Burger King - Pokémon (1999)
This Pokémon promotion was held in the United States starting November 8, 1999 and lasting through December 28, 1999 at participating Burger King stores. This followed the release of the first Pokémon film, which started airing in theaters a couple days prior. This campaign occurred during the boom of the Pokémon craze and would go on to be one of the biggest and arguably most memorable fast food promotions in the country's history.
Burger King would release 57 unique toys featuring various popular Pokémon, technically 59 toys as Pikachu's toy featured three variants with varying voice lines. Each toy would also come with an exclusive collectible trading card, 151 in all; however, it should be worth noting that these cards are not from the same line as those in the Pokémon Trading Card Game (TCG). Due to the success of this promotion, however, toys would quickly sell out and Burger King would release a set of six 23-karate (23k) gold plated cards. These were offered for an additional $1.99 fee with purchase of a meal and would also sell quite quickly. Some time later, a new run of these cards would be available, but with a different color box variant.
Due to the high number of sales and stocks of toys quickly depleting, some stores would begin offering "Master Sheets" of the trading cards as a replacement for the toys. These contain nine cards in total and are sorted based on the particular sheet number. It was also reported that some stores would resort to distributing promotional posters that featured all the toys as a substitute for the lack of toys.
In addition, Burger King would have a vast number of other promotional items in their stores, such as store displays and the packaging to the food as well. Each drink size would have a different Pokémon design as well as their fry/onion ring containers, various kinds of meal bag designs, tray liner, and their famous Burger King crown. These have become collector's items in their own niche.
You can find the various toys, cards, and promotional items below. There was also a series of lawsuits resulting from this promotion and a section about that will be added to the bottom of this page. the campaign was supposed to last until the end of December, but due to safety concerns, it was ended a few days ahead of schedule.
Promotional Images:
Videos:
Links:
- Official Nintendo Announcement - An announcement from Nintendo's website (via Wayback Machine)
- Wikipedia Page Regarding Recall - The Wikipedia page detailing all the info about the Poke Ball recall