MARK MY WORD: KIDS FUEL UP ON VARIETY OF FAST-FOOD TOYS

Forget the food, it's toys that are the attraction at fast-food restaurants.

Three-year-olds could care less about the food. But give them a kiddie meal toy and an indoor playground, and they're happy for hours.

Across America, parents have driven miles just to get "Simba" and all those other "Lion King" lions.

My daughter, Becca, doesn't want hamburgers and French fries.

Fueled with chocolate milk, she can go days without eating more than a few bites of solid food.

But she loves to go to Burger King and McDonald's to get the toys.

Those plastic toys are everywhere.

Centuries from now, archaeologists will be digging through the remains of our fast-food civilization and unearth some of these toys.

They'll find them at diverse sites across America and conclude that such plastic items were important icons in the ancient world.

Our house is crammed full of fast-food toys, many of them stuffed into two plastic baskets.

Becca loves to dump out the toys, turning the kitchen floor into a plastic junk yard.

She has a lot of the "Lion King" action characters. "Pocahontas" and "John Smith" share space with a bat car, a mini-basketball and goal, and a bunch of plastic, smash-'em-up cars. "Meeko" the raccoon is hiding in there somewhere as is a plastic, pink Barbie doll.

It's hard to keep track of all this plastic stuff. Some of it regularly takes root in the nooks and crannies of our mini van.

No matter how often you clean out the car, new toys keep appearing like an infectious disease.

Periodically, I pitch the old stuff to make room for the new ones and to eliminate some of the duplicates. Pitching out stuff is generally a covert operation. Becca would prefer to keep it all.

My wife, Joni, wondered the other day if I had discarded valuable toys.

I realize there are people who would drive 100 miles to get their hands on some of these toys. They collect this stuff.

But it's hard for me to understand how this stuff can be worth anything when the restaurants hand out zillions of these things.

Still, some day I'll probably regret throwing out that plastic gargoyle.

After all, a lot of the toys are the same ones that cost more at the store. You might as well buy the special meal and get the toy too.

When I was growing up, the toys didn't come with children's meals. They came in cereal boxes.

Children all across the country convinced their moms to buy whichever cereal had the best toy in it.

The best toys were often in the worst cereals. But you didn't have to buy a new cereal every week.

As every parent knows today, you can't just get one of these fast-food toys. You have to come back every week to get the rest of the toys in the series.

Of course, once one promotion ends, a new set of toys is there to take its place.

Your children know all about it because they see it on endless television commercials or on those giant cardboard signs that have become part of the regular decor of these restaurants.

Every Disney feature cartoon these days has a tie-in with fast-food toys. This means you have to take your kid to see the movie and get the meals too.

With all the success of these toys, it's a wonder that the IRS hasn't used it as an incentive to get people to fill out their income tax forms. Turn in your 1040 tax form and get a "Hot Wheels." Who could resist?

Instead of the motor voter bill, we need to hand out plastic action figures at the voting booth.

A free toy for your child and a chance to vote too, what more could moms and dads want?

~Mark Bliss is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.