In order to deliver the happy set “Pokémon” to as many children as possible, please purchase up to 5 sets per person for 3 days from August 9 (Saturday) to August 11 (Monday, holiday).
Please refrain from reselling or reselling other purchases for commercial purposes. Also, please refrain from ordering an amount that you can’t eat.
2nd clause likely refers to the Chiikawa collaboration incident where resellers bought then dumped food at the McDonald’s restaurants
Spending time looking up at the trees or gazing at the ocean, believing that “there must be many creatures in the world around me that I have yet to see,” will greatly expand a child’s imagination. Stories about the unique Pokémon will also spark their curiosity about the diverse creatures that inhabit this world. While the actions of spinning, rolling, and hitting Pokémon toys involve small movements of the fingers, they are also “full-body play” that requires coordination with the eyes, arms, and back. Let’s play and tell lots of stories from the Pokémon world as we move Pokémon toys in the palm of our hands.
Is it just me…or does this feel like a no brainer if the promotion only does last 3 days? Especially in todays climate with optimizations/market conditions.
We will see in a couple days, ebay listings (mostly presale) shot up 237 → 322 in the last few hours and distribution is meant to be during the day today
Something to compare:
A promo per purchase at one of 16 Pokémon Centers in Japan over several months
A Pikachu promo pack per 540 yen Happy Meal purchase at one of ~3,000 McDonald’s in Japan over 3 days
yeah right now/in a few hours should be the first day (? I believe). I just saw the Mercari pricing being so cheap…and was surprised. I believe US eBay presale was around $30-35 shipped.
I’ll be interesting to track over the next few days/if they run out early
Be careful with Mercari listings. Some sellers put 10-pack in listing but they actually mean 10 cards in 5 packs. Some sellers charge 10x the market price but you may click quickly(wrongly) while trying to compete with other buyers. I made the latter mistake by paying 10x price for one of my orders Ended up have to buy even more packs to average down.
Happy Set® “Pokemon” Pokémon Card Distribution End Notice
2025.08.09
Thank you very much for your continued patronage of McDonald’s.
The distribution of Pokémon cards to customers who purchased Happy Set® “Pokémon”, which was scheduled for a limited period of 3 days from August 9 (Saturday) to August 11 (Monday, holiday), has ended at many stores due to sales that exceeded expectations. I would like to inform you.
We sincerely apologize for not being able to meet the expectations of our customers who were looking forward to it due to the early termination of distribution.
In addition, please refrain from inquiring about inventory to the store.
Total attendance today, regardless of who was buying, swallowed up 3 days worth of regular attendance supply at McDonald’s in less than one. The morning queue photos posted were incredible
Actually not as bad as I expected considering those ridiculous videos/pictures of the distribution event and regarding the fact that it already ended early at many locations. Will be interesting to see how the price will be in the next couple of weeks.
Yeah that will be interesting to see. Here in Vienna there is a card store (which is in general ridiculously overpriced) that offers the Promo booster for 18,90€, which is also not as bad as I excpected. This might give me some hope that we might see reasonable prices for the card in the near future..
The fact that a shop in Vienna can offer a Japanese booster that requires a McDonald’s order in Japan is ridiculous isn’t it?
I mean, everyone’s part of the problem. Here as well, just as I am sure, everywhere is, there are at least a dozen or more people in groups I am in who can take “pre-orders” of this promo.
As I’ve said before, there really should be zero exclusives in this kind of market. Make it all available worldwide since it basically is anyway, except all the profit is taken by underhanded distribution.
For that to work, Yuu Nishida’s illustration has to change as well. Happy Meals aren’t served the same globally and the artwork should reflect that, so I would rather see multiple versions of the promo across different countries than just 1 for all with say a hamburger
That shop will either have ordered it on places like Mercari as well or may have gotten it from a Japanese distributor (the store offers other recent Japanese sets as well). The store also claims that shipping will start at the 20th of August, so it does not have the cards in hand yet. The same thing can be seen by people offering the card on cardmarket.
I think exclusive Promos are a nice thing to be honest, but I think that the people these campaign are directed at should all be able to get the card at least. I am kinda surprised that The Pokemon Company in Japan did not expect the demand being that high and therefore printed too little cards, as they should know how the market is since the end of 2024.
Ended up have to buy even more packs to average down.
