One of McDonald’s most popular and longest-lasting Halloween Happy Meal traditions returned in Oct. 2023 for the second year in a row. Yep, the nostalgia-inducing McDonald’s Halloween Buckets were available from Oct. 17, 2023 to Oct. 30, 2023.
There were four designs that you could have grabbed — a mummy, vampire, monster, and skeleton. Each McDonald’s location had a limited supply, so if you wanted the buckets, you needed to act fast to get them. In 2024, we expect them to arrive in stores starting in mid-October and last until Halloween.
So, how long are they expected to last in 2024, and can you get one for free with the McDonald’s Rewards app (spoiler: yes, you can!)? We’ve got all the answers below. And if you’re on the lookout for McDonald’s deals or ways to save at McDonald’s, we’ve got all the tricks and treats.
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McDonald’s Halloween Bucket Happy Meals were available from Oct. 17, 2023 to Oct. 30, 2023, and you got one bucket per Happy Meal order.
The Halloween Bucket Happy Meals were available starting around lunchtime (10:30 a.m.) on Oct. 17, 2023. They stuck around as long as supplies last, or until the night before Halloween, Oct. 30, 2023.
There were four bucket designs coming with our Happy Meals. The buckets were the orange Skeleton, the green Monster, the white Mummy, and a purple Vampire.
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How you could you have gotten the McDonald’s Halloween bucket for free in 2023.
Using your free McDonald’s Rewards app, you could have received a free Happy Meal (which comes with the Halloween bucket for FREE), when you had 6,000 points. Depending on how you are using your points, that meant you spent around $60 at McDonald’s.
Worth noting: in 2022, the Halloween buckets came with an additional Happy Meal toy — a small Cars toy — but there was no extra toy that came with the Boo Buckets in 2023.
Halloween Bucket were sold for as little as $1 at Five Below — 82% less than the McDonald’s Boo Buckets.
If your local McDonald’s ran out of Halloween buckets (or you wanted to grab one for cheaper), you could have picked up dupes for as little as $1 at your local Five Below or Walmart. Here’s what we found online in 2023:
2023 was the second year in a row that McDonald’s Halloween buckets returned.
During Halloween as early as 1986, McDonald’s put their Happy Meals inside plastic trick or treat buckets. This essentially made the bucket the Happy Meal “toy.”
The plastic buckets with handles had a bunch of variations over the years, but the most popular featured a simple design with three faces on them.
At first, there were three orange variations: McPunk’n (with a jack-o’-lantern face), McBoo (with a ghost face), and McGoblin (with a more jagged jack-o’-lantern face). And in the nineties, Happy Meal aficionados got the Pumpkin Pails, which included an orange pumpkin, a white ghost, or a green witch.
The McDonald’s Halloween Happy Meal Buckets didn’t come with a lid in 2023.
Unfortunately, just like 2022, instead of a plastic lid, the Halloween buckets will came with a cardboard lid with stickers on the top to use as decoration for your bucket.
The Halloween Buckets at McDonald’s cost the same as your regular Happy Meal, which is $4 – $6 depending on your location.
There was no extra charge for the Halloween Buckets at McDonald’s. They were included in the regular cost of a Happy Meal, which is $4 – $6 (prices vary by location and type of Happy Meal).
For example, in Virginia, a 4-piece Chicken McNugget Happy Meal (comes with Apple Slices, small fries, a small drink) will cost $4.19. A hamburger Happy Meal (comes with Apple Slices, small fries and a small drink) will cost $3.69.
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