McDonald’s ‘highly encouraging’ restaurants to prevent Happy Meal Pokemon Card Scalping

McDonald’s has revealed that they are “working fast” to rebuild Pokemon 25th anniversary cards after reports that scalpers make money on the limited edition package – and encourages “restaurants” to set a limit on how many packages they sell to individual customers. Yesterday it was revealed that the Pokémon memory cards, which should only be available when customers buy a McDonald’s Happy Meal, were bought in bulk by scalps and sold for ridiculously high sums online. In some cases, entire boxes of packages were posted on websites including eBay for over $ 1500.

@McDonalds @ Pokemon I hope you do some sort of inventory management for your promo Pokémon cards, as some of your inventory is sold in sealed boxes, which means they do not even reach your stores. Although the same thing happened with Tim Horton̵

7;s Hockey as well. Retail $ 1.99 pic.twitter.com/kX8qZyRX2V

– redphoenixsportscards (@redphoenixcards) February 9, 2021

Have you played Pokemon Trading Card Game?

YESNO

In response to IGN’s request for comment, a McDonald’s spokesman said the restaurant franchise was moving to distribute more packages to outlets, saying restaurants would be “strongly encouraged” to limit the number of packages they can sell to individual customers.

McDonald’s statement reads: “We love to see fans’ passion for our limited Happy Meal campaign celebrating 25 years of Pokemon. With such high demand for our promotional Pokemon TCG cards, and some fans even go to great lengths to obtain them We work quickly to address shortages and also encourage restaurants to set a reasonable limit for meals sold per customer.We want to offer the full Happy Meal experience to as many families as possible, and help ensure that everyone is in able to get in on the fun! “

McDonald’s confirmed that the company is working with its supply chain to help fill in restaurants that have sold out Pokemon card packages, and does not tolerate the resale of Happy Meal bonuses for profit. However, some restaurants will apparently be allowed to offer stand-alone purchases of packages in unspecified cases.

Happy Meals with back-up toys will be offered if restaurants run out of Pokemon trading cards, and we at McDonald’s clarified its policy that full boxes of Happy Meal toys should not be sold to customers, and that toys must be distributed in stores by employees only.

In light of Pokemon’s 25th anniversary, The Pokemon Company had teamed up with McDonalds to distribute 50 limited edition trading cards for as long as the shares last. The packs, which contain four random cards, celebrate the legacy of the franchise with all 24 starting Pokemon and serial icons Pikachu in standard and foil versions.

In other Pokemon news, Post Malone will perform a virtual concert on February 27 as part of the franchise’s year-long anniversary plans.

Tom Power is a British-based freelance writer. Follow him on Twitter.