Summary

• Mario Kart toys are returning to McDonald's Happy Meals with new characters like Gold Mario and Rose Gold Princess Peach.
• Previous McDonald's Mario Kart toys featured characters riding motorcycles, but now they are in standard karts.
• The new McDonald's Mario Kart toys allow fans to mix and match vehicles, incentivizing collecting all characters in the set.

Mario Kart toys are racing back to McDonald’s as part of a new Happy Meal promotion. Nintendo and McDonald's have had many Happy Meal tie-ins over the years, from special-edition Pokemon cards to toys based on 2023’s Super Mario Bros. Movie that gave eager fans their first glimpse of how characters like Princess Peach would look on the silver screen. In the summer of 2014, McDonald’s offered Mario Kart toys based on Mario Kart 8 on Wii U.

McDonald’s would bring back this Mario Kart promotion in 2022, this time under the generic Mario Kart banner and representing Nintendo’s mascot kart-racing series in general. The toy line-up in this second promotion was largely the same as its 2014 counterpart, except that a Mario cap visor toy was replaced with Toadette riding the Antigravity kart that was introduced in Mario Kart 8. On September 5, 2024, the Mario Kart toys would return to McDonald’s once again, although this was just for Australia at first.

Now McDonald’s has launched yet another Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Happy Meal tie-in promotion, as confirmed on the official McDonald’s website. The line-up of characters represented in this new line of toys is mostly the same as the previous ones, with plastic versions of Mario, Luigi, Donkey Kong, Toad, Toadette, Bowser, Princess Peach, and Yoshi. There are also two new toys to collect: a Gold Mario and a Rose Gold Princess Peach.

McDonald's Mario Kart 8 Deluxe 2024 Toy Lineup

• Mario
• Luigi
• Donkey Kong
• Toad
• Toadette
• Bowser
• Princess Peach
• Yoshi
• Gold Mario
• Rose Gold Peach

There are also a few changes made to this latest line of Mario Kart McDonald's toys. While past tie-ins had Yoshi and Peach ride motorcycles, this latest collection instead puts them in standard Mario Kart go-karts, while famed Mario bosses Bowser and Donkey Kong now have larger frames befitting their giant statures. Additionally, the chassis of each figure can now be swapped, meaning that fans can mix and match vehicles to allow other characters to use Luigi’s Antigravity setup, for example.

This new feature will give fans a greater incentive to visit McDonald’s more often and collect each new Mario Kart figure. As for the video games these toys are based on, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe recently received an update to fix various bugs and glitches. Meanwhile, Nintendo and LEGO are joining forces once again to release a line of six Mario Kart-themed building sets in 2025, featuring constructible versions of characters like Donkey Kong and Baby Mario in addition to Toad’s garage and a standard Grand Prix course.