McDonald's has announced that its latest Happy Meal promotion will contain toys based on the popular Mario Kart franchise, available throughout March to coincide with March 10, also known as MAR10 day. The news comes just weeks after it was confirmed by Nintendo that Mario Kart 8 Deluxe would get new DLC, containing tracks from previous games in the series.
McDonald's and its Happy Meals have a long history with Nintendo promotions, with the kid-friendly meals containing toys from Nintendo franchises for decades, going back as far as 1990 with a deal that coincided with the release of Super Mario Bros 3. Over the years the companies have released further sets covering the Super Mario franchise, and had a previous Mario Kart offer in 2014 to celebrate the launch of Mario Kart 8 on the Wii U. It's not just Mario who has partnered with the fast-food chain, as last year McDonald's released Pokémon cards in Happy Meals, causing scalpers to swoop in.
News of this latest promotion came when the official Happy Meal website (via Nintendo Wire) updated its homepage to Mario Kart branding, changing its Toys section to show eight Mario Kart vehicles, available for MAR10 Day. The toys feature main characters such as Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, and Bowser, riding vehicles from the game like Mario's B-Dasher and Princess Peach's pink bike, which seem to be modeled off the standard bikes rather than the popular Mach bike version. Each toy will also be customizable, as they come with a set of decals for their vehicles. The collection will be available in US McDonald's restaurants between March 8 and April 5.
The site also shows an Activities section, which will allow toy-collecting Super Mario fans to download themed Mario activity sheets. Although the Happy Meal homepage shows Mario Kart images for this section to match up with the rest of the current promotion, as of the time of writing, clicking through to download will still display activity sheets for the previous Happy Meal theme, Lilo & Stitch. Once the site has updated, fans will be able to download and print a series of free Mario Kart coloring pages, word searches, and more.
The Mario Kart toys shown in this promotion are identical to the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe release, with the exception of a wearable Toadette visor that replaces the 2014 Mario-themed one. While the set only being available in the US may disappoint some long-time Mario collectors and fans outside of America, US Mario Kart fans who missed out on these toys the first time around can look forward to collecting them - unless scalpers get there first.
Source: Happy Meal (via Nintendo Wire)