You may not know it from meeting me, but I’m a shy guy. Particularly when it comes to the phone. I feel awkward and uncertain, and try to avoid calling just about anyone whom I’m not already close to.

But I’m also a very curious guy about certain things. If the curiosity builds to a certain level, I will let it overcome my shyness, and make the call.

Now, I was living fine with the fact that I didn’t know if Wendy’s would continue putting out Peanuts board book titles with their Kids’ Meals – finding out gave me something to look forward to each month. But then I saw the press release for the next set of Kids’ Meal toys, announcing 5 toys based on the TV challenge show Minute to Win It – but making no mention of the Special Toy For Kids Under 3. That just drove my curiosity to the bursting point – a man can only take so much. So I faced my fears, and called someone at Wendy’s corporate offices… who passed me on to someone else… who gave me the phone number for someone else… and that person I called, and got the information I sought. Victory! And the main news is:

There will be Peanuts board books as the Under 3 toy all year at Wendy’s!

Now, the cycle on these things is actually a little more than a month per promotion, so this come to 10 different books at all. And she cautioned me that that doesn’t guarantee that you’ll get a Peanuts book if you ask for the under 3 toy, because sometimes they run out of a particular promotion and substitute some generic, non-licensed toy item. So the trick seems to be to hit Wendy’s after they’ve cleared out the last set of items (they generally run a few days passed the announced date, it seems) but before they run out of the current one.

And what is the next one, you ask? (Well, certainly I did!) It’s My Favorite Color. The official release date is next Monday, the 16th… but it may take a few days to make it to your local restaurant. I look forward to seeing if this is a rework of the board book Colors issued by Little Simon a few years back, or if this is something different. (Psst: keep an eye out on the coupon sections in your local paper. While Wendy’s will sell you just the book for 99 cents, in recent weeks I’ve found coupons for the whole kids meal – burger, a side, and a drink – for $1.99, making it quite a value for that extra buck.)

Now excuse me, I’ve just realized that the layout for this blog doesn’t list the year of the blog entry, which makes going through its history a bit befuddling. I must see if I can fix that…

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