Burger King has the best toys in their kids’ meals. Or maybe it’s just that they happen to partner with things that amuse me, such as Neopets or the Twilight franchise. However, sometimes I get toys that are repeats or simply ones I don’t want, and then I’m not sure what to do with them.
So I decided to paint them.
But the thing is, these toys tend to find their way into my office, as I have much more room on my desk for dust-catchers than at home. The first one was a few years ago, during the Neopets promotion. I was buying the kids’ meals strictly for the prize codes for use on the site – the toys didn’t interest me so much since there wasn’t a Xweetok toy. One day, after hitting up BK for lunch, I brought a Poogle back to my office. It sat there on top of my PC for weeks until one day, during a slow afternoon, my officemate and I were discussing The Dark Knight. (Comic book movies were one of our most common topics of conversation, actually.) My officemate was cleaning out his desk, as his last day was coming up (he left to go to graduate school full time), and I decided I wanted to give him something. So I painted the Poogle like Heath Ledger as The Joker. Needless to say, my coworker loved it.
Fast forward to a few days ago. BK was out of Twilight: Eclipse toys, so they stuck in a Marmaduke toy instead. (I guess they figured something random was better than nothing at all.) Before you chastise me, the Eclipse toys are hilarious. My Bella Bracelet looks like it was made by Duplo, and my coworkers really want me to get the Edward hologram ring. Anyway, back to Marmaduke. Or Giuseppe, rather. While the other toys had action-packed names like “Pouncin’ Marmaduke” and “Darting Lightning,” I got Loungin’ Giuseppe, whose special talent was described in the pamphlet thusly: “Giuseppe can sit on his pillow.” Whee.
In the film, Giuseppe is a hairless Chinese Crested dog. When cast in plastic, this means he has Ears of Doom. We decided he looked a big like Gizmo from Gremlins. And thus a new project began.
I thought about making this a tutorial, but there isn’t much to say. Take a plastic toy and recolor it using stuff around the office. And….that’s about it. So instead I’m just going to share the results with you.
Materials used: Liquid Paper (or generic equivalent), red and black Sharpies, green dry-erase marker
Materials used: Liquid Paper, brown dry-erase marker
Yes, I only colored their heads. There’s only so much Liquid Paper I’m willing to waste on these things, after all.
My coworker, having seen my handiwork, was sad that I’d given away my first Joker Poogle. Luckily, I had another one (a green one, this time), so I brought it in and repainted it. Now he has it on his desk, and he loves it. He also suggested I start a blog dedicated to kids’ meal toys repainted with office supplies. Which I would totally do, except I have no more toys, and I don’t really like kids’ meals enough to go purchase them on my own.
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