Pokemon And Mcdonald's Are Teaming Up Again For Its 30th Anniversary

Pokemon Is Teaming Up With McDonald’s Again, And TCG Fans Will Be Disappointed Published Aug 3, 2026, 12:30 PM EDT Sam Woods is TheGamer’s Senior Reporter. He’s been in games journalism since 2020 and has undertaken a variety of roles in that time. These have included roles such as SEO Editor, Managing Editor at DualShockers, and Global Head of Gaming, and he's also been seen on the BBC. He was promoted to the Senior Reporter position in 2025 following a series of high-quality reports and exclusives for TheGamer. Since 2020, Sam has written over 2,500 articles and specializes in telling the stories of the people behind the games. He’s interviewed the biggest game directors, some of the industry’s top talents, told the stories of how indie games came to be, and spoken to players about what really makes them tick. He’s also interviewed some of the world’s biggest musical artists to find out how the medium has inspired their work, and TV and Film actors about their roles in video game adaptations. He even hosted a PAX panel in 2021 and made a documentary in 2024 surrounding the creation of a Disney game. Alongside this, Sam focuses on breaking news. He got the scoop on Perfect Dark’s cancellation, got context around some AI drama, and revealed how Lady Dimitrescu’s actress would love to step back into the character’s giant shoes. These articles have been picked up by the biggest gaming sites, including IGN, GameSpot, and PC Gamer. He also loves to dive into the numbers behind the games. Sam’s journey in games journalism has taken him all over the world. He’s covered Gamescom in Germany, Summer Game Fest in Los Angeles, and Tokyo Game Show in Japan, each on more than one occasion. He’s been learning Japanese since 2024 with the intention of identifying and translating Japanese-language news and bringing it to English-language audiences first, something he’s done countless times. Sam’s first review was 2020’s Battletoads reboot, and he’s since reviewed games in The Legend of Zelda, Super Mario, and Pokemon franchises. Sign in to your TheGamer account Over the years, Pokemon and McDonald's have shared a fairly healthy relationship. Regularly, The Pokemon Company's creatures have featured front and center in Happy Meal campaigns, with toys and often trading cards available with your nuggs. Of course, the ones with cards from the Pokemon Trading Card Game are more popular, but it's always exciting to see. Now, the next crossover between the two has been confirmed, but unfortunately, it looks like TCG fans will be missing out, and given what happened last September, that's of little surprise. McDonald's x Pokemon 30th Anniversary Happy Meal Collab Is Coming The Pokemon TCG is in a bad way right now, with scalpers and opportunists trying to make a quick buck from desperate collectors. Products are impossible to get hold of, because flippers use bots to scoop up what's available, selling them on for much higher prices. This hype plagued a McDonald's x Pokemon TCG crossover last September. In Japan, the now-infamous Burgerchu card was released, depicting Pikachu leaning across a table trying to grab a burger. It was only available in McDonald's, and people went crazy. Queues often stretched out of the doors of every McDonald's in Japan, and people were buying meals just to get the cards, then dumping the food on the side of the road. The promotion was quickly suspended, and almost 300,000 copies of the card have been graded with PSA alone (which is facing down the barrel of a class-action lawsuit). Following that debacle, the next Pokemon McDonald's promo has been revealed, and it won't feature any Pokemon TCG cards. Instead, the collaboration will feature a range of toys featuring 30 Pokemon for its 30th anniversary. This includes the starters from the previous 9 generations, plus Eevee and Snorlax. For now, it will only be available in Japan. While we haven't got one yet, it would be a surprise not to see a McDonald's x Pokemon TCG set this year. We've had one in 14 of the last 16 years, with the largest coming on the TCG's 25th anniversary. To skip the 30th anniversary would be almost unprecedented. Release Date 1997 - 2023-00-00 Network TV Tokyo, TV Osaka, TV Aichi, TVh, TVQ, TSC Directors Shigeru Omachi, Koji Ogawa, Fumihiro Ueno, Hideki Hiroshima, Maki Kodaira, Makoto Ooga, Ayumi Moriyama, Keitaro Motonaga, Shigeru Ueda, Fumihiro Yoshimura, Minoru Ohara, Yoshitaka Makino, Kiyoshi Egami, Makoto Sokuza, Bjarne Heuser, Naoki Murata, Kenichi Nishida, Tomoe Makino, Masahiko Watanabe, Hiroaki Takagi, Tazumi Mukaiyama, Ryohei Horiuchi, Yoshihiro Oda, Hiromichi Matano Cast Rica Matsumoto Satoshi (voice) Ikue Otani Pikachu (voice) Writers Junki Takegami, Atsuhiro Tomioka, Hideki Sonoda, Yukiyoshi Ôhashi, Yuka Miyata, Takeshi Shudo, Shouji Yonemura, Shinzo Fujita, Michihiro Tsuchiya, Deko Akao, Reiko Yoshida, Aya Matsui, Junichi Fujisaku Franchise(s) Pokemon Creator(s) Naoko Takeuchi