McDonald’s Japan Apologizes For Pokemon TCG Campaign Chaos

A few days ago, McDonald’s Japan drew flak and disgust from customers all over the world after their highly anticipated Pokemon TCG campaign turned into a huge food waste mess and scalper’s paradise.

The company published an official apology on their website, apologizing to customers, McDonald’s crew, nearby residents, and nearby tenants for the inconvenience, littering, and chaos caused during the Pokemon TCG campaign.

McDonald’s Japan stated that they do not approve of the scalping behavior and wasteful disposal of food observed during the campaign, and they will implement the following measures immediately to prevent similar issues from happening again:

1. Stricter Purchase Limits

In the future, there will be stricter purchase limits implemented for select Happy Meal campaigns, and when such purchase limits are in place, it may not be possible to place mobile takeout and delivery orders. Details on these purchase restrictions will be announced at a later time.

In addition, McDonald’s Japan will refuse to serve any customers that try to circumvent the purchase limit, line up at the counter multiple times, behave in a coercive manner towards McDonald’s crew, or do not follow the rules. The company will also ban the McDonald’s Japan app accounts of customers that clearly tried to obstruct business operations at the restaurants or made a large amount of orders during the Pokemon TCG campaign.

2. Continue to work with online marketplace sites

McDonald’s Japan has pledged to continue working with online marketplace sites, such as Mercari and Rakuma, to clamp down on scalping of Happy Meal toys. They will also devise new and more effective ways to clamp down on scalping, and will take into account feedback from customers and crew members.

The apology from McDonald’s has attracted negative reactions from Japanese users, who say that more should be done to prevent scalping, such as restricting the sale of Happy Meal sets to customers that bring their child, or restricting sales to people who can speak proper Japanese and/or carry a Japanese passport.