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It's a collector's tribute to the kids, the teacher and perhaps the marketing gurus who decided years ago to include a toy with fast food kids' meals.
Leesburg Middle School sixth graders have collected all 101 dalmatians that were available through a McDonald's "Happy Meal" offer. The toys, inspired by Disney's live action movie featuring a villain who wants to make a fur coat out of adorable dalmatian puppies, were brought together Friday in a "Dalmatian Celebration."
Chris Bonifield, a teacher a Leesburg Elementary School, said the collection started when she put one of the toys on her desk.
"I had a 'Happy Meal' one day for lunch, and I put the dalmatian on my desk and it went from there," said Bonifield. "We started with our little one and got to our 101."
Initially the sixth graders brought in any they had. From there other kids at the school heard about it and contributed. The kids then sought out the toys from friends and baby sitters, Bonifield said.
But that didn't get them to their goal.
After soliciting toys from their friends and relatives, the search turned to the Internet.
Bonifield found "Happy Meals" on the Internet to see which other puppies were available to trade. The kids let her know which ones they wanted next and then the teacher brokered a trade for the many duplicates the students had accumulated.
"We have puppies that have came from California, New Jersey and Florida," said Bonifield. "It has been a lot of fun, we've got a lot of history on some of the different areas that some of the puppies came from."
When they reached the goal, the kids were rewarded. The dalmatian celebration held Friday featured dalmatian games, visits to the collection from other classes and plotting the location of the pups' origins on a map.
"I don't think that anyone from around here has gotten a whole set," said Mary Kay Price, manager of McDonald's, Detroit Street, Warsaw. Price also stopped by the school to see the collection.
Don't worry about the separation of the litter, though the kids decided that they needed to stay in the class, Bonifield said. Bonifield's classroom will be the home for the toys indefinitely.
