McDonald’s Happy Meal Promotion Begins Next Week in the U.S.

Contrary to our previous reporting, the McDonald’s Happy Meal promotion will begin in the United States next Tuesday, August 16th.

The signage that stated the promotion would begin today was actually for Canadian McDonald’s restaurants. The promotion started last week in Europe.

As posted before, each Happy Meal comes with a 4-card booster pack containing one foil card and three non-foil cards. There are 15 cards to collect: six of them are always holo (Rowlet, Gossifleur, Growlithe, Victini, Pikachu, and Smeargle). The rest are always non-holo. The holo cards feature the “confetti” holofoil used for past McDonald’s promotions.

Your booster pack comes in a variety of envelopes, like last year:

The envelope includes a cardboard coin of a certain Pokemon, a cardboard top you have to assemble, and a guide to a “Match Battle” game.

The coin is not metallic or reflective like regular TCG coins — it’s just a cardboard circle. One side is a Poke Ball and the other side is a Pokemon.

For the “Match Battle” game, you compare stats on your cards to another player (or even yourself) to see who wins. You flip a coin to determine if you’re going for a high or low value. Then you spin the top. Whatever icon it settles on is the stat on the Pokemon card you will compare. So if you flip tails and land on the scale icon, you and your friend compare which card from your packs has the lowest weight. Whoever has the lightest Pokemon wins (such as Tynamo).

As posted before, the coins and toys will rotate every week. They will feature Pikachu, Growlithe, Smeargle, Victini, Rowlet, and Gossifleur.

Last year’s McDonald’s promotion caused quite a frenzy due to the surge in Pokemon’s popularity during the pandemic. Most stores put a limit on how many Happy Meals fans could purchase and did not allow the Pokemon toys to be sold separately like in previous years. The same should apply this year.