There was a time when the red fries carton was simply a vessel for the fries, not an artifact to be preserved, catalogued and resold to strangers on the internet.
That time, it appears, has passed.
McDonald's, the fast-food giant that has turned the merchandising of its own brand into something of a second business, has changed the color of its iconic fries carton from red to gold for the first time in the company's history. The occasion is McDonald's sponsorship of the FIFA World Cup 2026, which the company is calling the largest sponsorship it has ever undertaken.
The golden cartons, along with nine collectible cups featuring soccer luminaries past and present — among them David Beckham, Ronaldinho and, somewhat inevitably, the purple McDonald's mascot Grimace — have prompted the sort of consumer frenzy that marketing executives describe in pitch decks but rarely witness in the wild. Empty cartons and meal bags are being listed on eBay for $36. (For the packaging. Which previously held food. Which is now gone.)
The campaign, created by TMS, the promotional marketing agency that is part of the Omnicom Group, extends to 23 Squishmallows Happy Meal toys and a golden Big Mac Sauce sachet, because if one is going to turn things gold, one might as well be thorough about it.
"We wanted to celebrate a golden brand with a golden color," said Diana Samper, writing on behalf of TMS. The gold, she noted, links the Golden Arches with the golden moments of the World Cup and, of course, the coveted World Cup trophy.
The campaign is running in more than 100 markets, which required the sort of global supply chain coordination that once might have been reserved for things like vaccines or semiconductors but is now deployed in service of making sure fans in São Paulo and Seoul can collect the same cups.
Social media, predictably, is full of people documenting their collections and trading tips on stock availability, a phenomenon that would have seemed improbable to anyone who remembers when a Happy Meal toy was simply a thing a child played with in the back seat and then lost under the seat.
TMS has been here before with McDonald's. The agency was behind the Grinch socks promotion that sold 50 million pairs in its first few days, briefly making McDonald's, a hamburger company, the largest seller of socks in the world.
Whether golden fries cartons will achieve similar velocity remains to be seen. But for now, at least, the red carton rests.
Original story published in The Drum: "Diana Samper: How McDonald’s first-ever fries color change created collectible cravings | The Drum"