Important information about the sale of Happy Set® and our response
2025.08.11
Due to the Happy Set® “Pokémon” Pokémon card campaign that we have conducted this time, some customers have made bulk purchases for the purpose of resale, congestion and confusion at the store and around the store, and orders. We have confirmed that there have been events such as neglecting and disposing of food. In addition to the inconvenience caused to customers who use McDonald’s on a regular basis, we deeply apologize for the inconvenience caused to the crew working at the store, the residents living in the neighborhood, and the owners of the tenants.
McDonald’s does not allow the purchase of happy sets for resale purposes, or the abandonment or disposal of food. This situation clearly goes against the philosophy of “providing a fun food experience for children and their families” and our attitude as a restaurant that we have cherished for many years, and we solemnly accept that our response was insufficient. In order to prevent recurrence, we will take the following measures quickly and thoroughly.
About stricter restrictions on the number of purchases
In the future, when selling certain happy sets, we may set a stricter limit on the number of sales for a certain period of time. In addition, we apologize for the inconvenience to customers who use McDonald’s on a regular basis, but during the limited number of sales periods, we may restrict the use of mobile orders and delivery. We will inform you of the details each time.
In addition, during the period, we will refuse to purchase for customers who do not follow the rules and manners, such as trying to make bulk purchases that exceed the limit, being lined up at the counter many times, and taking an intimidating attitude towards the crew. In addition, at the time of purchasing this Happy Set “Pokémon”, customers who clearly interfered with the operation of this service, or customers who have such a purchase history, were withdrawn from the official app in accordance with the terms and conditions.
About continuous consultation with flea market app operators
At the same time, we will request more effective measures from each flea market app operator in order to suppress malicious hoarding and resale by some customers as much as possible.
We will continue to review and improve these sales methods and countermeasures while listening to the opinions of customers and the crew working in the store.
We will return to the origin of the happy set of “by contributing to the healthy growth and development of the mind and body of children who will be responsible for the future, we will help their families spend time with a smile” and will review various measures once. We appreciate your understanding and cooperation.
McDonald’s Japan Co., Ltd.
[Google Translate]
TDLR too little too late with no mention of restock, maybe future campaigns will show improvement
Maybe I’m about to say something unpopular, but McDonald’s is not a toy shop where you enter, buy the cards and leave. Or at least shouldn’t work this way.
What’s the point of a partnership like that if it feels like purchasing a random booster pack, where the location (McDonald’s) is just a secondary afterthought?
The normal case scenario should be a family sitting on a table, the kid enjoying the happy meal + the surprise, while you or their friends grab a snack, a drink or a couple of McChickens, providing positive engagement with the brand and generating some additional purchases.
I mean in an ideal world…yes that’s what it should be. However, how many times does McDonalds have to release a popular Happy Meal today only to have people exploit/waste food…then say “aw shucks…please dont go against our corp values on wasting food”.
I mean cant they only play the naïve card so many times?
Not to mention that McDonalds even having a “toy” within a food meal is kind of opening themselves up to this. The toy is done deliberately as a marketing ploy to kids. We may hold nostalgia of going to McDonalds with our family…getting a cool toy; but lets not forget the real motive for Happy Meal toys.
Yoshinoya (a Japanese food chain selling beef rice bowls) held a campaign with Nintendo to offer Kirby figures for purchasing specific rice bowl products.
At first they did something similar to Happy Meals - order a Kirby rice bowl (for here or to go, but limit 3 per person), get 1 random out of 7 possible figures. Not surprisingly they got swarmed by scalpers.
So what they did after getting swarmed? They issued an apology with a promise that they will follow-up half a year later with more figures.
And half a year later, they made their promise while also changed the event to “made-to-order” - instead of giving out random figures directly, they asked customers who met purchase criteria to specify which figure they want in a registration form, which Yoshinoya would later fulfill and ship to customers:
The second campaign ended without issues, and most customers (although waited for a year) got the Kirby figures they wanted.
On the other hand, McD ended their Chiikawa campaign in the same disaster, didn’t fix anything and started the Pokémon campaign without any changes. smh
At the end of the day, a collaboration like this drives large profits and brand exposure for both companies involved. Any PR statements are going to be just that: damage control and corporate speak - but they’re empty words.
This is a pessimistic take but I do not see McDonald’s changing their campaign practices significantly for the next one. Maybe they place a limit on online orders or drop the in-person limit to 4 but this sort of scalper-driven frenzy only benefits them.
It would be awesome if they could optimize the mcdonalds app for people paying to say “I dont want the food”, and have less fortunate people, or those who are hungry to step up and eat free/happily via a notification or something similar to “paying it forward”. It doesnt solve the entire issue, but having all that food wasted really bothered me amongst the noise.
A bit offtopic, but Japan has the monpoké brand aimed at newborns/toddlers. I’ve bought a few onesies for relatives/friends over the years and they have lots of options in there. I read about a year ago that they were releasing the brand in the US, do you perhaps have this line available in your Pokémon Center site? Or maybe it’s a separate store?
I think it’s more of a general shift in people’s faith in their governments and backed currencies. Economies and political relations are doing poorly right now, many people are struggling to make ends meet, so I guess you just end up with a bunch of people pumping their life savings into semi-accessible high pop collectibles as a sort of financial hail mary attempt.
As much as I think scalpers suck, they’re just a symptom of the problem. Grown adults would not be fist fighting in Costco over cardboard with cartoons on them in a healthy economy. Grown adults wouldn’t be wasting food and trying to speculate on the investability of a mass produced McDonald’s Happy Meal toy meant for kids in a healthy economy.
This is all just pessimistic speculation on my end, I guess. But it’s hard to not want to just dissociate from it all until this whole thing cools off.
I think you are overestimating what direct impact politics/fiat currencies/the economy have on scalping and speculating. Not to say that it’s completely unrelated and there are certainly some indirect effects, but even in the healthiest of economies, there would still be scalpers if it would be possible to immediately flip the product for a profit.
The only difference is that today, due to social media/the internet in general, that information spreads way faster than 10, 50, 100 or 500 years ago. Meaning, 50 years ago there were no Discord/Facebook/whatever groups that let people know when exactly their local store is getting the product they can flip immediately. And furthermore, due to the easy access to second hand marketplaces like ebay, Facebook marketplace and so on, it was never easier to sell the product quickly.
As many may know the first recorded instance of a speculative bubble happened almost 400 years ago, with the tulip mania. This even happened during a time where the Dutch Republic had the highest income per capita in the world.
From interviews conducted by Asahi news:
“We have 3 million cards (=1.5 million Pikachus) in stock and they’re not even rare cards, we have no idea why scalpers would target us!”
I have seen at least 15 different sellers with this exact description. Has to be the same person/group trying to scam overseas buyers. I never buy from sellers with English in the description anyway, but I’d make sure to avoid any of those listings.
Was it English in the description or was it automatically translated to English? Buyee has the annoying habit of automatically translating descriptions via Google translate when you view any item.
