The Burger King Anime Promotion That Failed Completely

gamerant.com:

There is a saying in the business world that you know you’ve made it when you get a kid’s meal promotion. For many a Happy Meal promotion at McDonald’s is the gold standard, but if you can’t have McDonald’s then the next best thing is Burger King. While lagging behind their main competitor, Burger King is no slouch when it comes to producing kid’s meals, having made toys for Disney and Warner Bros., with the reach of their famous Burger King Kid’s Club being a staple in the nineties.

It was also Burger King that first took notice of the booming anime craze, and made moves to capitalize on this phenomenon that kids were “eating up” (if you’ll forgive the pun). This led to the fast food giant being ahead of the curve by making several major anime properties part of their kid’s meal promotion, with most being well received by fans. That said, they can’t all be winners, and even wise kings make mistakes from time to time, which resulted in Burger King making one of the biggest kid’s meal blunders of all time.

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The first anime that Burger King acquired rights to was Pokémon. They would actually manage this feat four times in a few short years: One for the franchise in general, a second for the release of Pokémon: The First Movie, a third for the release of Pokémon the Movie: 2000, and a fourth to help promote a new video game for the Nintendo Game Boy. The first promotion was the more memorable of the four, as in addition to the kid’s meal toys, diners could also buy one of four gold-plated Pokémon cards that came in individual PokéBalls. The promotions were successful enough that management at Burger King wanted more anime promotions.

The next promotion they would have would be for