As a child growing up in Venezuela, New York-based graphic designer and illustrator Oscar Bastidas remembers the happiness he would feel when his mom would take him to McDonald’s.
“I remember the first McDonald’s opened in Caracas, and everybody went crazy,” Bastidas told Remezcla during a recent interview. “I used to play for two hours on the playground after eating my cheeseburger.”
In one of those cheeseburger Happy Meals his mom bought him circa 1988, Bastidas received a Macro Mac, a small, plastic toy that transformed from McDonald’s signature Big Mac hamburger into a robot. The toy was one of the very few things Bastidas, who would later work at McDonald’s as a teenager, brought with him when he moved to the United States. It served as his inspiration when McDonald’s tapped him to design some of its collectible cups for the newly launched Collector’s Meal series.
“For some reason, this [Happy Meal toy] survived all the times I moved,” Bastidas said. “It was an emotional anchor for me.”
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With his Macro Mac on his desk, Bastidas designed three of McDonald’s six new collectible cups. The first cup, which features “McDonaldland,” a fantasy world where Ronald McDonald and his friends live, includes an illustration of the Macro Mac. Customers can also see characters like the Fry Kids, the McNugget Buddies, and Grimace.
“I wanted to recreate McDonald’s in my own style,” Bastidas said. “I wanted to elevate the narrative behind it a bit more. At the same time, I needed to respect the look and feel of the collectible.”
The other two cups Bastidas designed were ones featuring artwork of Beanie Babies and another featuring a mashup of Mattel’s most popular toy lines, Barbie and Hot Wheels.
“I had a lot of fun exploring and researching all the collectibles,” Bastidas said. “There is a huge fandom in love with these [collectible cups].”
Many of the fans, Bastidas said, are those enamored with the nostalgia the collectible cups generate. It was the first thing Bastidas felt when McDonald’s reached out to him to gauge his interest in designing some of the cups.
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“When [McDonald’s] told me about the project, I was exploding inside,” he said. “It was super meaningful for me. I was excited because there’s nostalgia that comes with it. You start remembering all the crazy McDonald’s toys you got when you were a child.”
Bastidas is also excited about how long his designs will last throughout McDonald’s history. A quick search on eBay will reveal how serious McDonald’s collectors are when dealing with vintage merchandise. Half a century from now, Bastidas’ cups will likely still be in the marketplace for a new group of mid-lifers. They will remember getting their first McDonald’s collectible cup when they were a kid in 2024 and want to recreate the magic.
“To me, the fact that these cups will be multigenerational is priceless,” Bastidas said. “People are going to preserve them in kitchen cabinets for years and years. They’re going to create their own memories with these cups.”
