“Hope this helps to stop some of the madness from the last round.”

McDonald’s launched a Happy Meal in Japan with unique Pokémon playing cards. However, scalpers produced tons of meals waste after promoting out the meals to get the merch. The model responds with an anti-scalper coverage for its subsequent Happy Meal.

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What is McDonald’s Japan’s anti-scalper coverage?

An X submit in August by Dextero confirmed luggage of untouched Happy Meals lined up exterior of a retailer. Scalpers took the unique Pokémon playing cards, leaving the meals to go to waste.

McDonald’s Japan has apologized after restricted version Pokemon Happy Meals containing unique playing cards bought out in lower than 24 hours

People have been shopping for the meals simply to resell the playing cards on eBay, with some prospects simply throwing out their meals pic.twitter.com/pdZrnWBD0Z

— Dexerto (@Dexerto) August 9, 2025

McDonald’s apologized for the chaos and meals waste and applied a brand new Happy Meal coverage forward of the Sanrio-themed launch.

Now, prospects can solely buy three Happy Meals per group. The order should happen in-store or by a drive-thru. Happy Meal orders can’t be positioned by the cell app or ordered for supply in the intervening time, in response to Newsweek.

What do prospects consider the coverage?

Customers on the r/Japan subreddit react to the brand new coverage, praising the quick meals chain for taking motion.

“Good, hope this helps to stop some of the madness from the last round. The amount of food wastage was incomprehensible,” one says.

“Should make it so that you have to prove you’ve eaten the food to get the toy,” one other suggests.

However, others recommend that the brand new coverage will inconvenience prospects and be ineffective.

“This solves nothing.. absolutely nothing. It makes it horrible for normal people who can’t go to the store to get ONE. No scalpers were paying Uber fees to begin with. Happy meals were already capped, nobody cared and still bought piles of them,” a commenter says.

“In person isn’t gonna work as well as they are hoping since the scalpers are just going to go to multiple restaurants anyway. Plus, there’s the fact that they can just wait for a shift change to go back to the same place again,” one other writes.

“This is dumb. I live next to a McDonald’s and usually order Happy Meals for the kids via the app as I am stepping out of my front door to pick it up the moment I arrive,” a 3rd provides. “Now I need to not only stand in line but also explain carefully that if there is anything between the buns besides the patty and the slice of cheese, there will be a riot at home.”

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