Day: August 13, 2025

• McDonald’s Happy Meals and cute collectibles are a recipe for long queues.
• McDonald’s Pokémon Happy Meals in Japan were sold out on the first day of their launch.
• Here are 3 other times the chain has aced the collaboration game.

McDonald’s Japan launched Happy Meals with special Pokémon trading cards, and fans went wild.

The chain held a giveaway of the trading cards with their children-focused Happy Meals from August 9 to 11. However, it had to stop the giveaway on the first day, saying it had run out of toys.

“The first wave of Pokémon Happy Meal® toys has sold out,” McDonald’s said in a notice on its website. “We sincerely apologize for not being able to meet customer expectations due to the early end of sales.”

Posts on X show large crowds in stores, with people buying several meals to get multiple cards, and discarding bags of food in and around the stores.

In its notice, McDonald’s requested that customers refrain from ordering more meals than they could eat and not purchase meals for resale or commercial purposes. It also asked that customers not contact stores asking for Happy Meal availability.

Representatives for McDonald’s did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

Pokémon trading cards mean big business. One pull factor, particularly for millennials, is nostalgia.

The president of the trading card grading company, Professional Sports Authenticator, told Business Insider in 2024 that Pokémon cards are the most popular collectible in the world.

New card sets draw huge crowds to Pokémon stores. The Pokémon Centre in Singapore’s Jewel Changi Airport saw over a thousand people turn up for its January launch, and police had to be called in to manage the crowd.

And Lego, trying to ride the Pokémon hype train, announced a collaboration with the franchise in March, set for release in 2026.

There have been other occasions when McDonald’s giveaways and special offerings prompted customers to flock to stores. Here are some highlights.

The BTS Meal (2021)

BTS fans worldwide made a beeline for McDonald’s when it launched a meal in collaboration with the K-pop boy band in 2021.

The meal itself was simple: 10 pieces of McNuggets, medium fries, a medium Coke, and sweet chili and Cajun sauces inspired by items in McDonald’s stores in South Korea.

The meal was launched in about 50 countries to great fanfare, with some branches in Indonesia being forced to close because of the overwhelming demand.

The meals were so popular that BTS fans tried to preserve the purple wrapping they came in.

Some fans documented themselves washing, drying, and framing the wrapping. Others made posts on social media, cataloguing how they coated the wrappers in resin to make keychains.

Hello Kitty plushies in Singapore (2015)

For Singapore’s 50th independence anniversary in 2015, McDonald’s launched limited-edition Hello Kitty plushies in the island city.

The plushies were designed to look like iconic Singaporean characters, such as a trishaw driver. One was wearing a durian costume, Singapore’s national fruit.

The giveaway drew snaking lines to McDonald’s stores in Singapore. McDonald’s Singapore has a track record of releasing crowd-pleasing Hello Kitty collaborations. That trend goes back to its “Wedding Series” in 2000, which featured plushies in various Asian wedding outfits.

Cactus Plant Flea Market Happy Meal (2022)

In 2022, McDonald’s launched an adult Happy Meal in collaboration with streetwear brand Cactus Plant Flea Market.

The meal was tailored to adult portion sizes and consisted of a choice of Big Mac or 10-piece McNuggets, fries, and a drink. Customers could also find one of four toy collectibles in the meal box.

McDonald’s workers in the US told BI in October 2022 that the meal had sold out across numerous outlets in the country on launch day.