This is my first year in charge of fall festival games for our elementary. The way we do it, is you buy tickets to play games; everybody who plays gets a piece of candy (donated by parents) and if you "win" you get a cheap prize. I'm looking at the prizes on Oriental Trading and places like that, and the affordable things are such junk.

I do have a lot of party favor type things I've gotten on clearance over the years and plan on using those, though it's not enough.
Would it be totally tacky to have happy meal type toys as prizes? Has anyone ever asked McDonalds et al to donate such items? Or ask friends/parents if they have a stack of them (like we do) that we could use?

How about packaged snacks.....I can get bags of gummies, cheese balls, etc inexpensively at Sams. Would that be a total dud for kids?

I know a lot of schools are now using tickets a-la Chucky-Cheese to redeem bigger prizes, but it honestly sounds like it would be a nightmare running the redemption table. (I know how long it takes my kids to pick out prizes at Chucky-Cheese.....can't imagine doing that with 500 kids!) And having to purchase all those bigger prizes could really add up $$.

Any advice appreciated!