Robot Claw – Page 59 – “Life In The So-Called Space Age”

The Cursed ‘Collectors’ Cups

August 20, 2024

McDonald’s is doing a special ‘Collectors Meal’ right now, which is a normal Big Mac, Chicken Nugget or Sausage McMuffin meal that comes with a collectors cup. I got this one:

As you can see it’s blind-bagged, which means you don’t know which one you get until you open it. There’s six different cups, and you can only get them if you buy one of the three meals. My Big Mac collectors meal cost me the princely sum of $14.86, which means this cup wasn’t cheap! Let’s see which one I got…

Hot Wheels and Barbie. In other words, the worst one. Others include Snoopy, Minions, Jurassic Park, Beanie Babies and – best of all – McDonalds characters.

However there’s a side to these cups not visible in the photos: they’re plastic. McDonald’s is know for decades of glass collectors glasses but apparently for this promotion they’re cheaping out with plastic cups. They’re not even dishwasher safe!

So my verdict: absolutely not worth the extra cost, and the fact you have to eat American McDonald’s food is a second reason to avoid.

But what’s this…?

As it turns out Canada was doing a very similar promotion! It differed in several ways: there are four glasses instead of six, the glasses are made of glass and you can just buy them outright for $3 each!

Keen-eyed readers will have looked at the decoration on the box and guessed what was inside, but let’s see:

Yes it’s also the Hot Wheels & Barbie one! Again not the best (I wanted the Grimace one) but better than the USA version in my opinion. So I’ll give the Canada promotion the thumbs up over the USA one.

But what’s this now?

It turns out Australia is also doing this promotion, and they’re doing glasses as well, but they have two additional ones that Canada doesn’t (Minions and Coke). Also the method of obtaining the glasses is even more restrictive than the US version (you need to buy a Quarter Pounder meal)!

I was going to end with a smart line about how if I was my brother and happened to be in Australia right now I’d get one and send it to me but… well I sort of hate these glasses and don’t want any more 🙂

Every Frog Has Its Day

August 17, 2024

People seem to sleep late here in Old City Quebec since even the cafes don’t open for breakfast! We had a bit of a late start as well, before heading down to the ‘lower city’ to see what was down there.

Quebec City has a walled section, which is now full of hotels and shops and tourists. Directly below the high ramparts on the river side is another concentration of shops and restaurants – similar to those above – catering to tourists as well. We wandered around like people tired after an active week and purchased nougat and Tintin postcards!

There’s a few ways up/down between the upper and lower cities, but the most direct walking route is a staircase called the ‘breakneck steps’. When it came time to return to the promenade, we chose the funicular 🙂

There’s a fort (Le Citadelle) not far from the hotel, and Jim and I visited it when we were here years ago. We weren’t going to go this time but I learned they had a temporary exhibit on tabletop war gaming so in the afternoon I went and had a look. The exhibit was small but had some nice artifacts, although I would have preferred more info about each.

Many board games were showcased, including the above one from over 60 years ago. It brought back memories of Bernard and I trying to play a similar insanely complicated wargame (Blitzkreig) that we someone obtained as kids. I’m sure we ignored most of the rules 🙂

After the wargame exhibit I got sucked into their wider museum and spent an hour or so reading all about the Canadian contributions to the world wars and afterwards. I liked the above photo showing the allied leaders during WW2. It was taken very close to the Citadel, and shows our hotel in the background.

Today our Canadian excursion comes to an end! As with any vacation this means the return to ‘normal’ life, but we’ve got one more night in a hotel before we see our kitties again…

Five Nights At Froggys

August 16, 2024

We’re in Quebec City now, staying here:

Chateau de Frontenac is an iconic and famous hotel that has stood on the bluff overlooking the St Lawrence river for 130 years. I stayed here with Jim many years ago, but the hotel was being heavily renovated at that time, and that work is now long complete. Needless to say, it’s far too fancy for a lout like me!

That’s our room view, and you’re seeing a performance area where professional acrobats give shows all day long (literally until 11pm last night). I’m sure we’ll watch one tomorrow.

After arriving we explored the ‘old city’ immediately adjacent to the hotel, buying souvenirs and eating well. The best purchase: Kristin bought two original paintings. They’re packed up well now, but I’ll show them off in a future post.

That’s the promenade outside the hotel, and if you look to the right from this promenade you overlook the ‘lower city’ and the river. As part of summer festivities there were fireworks launched from a barge in the river, and we joined thousands of others on the promenade to watch.

It was a long and spectacular show, and I loved how the booms echoed from each bank of the river.

Tomorrow we’ll go down and explore the ‘lower city’, and no doubt more shopping and eating will follow 🙂