Burger King has a Hello Kitty campaign coming, and the promotional material it sent to its own franchisees gave it away before the company could issue a single announcement regarding it.
The promo puts the “Burger King x Hello Kitty and Friends” collaboration in US restaurants from October 10 through November 30. Instagram food news account @mnmtwinz (Marcus Smith), a go-to source for early looks such as these, posted the first glimpse of the blind-box toys.
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Leaked promotional image of the upcoming Burger King x Hello Kitty blind boxes. (©Image Credit: Burger King via @mnmtwinz / Instagram)
The leaked images show a blind box collection featuring Hello Kitty, My Melody, Kuromi, Cinnamoroll, and Keroppi, each tied to something from the BK menu. Serious collectors will likely chase the rarer, gold Hello Kitty variant, which reportedly has a significantly lower drop rate.
What we don’t know is how the toys will get handed out. King Jr. Meals is the obvious guess, however.
The leak comes as Sanrio doubles down on fast-food collaborations everywhere this year. McDonald’s, for instance, ran a splashy Godzilla crossover Happy Meal in August that cast Hello Kitty as Godzilla, Kuromi as Mechagodzilla, My Melody as Mothra, and Pompompurin as Gigan.
Overseas, KFC Thailand put out its own blind-box set with Cinnamoroll, My Melody, Pompompurin, and Kuromi, along with a secret Hello Kitty. Sanrio even launched its own merchandise line this summer, Kawaii YumYum MART Diner, turning Hello Kitty and friends into plushies shaped like burgers and fries.
Burger King, in fact, already did a version of this in France, where restaurants sold blind-box socks and ran Sanrio-themed King Jr. Meal games earlier in the year. The US campaign goes for figures instead and arrives a couple of months after McDonald’s had the character to itself.
Sources: Instagram, Dexerto, Essential Japan