Earlier this week, McDonald’s started a new promotion to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Pokemon franchise. For a limited time, fans can receive TCG packs inside Happy Meals, or as a separate purchase from participating locations. Unfortunately, Pokemon cards are quite popular at the moment, and resellers have been snatching up the promo cards. There have even been auctions of entire cases of the cards on eBay! Following ComicBook.com’s previous article about the situation, McDonald’s contacted us with a statement about its plans to ensure that fans are able to enjoy the current promotion. That statement can be found below.
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“We love seeing fans’ passion for our limited-time Happy Meal promotion celebrating 25 years of Pokémon. With such significant demand for our promotional Pokémon TCG cards, and some fans even going to extreme lengths to get them, we’re working quickly to address shortages and also strongly encouraging restaurants to set a reasonable limit on Happy Meals sold per customer. We want to offer the full Happy Meal experience to as many families as possible, and help ensure everyone is able to get in on the fun!”
According to McDonald’s, individual restaurants are allowed to decide whether or not to sell toys a-la-carte, but it is company policy not to sell cases of Happy Meal toys. The company also does not condone reselling of the toys through what it refers to as “unauthorized channels.” Instead, it believes the cards should be exclusively offered through the promotion.
Some stores already seem to have placed limits on the number of toys that can be offered to each customer, with many limiting patrons to four or five. With the company encouraging stores to place these types of restrictions, it will be interesting to see whether or not it will prevent some resellers from catching ’em all before fans can.
For those unfamiliar with the promotion, McDonald’s Happy Meals are currently offering 25 Pokemon cards celebrating the history of the franchise. The cards are offered in blind packs of four, though each card also has a hologram variant. The TCG packs are accompanied by additional items, such as card boxes, stickers, and more.
Have you picked up any Pokemon cards from McDonald’s during the promotion? Have you noticed any restaurants that sold out of the cards? Let us know in the comments or share directly on Twitter at @Marcdachamp to talk all things gaming!
