Looking back, I feel like kids’ meal toys were my first gacha experience. I begged my mother to drive me to the Burger King a town over when the restaurant was giving out toys for the first Pokémon movie, and opening up my chicken nugget meal to find a toy I didn’t want brought with it a deflating feeling. Some dispiriting traditions are too lucrative to let go of, though, and thus the blind boxes will continue. McDonald’s next set of toys stars the heroes and villains of The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, and there are some pretty good ones in the bunch, as well as a few I imagine some kid is going to throw at the back of their parent’s head in the car when they open it and it’s not their fave.
The set includes 12 toys, most of which are of different characters, but both Mario and Bowser Jr. get two. Mario gets one in his standard red-and-blue outfit, and another of him in his white-and-red look after undergoing a Fire Flower transformation. Bowser Jr. has one in his default form, while the other has him in his distorted Wonder look from Super Mario Bros. Wonder. Picking Bowser Jr. as a character to double up on is kind of surprising considering several characters have alternate forms in the movie and only got one toy, so I’m just going to assume that this decision was made from on high because someone up there knows that Bowser Jr. is the best boy.
Each toy comes with a personalized stand with a different background, so they’ll look pretty nice to display whether you get one or all of them. Check out the full announcement below:
McDonald’s will start offering the Super Mario Galaxy toys next week on March 26, just days before the movie premieres in theaters on April 1.