I’ve recently begun watching Netflix’s live-action One Piece, having never seen One Piece the anime or read One Piece the manga before. I’m doing this mostly out of curiosity about this series that so many of my friends love so dearly, and I’ve chosen the live-action version because I do not have thousands of free hours to burn catching up on the incredibly long anime and even longer manga series. I’ve finished season one and have just begun season two. Most of our heroes are currently stuck inside a whale, while Luffy is outside of the whale yelling at anything he can see in an effort to get them out of it. It’s very charming and I love it.
Anyway, all this preamble is to lead up to my intense delight, followed by confusion, when I learned this morning that McDonald’s might be getting a One Piece x SpongeBob toy collaboration for its Happy Meals. This comes via food leaker snackolator, so it’s not confirmed yet, but seems pretty likely given their track record:
So, my initial reaction is that this freakin’ rules. These are two properties that, apart from general nautical themes, have absolutely no business being anywhere near one another, and yet this mash-up is somehow hilarious to me. I guess SpongeBob is Luffy because they’re both exuberant heroes, so I can work with that, and Squidward as Sanji works fine I guess given their shared love for the finer things. I cannot at all explain Plankton as Usopp, but that makes it even funnier. I love this.
But my second reaction to this involves confusion. Now look: I admit, having only seen a season and change of the live-action show, there were always going to be some characters in this collab that I didn’t recognize. That’s fine. I don’t know who Jinbe, Franky, or Linlin are, and while I’ve seen Chopper in a lot of promo materials (I think he’s coming up in the live-action show soon for me), I’ve not met him yet. Not an issue.
What is an issue is the severe lack of Nami and Zoro in here, despite there being very obvious SpongeBob characters to pair them with. Why do we not have a Nami/Sandy and a Zoro/Patrick? Both of those would be extremely funny! It’s wild that both series are missing two each of their most important cast members. Snackolator does say it’s possible there could be more than are pictured here, so perhaps there’s still hope.
Also, the image above has Larry and Mr. Krabbs mixed up. I’m not sure if that means it’s not legit or if someone just goofed on an early version that’ll be resolved in a final draft. We’ll find out if and when these things actually come out.
Per the leaker, this collab is planned for Australia, and I really hope it comes to the States. I’ll know who Chopper is by then presumably, but I’m just so drawn to that stupid plastic figurine of Sanji/Squidward, and the concept of a Zoro/Patrick if one ends up existing. I’ve mostly sworn off McDonald’s as an adult but I would absolutely go pick up a Happy Meal or two for this absurdity.
