Collecting McDonalds Happy Meal Toys

By offering toys with their Happy Meals product line the McDonald’s Restaurant Company has become indirectly the top toy distributor in the world. As of 2018 McDonald restaurants can be found in 120 countries and territories around the world and serve 68 million customers daily. They have 37,855 restaurants worldwide. This is according to their Wikipedia page.

If you compute 68 million daily customers by a year you would come to a number of almost 25 billion customers served yearly. We could also discern that a lot of these customers are children and adults who brought happy meals just for the toys. You might think that happy meal toys are a saturated market and not many people will buy them anymore especially the collectors.

But let us look at one important figure. There are 193 countries around the world and McDonalds as of 2018 only serves 120 countries. Due to cultural differences many of these unserved countries may not like to eat McDonalds meals but can buy McDonalds toys either as toys or collectors items for their children or for themselves.

Add to the fact that only 68 million customers eat at McDonalds daily out of the nearly 8 billion people in the planet and not all of them purchase happy meal toys. So it is safe to say that although there are a lot of sellers online offering McDonalds toys the market is not yet saturated.

Are People Making Money Now from Them?

Having looked at McDonalds toy prices both in eBay and Etsy I have computed that there are people making money from selling McDonalds toys. Some of these toys even fetch a high prices. There are numerous articles online about certain McDonalds toys that already cost a lot of money.

One of the many articles I found reporting this was 7 McDonald 's Happy Meal Toys Worth Tons Today. It is advisable that you Google “are mcdonalds toys worth money” for more articles as some of the toy lists are different from each other. This is so you can get a more concrete list of which are the valuable ones.

For example the Inspector Gadget toy was mentioned as a high ticket item in several articles but not all of them. I did a check myself on eBay and Etsy and sure enough I found that it was worth significantly more than other McDonalds toy collectibles. I even read in one article that Star Wars themed McDonalds packaging is being collected.

Do not be disheartened that your McDonalds toys do not seem to be commanding high prices in eBay or Etsy or some other e-commerce or auction site. If you take a closer look at the shipping costs for these toys you would notice that you could make good profit by balancing your item cost and shipping cost. There are sellers who make extra money on shipping costs.

Are McDonalds Toys Worth It?

McDonalds have closely allied itself with popular cultural icons such as Barbie, SuperMario, Marvel Superheroes and so on. In fact whenever a popular movie comes out about popular cultural icons you can be sure there is a McDonalds toy for it. As such no collection of such icon would be complete without a McDonald toy as well.

There are also several McDonalds toy collectors club around the world. So there is a ready market for these toys formally. Not to mention people who just collect the toys just because they like them. The proof is that there are several McDonalds toys which are not cultural icons but are direct McDonalds toys. The McDonalds transforming toys are one of these.

I think the reason why you can purchase the toy without the meal is because McDonalds realised people are collecting the toys and are not interested particularly in the meals. So the toys are standalone products of the company which proves that they sell well. Maybe the reason why many toys are not being found in eBay or Etsy is because people do not want to sell them.

Could You Collect all McDonalds Toys?

Which begs the question are there unique McDonalds toys in each country not found in other countries? The answer is Yes. You could check in eBay for example by typing the search term “mcdonalds toy japan” and you would find McDonalds toys specifically marketed for the Japanese market.

Remember that McDonalds is available in 120 countries around the world and each country might have a different McDonalds toy unique from other countries so there is a fair bit of chance that no one would be able to collect all McDonalds toys from all the countries so people with international collections could make good money selling their collections.

McDonalds is Making Their Toys More Collectible

McDonalds have introduced several policies that would affect the prices of their collectible toys. They are now offering a choice between a book and a toy which can affect the number of toys in future circulation around the world. They are also encouraging the recycling of McDonalds toys which could also diminish the future supplies of toys in circulation.

A simple McDonalds policy change can affect the prices of their toys. For example in the UK and Ireland they would now introduce paper and soft toys instead of plastic toys which means that the cost of plastic toys will increase significantly. Many people also do not especially like paper or soft toys which means more price increase for the plastic toys which will be phased out.

I also type “mcdonalds toy ireland” and found 1 listing only from Australia. This means that there is not many people selling their McDonalds toys from Ireland. I selected the Worldwide search option in eBay but still found only the 1 listing as before. Even Etsy showed no results. You make your own conclusion but one thing is for sure there are no people selling McDonalds toy from Ireland. My search date was November 22, 2020.

Conclusion

From being a part of the Happy Meal product line to a standalone toy product from McDonalds the Happy Meals have come a long way and are now collectible. By allying their toys with popular cultural icons McDonalds has ensured that the toy have become collectibles. They are cheap investments but if you wait long enough you might see a good return on your investment.