I Tried McDonald’s Halloween Boo Buckets: The Good, the Unhealthy and the ‘Lids’

McDonald’s Halloween pails, aka Boo Buckets, are again for Halloween. What the heck are they, you ask? They’re merely plastic trick-or-treat pails in three designs that change the standard paper Glad Meal containers McDonald’s makes use of to serve up its youngsters’ meals. 

The fast-food chain first launched the pails in 1986 and have provided them on and off, with loads of modifications, since then. Their return would not seem to be a giant deal, besides that a lot of individuals are feeling nostalgic about their return, and the anticipation for them dominated social media because the pails’ arrival neared.

They’re now accessible at collaborating McDonald’s throughout the US, and I ordered one (uh, actually two) to have a look.

McDonald’s Boo Bucket: My evaluate

I ordered two Glad Meals on the McDonald’s app and picked them up within the drive-thru at my native McD’s. The app let me select between a four-piece serving of Hen McNuggets, a six-piece Hen McNuggets serving, or a hamburger (you’ll be able to improve to a cheeseburger). The meal comes with a kid-size order of fries, and also you then select between additional fries or apple slices, and choose a drink. On the finish of my order, the app requested me what sort of toy I wished, and let me select between “Halloween pails,” “toddler toy” or “no thanks.” (WHO WOULD DECLINE A TOY?) 

Spoiler: I picked “Halloween pails.”

The Halloween pails themselves are just about what you’d count on — plastic deal with pails which can be actually too small to carry a child’s Halloween sweet haul except they seem to be a toddler. However they’re cute nonetheless. 

There are three varieties, however my McDonald’s had solely the white McBoo ghost-faced pail on day one of many promotion. (Prior to now, the white pails have been glow-in-the-dark, however I examined mine and it wasn’t.) I requested when my McDonald’s can be getting the opposite two colours — orange McPunk’n and inexperienced witchy McGoblin — however the staff did not know. I would guess every restaurant ultimately might get all three colours, however relying on demand, it looks like a crapshoot as to which one they hand out when.

Prior to now, the buckets have generally include plastic lids you’ll be able to placed on and take off, and generally the lids have even featured built-in cookie cutters. Not this yr. As a substitute of a lid, there’s … sort of a fake lid, that means a chunk of plastic resembling a pumpkin prime arches between the 2 spots the place the bucket’s deal with attaches to the bucket. It is cute however will seemingly break 5 seconds after a child begins trick-or-treating. Additionally, as a Minnesotan, I believe the white pumpkin prime design appears just like the now-demolished Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome.

The meals in your Boo Bucket is roofed with what appears like a spherical piece of paper, which seems to have Halloween stickers. My two Glad Meals got here with the identical McBoo ghost bucket and the identical sticker sheet. The sticker sheet has drawings of skeletons on one aspect and (principally) pirate-themed stickers you’ll be able to peel off and use to “gown” the skeletons on the opposite aspect.

These Glad Meals do not include further toys. The bucket is the toy. However McDonald’s new grownup Glad Meals do include toys — basic McDonald’s figures, plus one new character, all of whom haven’t two however 4 eyes. (My McDonald’s is offered out of these. One thing tells me Ronald and friends have hit on a moneymaking oil nicely right here, and I count on to see extra grownup Glad Meals sooner or later.)

I give McDonald’s Boo Buckets a strong B+ as a promotion. The three totally different colours and faces are cute, and I completely perceive why they could promote just one number of bucket at a time. Think about the poor frazzled clerk who has to take orders when little Liam desires a ghost, however Maddy desires a witch, and in the meantime, nobody desires the pumpkin, and the orange buckets are piling up within the inventory room subsequent to 800 gallons of ketchup. You get what you get, and you aren’t getting upset, as they are saying in daycare.

I might’ve graded the promotion larger if every bucket had an precise plastic prime as an alternative of a chunk of paper and the fake prime, however stickers are an excellent comfort prize, and sort of like a toy.  

I am not grading the meals. It is McDonald’s. what it’s.