Last year, the fast food giant collaborated with the Pokémon Company for the 25th anniversary of the media franchise. The Pokémon Happy Meal immediately sold out in stores and even had scalpers reselling the cards on eBay. McDonald’s is once again bringing back the popular trading card game as the toy for the Happy Meal. Fans are excited to once again collect all the cards available through the promotion.
The trading cards
Each Happy Meal comes with a Pikachu-themed box, a four-card booster pack, a coin, a spinner, and an instruction manual. Using the items, you can play a Match Battle with friends who have also purchased the meal. The Match Battle is a card game where the player with the last Pokémon in play will be the victor. Instructions on how to play the game come with every Happy Meal. For most fans, the appeal mainly comes from the trading cards themselves. There are 15 Pokémon Trading cards in total to collect. The available Pokémon trading cards available through the Mcdonald’s Happy Meal are the following:
Bewear Chinchou Cutiefly Drampa Flaaffy Gossifleur Growlithe Lapras Ledyba Pangoro Pikachu Rowlett Smeargle Tynamo Victini
The most valuable cards
Each booster pack contains one holographic (foil) card. The six holographic cards that were revealed are Victini, Smeargle, Growlithe, Gossifuer, Rowlet, and Pikachu. The most sought-after card will undoubtedly be the holographic Pikachu card. Pikachu is the mascot of the Pokémon franchise and even had a solo movie some years ago. The Holographic Pikachu card from last year’s collaboration between McDonald’s and Pokémon currently retails for around $10 on eBay. Other holographic cards sell for around $3-$6, while regular cards sell for $1 or less. If you are lucky enough to get the holographic Pikachu card, best hang on to it for a few more years. The value of trading cards tends to go up as they age. The complete fifteen-card set for this year’s edition of the Happy Meal freebie is already available on eBay if you want to acquire them all that way.
Availability
If you are planning to head out to your nearest McDonald’s branch, it would be best to call ahead to check if the Pokémon Happy Meal is already available. Some fans have reported that the Happy Meal they bought came with the Space Jam 2 or Thor: Love and Thunder toys, or were the regular boxes, instead of the Yellow Pikachu box. There are also reports that some stores had not yet received their shipment of the new Happy Meal toys when the promotion was announced. Stores may also limit the number of additional toys that you can purchase with the Happy Meal during the collaboration between Pokémon and McDonald’s. Last year, collectors and scalpers bought dozens of Happy Meals with a lot of the cards ending up on eBay.
Big year for Pokémon
It is a big year for Nintendo’s Pokémon franchise. Pokémon Scarlet and Violet are coming to the Nintendo Switch on November 18, 2022. The collaboration between McDonald’s and Pokémon may have been intended to create hype for the new game.
