn’t a bad deal for the value. Don’t forget to complete your Metric lesson before leaving!

Boy I’m sure glad we didn’t get suckered into this Metric nonsense!

 

8 comments

  1. I have all 3 of the 45 plastic records, any idea what they are worth today, slightly damaged,

  2. The best part is that the current Jack (as a character) is canonically supposed to be the same one here, having been blown up in the early 1980s and returned “thanks to the miracle of modern plastic surgery”. As that happened and he was hit by a bus about a decade ago, Jack is definitely no stranger to physical pain.

    1. Thank you! It’s no secret I’ve been a fan of your blog for quite some time. Glad to know you’re following again!

  3. I don’t think I have any vintage Jack in the Box collectables, but I do have at least one fast food record in my modest retail collection. A few months back, I was rummaging through some old 45s that were sitting in a box in the garage. I noticed that something was stuffed into the sleeve of a Wilson Pickett 45. I pull out the stuffed item and it was a promotional record that McDonald’s distributed in 1989!

    To call this a record is a bit of a stretch. It’s a piece of thick paper coated in wax that has a groove cut into it. Nonetheless, even 30+ years later, it played brilliantly on my 1980-81 Radio Shack Realistic LAB-420 direct drive turntable (which I also consider to be retail memorabilia, albeit something a bit more functional than the McDonald’s record, lol).

    This isn’t my video, but here is the same McDonald’s record on YouTube: https://youtu.be/s-aS7te7huo

    1. Excellent little piece of retail history. I honestly didn’t know this way a semi-common thing until recently.

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