McDonald’s outlets around the world recently released its highly anticipated Minecraft Movie Meal.
The McDonald’s x Minecraft collaboration marks the upcoming release of A Minecraft Movie, out in Singapore theatres on April 3.
The meal set features both familiar and seasonal food items. Each also comes with a blind box that contains one of six different collectibles.
Having grown up playing the game, I knew I had to try the meal for myself, like many other Gen Zs across the world.
I anticipated that the meal would sell out quickly upon its release at 11am, with many queueing for it, so I planned to order the meal online and then collect it in person to skip the line.
To my surprise, the McDonald’s outlet I visited was pretty much empty.
When I received my meal, I noticed the unique Minecraft-themed packaging, such as the world generation loading bar on the burger box and the crafting table reference on the back of the fries box.
I also received the Big Mac Crystal collectible from the blind box and I could redeem a free limited edition skin in-game using the code on the back of the card.
A box set of all the six collectibles can be also redeemed using points in the McDonald’s app. However, they are limited in quantity and only available at certain outlets.
After finishing my meal, I returned home slightly disappointed as I had expected more excitement surrounding the collaboration, with at least a crowd present in stores.
Then again, I had dropped by on a weekday morning.
I was in for a surprise upon browsing Carousell, where I noticed hundreds of listings for the collectibles, with the full box set being sold for as high as $100 despite being just released.
The box set can be redeemed with 2,500 McDonald’s app points, with 10 points = $1. This means that the box set is worth $250, so I guess mayve these resellers are doing fans a favour..?
Meanwhile, individual blind boxes are being sold for up to $15: almost the price of the full meal itself.
In a perhaps more sensible approach, some Carousell users are also offering to trade their collectibles.
While this all seemed ridiculous to me at first, I thought back to the McDonald’s BTS meal craze in 2021, when people were selling the actual food packaging that had the BTS logos on it on Carousell.
I went as far as to wash the packaging and have kept it to this day, in hopes of being able to resell it as a vintage item in the future – even though I would not even consider myself a BTS fan.
The current Minecraft x McDonald’s hype is reminiscent of that surrounding Labubu and Pokemon card drops, both of which are being resold across Singapore for exorbitant prices as well.
Thus, I have to ask: what is it about Singaporeans and collectibles?