McDonald’s is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Big Mac this week. To celebrate, it started passing out MacCoins at its stores yesterday, a currency of sorts that can be used to, well, buy Big Macs. You get one by purchasing a Big Mac from the company using real money, making it essentially an elaborate buy one, get one promotion—and you still have the opportunity to take advantage of it.
The company is distributing 6.2 million MacCoins globally in five designs, each representing a decade of the Big Mac. Here’s how McDonald’s describes them:
“Each MacCoin design pulls in elements from that time in history, nodding to art, music and pop culture, while the front-side of the MacCoin celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Big Mac. The MacCoin highlights the ‘70s, showcasing the decade’s flower power, and the ‘80s alludes to pop art. Bold, abstract shapes defined the ‘90s and translate on the MacCoin design, and the early ‘00s specifically focuses on the technology that was at the forefront of the turn of the century. The ‘10s MacCoin celebrates the past 10 years and calls attention to the evolution of communication. Additionally, the seven languages featured across the various designs represent many of the countries participating: Arabic, English, Indonesian, Mandarin, Portuguese, French and Spanish.”
The promotion officially started on August 2nd, but it’s running “while supplies last.” How long that is depends a lot on where you are and how popular the Big Mac is there.
We placed calls to a few different McDonald’s locations and it seems like most of them still have the coins available. We also reached out to McDonald’s PR to see how long we can expect the promotion to last, but haven’t heard back just yet (we’ll update the post if we do).
As with any “limited time” promotion, it pays to go try and take advantage of it sooner rather than later. If you’re specifically on the hunt for coins, it also wouldn’t be the worst idea to give your location a call and see if they still have some available before you pull into the drive-thru.
And an important part of getting a MacCoin is actually spending it: Once you have a MacCoin in your possession, you have until December 31, 2018 to redeem it for another sandwich.