McDonald's Philippines A Minecraft Movie promotion

2025-04-07 at 2:54 PM

McDonald's Philippines A Minecraft Movie Happy Meal promotion banner

The McDonald's Philippines crossover with A Minecraft Movie.

McDonald's Philippines ran a crossover promotion featuring the 2025 film A Minecraft Movie in March 28, 2025. This crossover is the largest global promotion by McDonald's Corporation.

McDonald's Philippines also held an on-ground activity day on April 7, 2025, at the Glorietta Activity Center of Ayala Malls Glorietta in Makati City, Metro Manila.

The promotion is controversial for its A Minecraft Movie Meal promotion, where the collectibles can only be obtained randomly with blind boxes. McDonald's Philippines branches also covered certain texts on the toy boxes using black markers, which made the set unappealing to collectors who prefer the boxes in mint condition.

Background

The film A Minecraft Movie was released in the Philippines on April 2, 2025.

Crossover promotion

The promotion comprises two toy sets: "A Minecraft Movie Happy Meal" and "A Minecraft Movie Meal".

A Minecraft Movie Happy Meal

The Happy Meal promotion started on March 28, 2025. The meal comes in Minecraft-themed Happy Meal Creeper boxes, which include a QR code that links to the A Minecraft Movie browser game on HappyMeal.com.

The Philippine promotion is comprised of 8 collectibles:

Creeper
Pink Sheep
Bee
Skeleton
Redstone Block and Creeper
Diamond Block and Steve (Jack Black)
Gold Block and Dawn (Danielle Brooks)
Grass Block and Llama

It is one of the fastest-selling Happy Meal toy sets, with several McDonald's Philippines establishments running out of stock less than a week after launching.

A Minecraft Movie Meal

The promotion started on April 5, 2025. Unlike the Happy Meal set, the collectibles come in a blind box and can only be bought with one of two meal sets costing ₱299:

6-piece Chicken McNuggets meal (with medium fries and medium drink) with a promo-exclusive "Nether Flame Sauce"
Cheeseburger meal (with medium fries and medium drink) and a Golden Apple Sundae

The set has 6 collectibles, in line with promotions in other countries. Each collectible has a foil card and a serial code that can be redeemed for a skin on Minecraft.net.

Despite being labeled as "blind boxes," the boxes have identifying numbers that indicate which collectibles they contain. The following are the collectibles and their identifiers on the bottom of the boxes:

29570-01: Zombie Hamburglar
29570-02: Birdie Wings
29570-03: Grimace Egg
29570-04: Fry Helmet
29570-05: Big Mac Crystal
29570-06: Soda Potion

Differences in Philippine promotion

A Minecraft Movie Happy Meal

The A Minecraft Movie Happy Meal set is comprised of 12 toys. The Philippine set is missing the following:

Evoker
Dennis (A pale wolf in the movie)
Pink Wool Block and Pink Sheep
Stone Block and Garret (Jason Momoa)

A Minecraft Movie Meal

The visible codes in the Philippine release are a design package oversight. In the U.S. and Canadian releases, the box code identifier is located on one of the edges of the bottom box flaps and is hidden when the box is assembled. The boxes also don't have additional text details on the sides.

Controversy

Photo of McDonald's Philippines' April 6, 2025, guidelines for A Minecraft Movie Meal blind box promotion

New guidelines for April 6, 2025, which include using black markers on the boxes.

For the A Minecraft Meal blind box collectibles, many McDonald's Philippines branches used black permanent markers on the boxes to cover any text that could help identify the collectibles inside. The move was presumably done to prevent customers from negotiating with branch employees to receive specific collectibles. This drew the ire of collectors, who prefer to have the boxes in mint condition.

One customer claimed that it was possible to choose collectibles on his chosen branch during the April 5 launch. However, the branch received a memorandum from management which reinforced the promotion's blind box nature. He also showed pictures of boxes from April 5 and 6, with the initial boxes in mint condition compared to a box on April 6 with black marks to hide the codes.^[1]