McDonald’s launches Mario Kart Happy Meal toys complete with rare variants

Dylan Horetski
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe key art

McDonald’s has launched a new set of Happy Meal toys featuring the most popular characters from Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.

Ever since McDonald’s launched the Happy Meal in 1979, it’s been accompanied by a toy featuring whatever brand was popular at the time.

We’ve seen collaborations with Hello Kitty, YuGiOh, Crocs, and even adult Happy Meals go viral across social media, and the latest release is no different.

Released on Halloween – Thursday, October 31 – the latest Happy Meal toy features iconic characters from Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.

McDonald’s social media manager Guillaume Huin shared the collab on his X account, revealing 10 Mario Kart figures that are available to collect.

The release features Mario and Luigi, Princess Peach, Toad, Bowser, Yoshi, and Donkey Kong.

“Each Mario Kart Happy Meal toy will come in that cute exclusive box,” he said. “We also have two special toys with the Gold Mario and Pink Peach which we’ve never had in the past!”

Delighted fans and customers flocked to the comments of his post to share their thoughts. Even if it isn’t the most seasonally appropriate drop considering Mario Kart isn’t the scariest thing ever, fans of the series are excited nonetheless to get their hands on these toys.

“Definitely need to get one for my ‘kid’,” one user commented.

Another said: “I’m undefeated as peach kart.. let’s gooo.”

The Mario Kart toys being released in a box is a major change for McDonald’s in the US, but it’s something we saw with the Belgium release of the Hello Kitty x YuGiOh collab. When the toys were released in the United States, they were swapped from boxes to plastic bags which devastated fans in the process.

McDonald’s Mario Kart toy launch replaces the iconic Boo Baskets that they used to celebrate Halloween. They released in September, but fans weren’t thrilled about the design changes made to the 2024 launch.