Last week, McDonald's and The Pokémon Company confirmed that Pokémon and McDonald's would be coming together yet again for a new promotional event in November. In the reveal post, The Pokémon Company showed the Pokémon trading cards and toys that would be given out with each Happy Meal. However, pictures of the wrong set of cards were accidentally posted, apparently revealing the promotional assets for next year's collaboration.

Each year, Pokémon and McDonald's tend to produce exclusive trading cards as part of a promotional event. Fans all over the world collect them, so it's always exciting to get a look at the upcoming cards. When The Pokémon Company published this year's announcement, eagle-eyed fans immediately noticed that the promotional tag said "M27", indicating that the cards were intended for the 2027 promotion. ​​​​​​

It was clear that these were images of the wrong promotional Pokémon cards. The page was quickly updated with the correct assets, but it was too late, as the 2027 set of cards had already spread among the community.

McDonald's Pokémon cards are widely available, but fans still flood restaurants and order too many meals, causing chaos and food waste . Die-hard fans want to acquire the 15 different cards as soon as possible and buy Happy Meals until they've collected them all. Scalpers spend hundreds of dollars to buy as many limited-time cards as they can to later resell them at exorbitant prices. Facial recognition technology has been installed at Pokémon Centers in Japan to limit purchases, but it's unlikely that McDonald's would implement such measures for an annual promotional event.

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