McDonald’s Is Bringing Back This Highly Anticipated Collaboration

One of the most popular toy crazes of McDonald's history is finally coming back and fans are already gearing up to get one themselves. This year might be one of the biggest yet as Mickey D's employees brace themselves after leaked images have collectors buzzing online.

The McDonald's Happy Meal and Pokémon card collaboration promotion will launch on August 16, according to PokéBeach. Each Happy Meal will include a 4-card booster pack with one foil card that fans can collect, which will include 15 total cards.

The annual card release has been going on almost every year since 2010. And almost yearly, it stirs up excitement as collectors gear up to grab limited-time releases.

There will be six holographic cards this year featuring Rowlet, Gossifleur, Growlithe, Victini, Pikachu, and Smeargle. The meals also include spinners to play the game and cardboard coins.

The news broke on Reddit by a McDonald's employee last Friday who shared an image of a box with the Pokémon brand at a restaurant, which read "Toy 2, Victini – Dark Blue." The post received over 11.5 thousand votes from excited fans.

Although if you want any cards this time around, you might want to plan your trip soon given the toy's current interest. Last year's promotion had a hot run as the toys were sold out at some locations in a matter of days after professional collectors and scalpers descended on restaurants. Soon after the cards started popping up for sale online—and sometimes for a lot of money.

According to reports, a single McDonald's Pikachu card actually sold for $500 on eBay, while entire cases of cards were listed for over $1,000.

However, last year some restaurants were selling the collectible cards as side items rather than making customers buy an entire Happy Meal, and since the burger chain updated its policy for the promotion. Now it asks franchisees to set limits on purchases.

"We love seeing fans' passion for our limited-time Happy Meal promotion celebrating 25 years of Pokémon," the company said in a statement last year. "With such significant demand for our promotional Pokémon TCG cards, and seeing some fans going to extreme lengths to get them, we're working quickly to address shortages and also strongly encouraging restaurants to set a reasonable limit on Happy Meals sold per customer."