I grew up in Newport Beach, CA where it never snows, but the gift shops still sold snow globes featuring the famous Pavilion there.
As a collector - yes, they flourished with the rise of the stable coloured injection moulded plastics industry in Hong Kong in the late 1950s, although were around as a more carefully made and costlier item much earlier, made in both Europe and US. They are still around but the classic half-domed small thing with different elements made specifically for Attraction X are effectively extinct in the wild.
The new generation is glass spherical globe, a beautifully designed and painted resin base and internal element. Some represent high quality art and design and some are generic tat. The relative cost of each item is much higher, but the industry (and challenge to building a comprehensive collection) remains.
See and admire a collecting colleague’s collection here.
One item not specifically mentioned above was the 12 inch ruler in some lurid colour, or more demure hardwood, that had a fat paper strip running down the centre with photos proclaiming you’d been to Attraction X / Town Y. Usually proudly displayed at school after the return from the long vacation.
There was something similar the last (and only) time I went to Rock City, GA. In addition to the crevasses and precipices you could walk through aboveground, they had carved out an artificial cave in part of the unguided tour that had day-glo dioramas of fairy tales. Which I enjoyed, but it didn’t seem very connected to the rest of the park, especially since they took out the gnomes from the above-ground section (except for one hidden in a corner like an Easter Egg).
For several years, my parents used to buy pennants for my brother and me nearly every place we went. The walls of my room were plastered with probably a couple dozen of them. I have no idea where any of them are now. I haven’t seen a tourism-based pennant in decades.
We had one of those at the museum I worked at in Little Rock. People would stop by the museum specifically because they were collectors who wanted to get their pennies pressed. It was wild. I had no idea there was a penny presser fandom.
When I was growing up, the prominent souvenirs in our house and in my maternal grandparents’ house were souvenir tea towels (or kitchen towels, as they are sometimes called in the U.S.). I fondly remember ones from Victoria, B.C. and Australia. I still buy them even now, but they’re getting harder to find (in my experience).
Demi-famous author [and dear family friend] Roy Bongartz was working on a book-length collection of weird and wonderful ‘a-rama’ usages and sightings when he passed during a cross country research road trip. Alas, this was the paper notebook era, and his first draft was lost with him.
Another souvenir of my youth that I haven’t seen in a while: a glass beer stein etched with the name of the site you visited. We had maybe half a dozen of those.
You drank lots of beer in your youth, eh? That sure explains a lot. 
I’ve been collecting patches or stickers of some special places I visit. On the roof of my car I have a cargo box, and I stick them or glue them to that — but on the inside, not the outside. So when I drive around it looks pretty squared away but when you open the box there are lots of reminders of where I’ve been.
Its probably timely to say that the Society for Commercial Archeology (https://sca-roadside.org/) is focussed on the task of documenting and celebrating the places associated with the great age of tourism, including diners, tourist traps, roadside rip-offs and their ephemera. Its not serious, fat-beardy-men-in-dirty-jumpers archaeology.
A great place to start if you’re tying to pin down childhood memories of trips to far away marvellous places.
Dave Barry, in his 2016 book Florida – Best.State.Ever writes about finding working Mold-a-Ramas at various aging Florida tourist attractions, and about using them to generate warm plastic trinkets. He even rates the attractions using a “Mold-a-Rama” scale
Howard Johnson’s restaurants used to be a really common sight. They got the contract for services on a lot of highway and turnpike rest stations, at least in the northeast, so you couldn’t miss the orange roof, teal trim, and that peak triangle with the simple-simon-and-dog-and-pieman sculpture on the top. MacDonald’s hasn’t got the style, class, or varied menu. (I got to eat at the last remaining HJs at Lake George, New York, six years ago before Covid finally killed it.)
They had very interesting kids menus
Featuring 2001: A Space Odyssey
Or Simon and the Pieman in space
or at the 1964-5 World’s Fair
or skiing in Europe
or rotating
Or that unfolded into a hat
Or that you could fold into a trailer
By the way. The same guy who designed and made the “Simple Simon (with dog) and Pieman” windvanes for Howard Johnsons also made the “Ice Cream Man and Dog” windvane for the Chelmsford Creamery in Chelmsford MA. And it shows
Kinda like the way that Bob Montana (of Meredith, NH), who drew the Archie comics and created Forsyth P’ “Jughead” Jones also came up with the joker logo for Funspot in Laconia NH
Household bar ware in general, pretty much, but in particular what David Sedaris called “an assortment of cartoon napkins illustrating the lighter side of alcoholism.” (This sort of thing.)
If you follow the link in the OP, you’ll eventually get to a listing of all machine locations. Including that museum; yes, an orange WeinerMobile is on there.
They weren’t intended as souvenirs, but all those hotels used to have individually-wrapped bars of soap with the hotels name or logo on the wrapping:
https://www.etsy.com/listing/939797439/hotel-motel-advertising-soap-bar
https://www.etsy.com/listing/4327454211/vintage-50s-60s-hotel-motel-souvenir?gpla=1&gao=1&
I never experienced the full Howard Johnson experience. I’ve eaten there several times and probably slept there several times but not at the same locations. For some reason it was the closest chain hotel to where I used to live, so relatives would stay there occasionally. The location was on a US Highway rather than an Interstate, so my theory is that the location preceded the arrival of the Interstate to the city, and then managed to stay in business for a few more decades.
Oddly enough their being in a relatively built up location probably helped their restaurant business because like you say they were a step up from McD. So the locals like myself ate there occasionally. There were always a few people in it, unlike upscale department store restaurants, but not as many as sports bars had.
Likewise.
One of the last remaining locations was close to work and I’d often stop in there for breakfast on my way to our building. Never stayed in one, AFAICR.
There used to be a Howard Johnson’s in Medford, Massachusetts at the intersection of routes 28 and 16 that was open 24 hours. I took visiting scientists there sometimes if we got out late at night, because you could always get something to eat there. And they had all 28 ice cream flavors.
It’s gone now, bulldozed for a CVS.
As I said, Pennants are something that’s virtually disappeared. I don’t know why they were ever a thing in the first place. The only place they showed up was tacked tl a kid’s bedroom wall
Here’s a history of pennants: