Japan McDonald's latest collaboration, the Pokémon Happy Meal featuring collectible cards and toys, kicked off on August 8. Today (August 9) marked another card giveaway day, and the scenes across McDonald's locations were nothing short of chaotic. Stores were swamped, and a buying frenzy erupted once again, quickly becoming a hot topic on X (formerly Twitter).
▼ Unsurprisingly, top trending searches on X were all related to McDonald's, Happy Meals, and resales.
One X user shared a particularly frustrating experience from today's card Happy Meal event. They recounted seeing four or five foreign customers order a staggering 25 sets at once – a number so high they initially thought they'd misheard. After snapping a photo, the group immediately re-queued. Even worse, they reportedly left all the food untouched, only taking the card games and toys. The user expressed their growing frustration with such behavior, noting that elementary school kids waiting alongside them were in tears, and they themselves waited two hours only to miss out.
And that wasn't an isolated incident. Reports flooded in of numerous customers buying meals in bulk, only to discard the food everywhere after snatching up the coveted cards. The sheer amount of wasted food left behind was a widespread problem.
Another netizen captured footage at a McDonald's showing customers, who appeared to be Chinese, allegedly purchasing 40 Happy Meal sets despite a stated limit of 5 per person. What made the situation even more viral was that it wasn't a staff member who intervened, but a fellow Japanese customer, sparking further heated discussions online.
Adding insult to injury, the Pokémon card event was originally slated to run for three days. However, before the first day even concluded, McDonald's Japan was forced to issue an official announcement: "The 'Pokémon Cards' weekend giveaway for the 'Pokémon' Happy Meal has been halted at some stores." They also urged customers to adhere to a strict limit of 5 "Pokémon" Happy Meal sets per person for the duration of August 9 to 11.
McDonald's further cautioned: "Please refrain from purchasing in large quantities for the purpose of reselling, secondary sales, or other profit-making activities," and "Please do not order more food than you can consume." They also requested, "Please do not inquire about card stock availability at stores."
This chaos, unfortunately, was largely anticipated. McDonald's had even partnered with the auction platform Mercari to implement countermeasures. Yet, today saw a massive influx of resale items flooding auction sites, leaving many netizens furious and utterly disappointed with McDonald's perceived lack of effective solutions.
