McDonalds Secret Customizable Watch

McDonalds has released quite possibly their best happy meal toys yet; the Hello Kitty watch series. I'm not a big fan of hello kitty, at all, but when I saw these watches, I saw an opportunity. So, I stole one from my four year old sister, and turned it into something fun and useful!

The requirements are really simple, and can be foraged from your catch-all drawer:

Hello Kitty McDonalds Watch (I used the square brown one because it best fits my tastes)
Craft knife
Superglue
Triangular head screwdriver (you can make your own! thanks to adrianmonk) or a pair of pliers with a triangular end that will fit into the screw.
Printout of a picture you like (more later)
Keychain mechanism (doesn't matter what type you use, I used a d clip and a plastic clip from my work badge, you could easily recycle an old keychain instead)

Unless you have baby hands, the strap isn't going to fit you. So get rid of it by removing the screws on the back, and pulling the strap free.

Inside, you'll see the digital watch bit. It is very finnicky, so don't mess with it unless you have to.

Attach the keychain part to your watch. I went throught the strap hole, and hot glued it to the node that held the strap in place. Depending on what type of keychain you use, it will be different, so experiment. If all else fails, hotglue.

You could replace the strap with another watch strap. They're fairly cheap, and you can buy them at places like Shopko. Or, you could make your own strap out of duct tape, leather, or cloth!

Re-attach the back to the watch. Don't forget the screws.

Using a craft knife, carefully pry up the clear plastic cover that houses the hello kitty image. It will be stubborn, but if you work at it, it will eventually come up. Try cutting all the way around the cover edge with your knife.

Choose your image, I chose one of Domo-Kun. Nom nom nom. Choose something size appropriate. it should be about 1.5 inches wide (width of the watch), unless you are cutting a slice of an image out of a larger one. Search for higher resolution photos set your printer to print at high qualilty, in order to get a good image.

Trace around the cardboard image from the watch onto your image, including the area where the time shows through. AKA, make your image fit into the watch face. Cut out carefully with your craft knife.

Put the new image into the watch, and re-attach the plastic face. Use a small dot of super glue on the bottom edge of the plastic cover to hold it in place, otherwise it will fall off.

Congratulations, you are now a McDonalds toy hacker, and you have an awesome watch.