Pokemon's Fast Food Promotions

Trading card games have had a long and storied partnership with fast food restaurants over the years. Whether it’s Yu-Gi-Oh and McDonalds, Digimon and Taco Bell, or Burger King and Dragon Ball Z, incorporating TCG cards into kids meals is a time honored tradition and a natural alliance for products targeted at children. McDonalds is currently in the middle of its latest Pokemon Happy Meal toy promotion in America, and to celebrate this latest release, I wanted to take a look back at the previous fast food Pokemon TCG tie-ins.

Pre-2008 Releases

Americans received their first taste of Pokemon TCG – fast food promotions from Burger King in 2008, around the launch of the Diamond and Pearl era. Given that the Pokemon TCG officially launched in early 1999 in the United States, it seems rather strange that it would take nearly 10 years for us to have our first Pokemon TCG kids meal promotion, especially since Pokemon is a brand built on a multi-media release platform. Now, that is not to say that Pokemon toys did not see fast food promotional tie-ins. KFC, Burger King, and even Subway had Pokemon kids meals prior to 2008, the most notable being  Burger King’s 1999-2000 tie-ins with the first and second Pokemon movies. In those promotions, Burger King offered not only toys, but a complete 151 trading card set (not compatible with the TCG), and a series of special “solid gold” trading cards that could be separately purchased. Back in the day, everyone was convinced that investing in those gold cards would lead to an early retirement, but today they are worth only slightly more than a late 1990s beanie baby collection, which is to say, almost nothing.

The gold Burger King Pokemon cards, extremely common and not very valuable

While the Pokemon TCG and fast food would not intersect in America until 2008, in Japan, the story was different. From January 26 – February 24, 2002, Japanese McDonald’s patrons were treated to one of the absolute coolest TCG fast food promotions of all time with the debut of the McDonald’s exclusive “e Minimum Booster Pack.”

e-Minimum booster pack

The e Minimum Booster Pack was a foil wrapped booster pack containing a random assortment of six cards (including 1 holo and 1 basic energy card). The set had a total of 30 cards: 18 Pokemon and 12 energy cards (six basic energy available in both holo and non-holo variants). It bears repeating that unlike American McDonalds promos, this was not a single card haphazardly thrown in a plastic bag with a toy, this was a legitimate booster pack. It still blows my mind to think that McDonald’s, Pokemon, and Media Factory (the Japanese Pokemon TCG company at the time), committed to what must have been extremely high production costs to create this booster pack, especially when you consider that (1) the quality of the cards is on par with standard Japanese booster releases, (2) the foils are gorgeous, (3) the cards are e-reader compatible and, (4) to top it all off, they come packaged in an actual foil booster pack.

In the years since the release of the e-minimum booster pack, the Japanese Pokemon TCG and McDonalds continue to have a strong relationship. Today, the McDonalds/Pokemon alliance is global in scope, but that wasn’t always the case. In the United States, our first Pokemon TCG releases were served up by Burger King.

2008-2009 Burger King Promotional Cards

The first Pokemon TCG fast food cards in the United States were reprints of cards from the Diamond and Pearl and Mysterious Treasures booster sets. Like other fast-food Pokemon TCG releases, each Burger King kids meal came with a plastic toy and 1 random card out of a possible 12. These cards featured the same foil pattern as reverse holos in the Diamond and Pearl era booster packs and are nearly identical to their non-promotional counterparts. Their sole distinguishing feature is the “Diamond and Pearl” identifying stamp on the cards. The 2009 release offered more of the same but with a new “Platinum” identifying stamp. At the time of their release, I thought these cards were amazing, probably because I had been starved of any fast food – Pokemon TCG cross-over up until that point. In the years since their release, these cards have not aged well. Their biggest flaw is that they are virtually identical to reverse holos from the Diamond and Pearl era. Furthermore, without some background knowledge of the release, new collectors would have no reason to guess that cards bearing the generic “Diamond and Pearl” and “Platinum” stamps were part of a Burger King promotion. These problems became a thing of the past with McDonald’s Pokemon TCG promotions.

Left: Turtwig from the 2008 release; Right: Turtwig from the 2009 release

2011 - 2017 McDonalds Promos

With their first foray into the Pokemon TCG, McDonalds immediately set itself apart from the Burger King precedent and the 2011 release established the model by which McDonalds-Pokemon releases still follow today. Like the Burger King releases, each Happy Meal contains 1 of 12 cards and a plastic toy, all packaged together in a plastic bag. In a welcome change for 2017, cards in the current happy meal promotion are packaged separately in an additional plastic bag and set against sturdy cardboard to prevent bending and puncture wounds from their corresponding plastic toy (a known issue for earlier McDonalds releases). In each of the McDonalds releases, the cards are random. So it is possible to buy 5 copies of the same toy and receive 5 completely different cards.

Snivy from the 2011 release and Servine from the 2012 release. 2012 saw the introduction of the McDonalds “M” stamp on the bottom right corner of the card artwork, a trend that continued through the 2014 release before being removed in 2015.

Unlike the Burger King releases, each set of McDonald’s promotional cards bears its own unique set symbol and a special foil pattern not otherwise found in booster packs. These changes make a world of difference for collectors and make it easy for even new collectors to identify the cards. The most perplexing aspect of the McDonalds-Pokemon releases are their inconsistent global release schedule. For instance, every year from 2011 to present there has been a McDonalds – Pokemon TCG release, but not every country has had access to these cards. In 2013, McDonalds offered a French exclusive Pokemon TCG set prominently featuring Eeveeloutions. In 2016, Europe received a Pokemon TCG release in a number of regions and languages, but the cards were never released in the United States. To further complicate this process, the cards are rarely released at the same time across regions. The 2017 promotion was first released in Australia over the summer, followed by the European release in September, and only now are we receiving the set’s American release.  This inconsistent release schedule coupled with McDonald’s historical trend of excluding promotional releases from certain countries has led to considerable uncertainty on the secondary market. If your country wins the McDonalds lottery and obtains its Pokemon set before the rest of the world, buyers will be willing to pay a premium to obtain a complete set, just to ensure they don’t miss out if the cards are never released in their own country.

What are your favorite TCG fast food promotions? Let me know in the comments below.

Thecardpletionist has been collecting Pokemon TCG cards since the game’s English release in 1999. You can read more from the author at http://thecardpletionist.blogspot.com/ and follow him on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/thecardpletionist/