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McDonald’s Japan vs. Pokémon Happy Meal Resellers – New purchase restrictions announced

Casey Baseel Aug 14, 2025
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With new Pokémon toys on the way, McDonald’s is trying to get ahead of the problems being caused by speculative scalpers.

In what’s becoming an increasingly common sequence of events, McDonald’s Japan recently launched a highly anticipated Happy Meal promotion that was quickly marred by resellers ravaging restaurants and flooding the mobile order app to snatch up as many Pokémon Trading Card Game cards as they could. Many of these resellers further showed their self-centeredness by leaving bags of untouched food behind on tables and pickup counters inside McDonald’s branches, or even on the streets and sidewalks outside of them.

With Japan being a country where selfishness, food waste, and litter are all heavily frowned upon by the vast majority of the population, genuine Pokémon fans, as well as regular McDonald’s customers who’d just wanted to have a pleasant meal without ill-mannered scalpers swarming around and leaving a dirty mess behind, were upset. McDonald’s Japan even felt compelled to offer an official apology about the situation. The chain also said that they’d be reevaluating their sales policies for certain upcoming promotions, and that’s happening right away, with new restrictions going into effect on August 15, when the second batch of toys in the current Pokémon Happy Meal campaign starts being distributed.

Under the new rules, there will be a limit of three Happy Meals that can be purchased per group. Again, that’s per group, not per person. This limit is being applied not just to in-restaurant orders, but to orders placed through the McDonald’s mobile app and delivery services too. Try to purchase four or more, and your entire order will be cancelled. Some branches will also be suspending mobile/delivery orders entirely at certain times/on certain days during the promotion.

▼ One of the new Pikachu Happy Meal toys

These regulations will be in place from August 15 to 17. In addition, McDonald’s has requested that customers refrain from contacting individual branches to ask about whether or not they have the Pokémon Happy Meal toys currently in stock, implying that even if anyone is pushy enough to call and ask anyway, they won’t get an answer.

The countermeasure is by no means airtight. A team of resellers could easily circumvent the limit of three Happy Meals per group simply by lining up to order separately and not acting as if they know each other, and there still doesn’t seem to be anything preventing against speculators spending an entire day going from one McDonald’s branch to another and scooping up three Happy Meals at each one where they’re still available. Moreover, while the extra restrictions are in place from August 15 to 17, the Pokémon Happy Meal toys are scheduled to be given out through August 21, meaning there are four days where it could still be a wild west-style free-for-all in obtaining them.

Still, making bulk buying a more time-consuming process for the first three days increases the likelihood that there’ll still be some stock left over for actual fans, including little kids. McDonald’s Japan also says that it will be continuously taking feedback from customers and suggestions from workers into consideration and revising its policies to help ensure a happier dining/Pokémon hunting experience for people who’re buying Happy Meals to have fun, not to make some quick cash.

Source: McDonald’s Japan via Oricon News via Yahoo! Japan News via Jin
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