Although the Universal Pictures release did not make it to Chinese cinemas this July, fans of Despicable Me 2 can collect it’s pill-shaped yellows characters in McDonalds’s Happy Meals from tomorrow.
No official announcement has been made, but people on Weibo and Weixin have been speculating for a while: between October 30 and November 26, six of the yellow characters (availability varies around the world) will be given away with Happy Meals in mainland China. First come first served!
The little yellow guys are causing a sensation here, and many have expressed their passion via social media. Taobao shops have already made serious money from imported toys; and many other Asian countries have already been through “minion madness”.
When McDonald’s launched the palm-sized minions in Malaysia three month ago, swarms of parents and children stood outside the Kuching International Airport franchise at midnight for the release, and the first batch sold out in only 10 minutes, according to vocativ.com.
In Singapore, McDonald’s had to issue rules imposing “a limit of 3 Happy Meal Despicable Me 2 toys per customer transaction” and making the toys available “only for dine-in customers and not available via Drive-Thru, McDelivery, and Institutional stores”.
A set of eight characters from the complete US set of nine was auctioned for $50 on eBayand a complete set is much more expensive. A whole set of 19 characters from multiple countries is priced at around RMB 2000 on China’s Taobao.
If your child wants to assemble the whole crew using traditional methods, you may also want to watch his waistline.
Photos by sonson (Flickr) and Taobao.com
