Around a month ago we let you know about the Mario Kart 8 Happy Meal toys series, and since July 4th they've been available at your local McDonald’s. Today I'd like to share the outcome of our Mario Kart 8 toy hunt that took 8 days to get the entire collection.
We were lucky enough to have three McDonald's nearby in our area. I heard that all the McDonald's around get a shipment of different toys once per week, so that's why it took us so long to get all the toys, especially the Mario Hat. You can get these toys inside the McDonald's Happy Meals or you can actually get them without buying food for less than $2.00. To be honest the first day we went to McDonald's I was afraid they would deny us or treat us rude because we just wanted all the different toys they had, but every McDonald's we visited, the employees were so nice,without judging our age -in our mid 20's- for getting kids toys.
According to a McDonald's employee in Chula Vista, if you get a repeated toy you can keep it, without opening, and come back later to exchange it for the one you wanted. As long as you keep it in it's original plastic without it taking any damage or having rips or holes in the plastic. Unfortunately, in our situation, we were just missing Princess Peach and the Mario hat for a few days. As a fun fact, I also noticed during the first week of release the easiest to come across was Donkey Kong. All 3 McDonald's we went to had Donkey Kong as one of their options.
The packaging included a toy kart -measuring around 4" long- and a few small stickers to decorate the kart with and some random stickers left over. The karts are also numbered, that's the order I kept while opening them for the gallery below:
Overall Quality: As you can see in the photos, they weren't bad quality for a $1.99-toy. Donkey Kong was the only toy I felt was poorly painted and Mario had some brown paint dripping on his right ear. I'm glad they're not my favorite MK8 characters, but still, it affects the collection a little bit. The plastic or material used on these toys looks durable, they're light, but I can see a kid having a hard time trying to swallow it or trying to break it throwing on the ground.
About the stickers, in my opinion, I understand that McDonald's wants to make the toys more interactive, but I really hate when they force me to put stickers on my toys because I have a hard time putting them on thanks to my shaky hands, they fade away, and they look cheaper compared to a toy with everything properly printed on. But to be fair, these toys didn't look bad after all!
Mario Hat: More like a visor cap, it seems durable, hard to break even if you have a big head, but sadly this would never happen because you could never fit it on. It's 100% for toddler kids . . . or your puppy!
McDonald's Mario Kart 8 Happy Meal toys made their debut in the United States on July 4th and will be available until July 31st, so hurry up before time runs out. If you haven't gotten them yet, they're totally worth it Each toy comes with extra stickers and a mobile game! You'll have to download the McPlay app first, but then you can scan your toy, unlock the game and play some puzzles -remember they're created for kids, so don't expect hard puzzles-.