McDonald's has just announced that it is cancelling McDonald's Monopoly this year and we're devo'd tbh.
The popular fast food chain - which has been steadily reopening branches for drive-thru and delivery since May - announced the news as part of an update on its reopening plans.
The much-loved promotion, which has been running since 2005, was planned to launch on 25th March 2020, just two days before Prime Minister Boris Johnson put the country on lockdown.
Since then, fans have been wondering if the game will run this year at all given the pandemic - but now we have our disappointing answer.
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We hate to be dramatic, but with all the fun stuff that's been cancelled this year, we kind of hope we could have at least this one *tiny* thing. 2020, you have played us once again.
But before we throw a hissy fit, McDonald's explanation for the decision makes a lot of sense.
It's all to do with the "excitement" the game causes in the restaurants (scrambling to the till for your free apple pie doesn't quite go hand-in-hand with social distancing), and the stickers being on items they have not yet reintroduced to the menu yet.
"We took the decision to close our restaurants shortly before this year's Monopoly promotion was due to launch," they said in a press release.
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"We know many of you enjoy this promotion, which has run since 2005 in the UK. To enable safe working and social distancing inside our restaurants and to minimise the pressure on our employees, we have decided to cancel this year's Monopoly VIP campaign.
"It creates a great deal of excitement inside our restaurants and relies heavily upon menu items we cannot safely reintroduce yet."
That's kind of fair enough, really.
McDonald's also told fans that they are already planning for their next run of the game in Spring 2021, which at least offers some hope.
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The game, which generally lasts 41 days, sees fast food lovers collect tiles, just like on a Monopoly board, with millions of prizes up for grabs. These range all the way from free food, to cash prizes, cars and holidays.
You simply peel-back stickers that are attached to boxes, cups and chip trays, offering instant wins - such as a portion of chips or a cheeseburger - or stickers with codes you can redeem online to collect bigger prizes.
Prizes from 2019 included 20 Mini Coopers, 50 holidays and huge sums of cash. There was also 650 PS4 game consoles on offer as well as 18,000 £50 boohoo.con vouchers, and 2,000,000 medium McDonald's meals.
Alongside the news about McDonald's Monopoly, the chain also revealed that from 11am on Wednesday 8th July, they'll be reintroducing some more main menu items such as Shakes, Mayo Chicken, Bacon Mayo Chicken, Hot Chocolate and the Bacon Double Cheeseburger. Yaaaas.
Aside from that, they added that from the same date, they would be reintroducing breakfast service to over 1000 after the successful trial of a few restaurants last week.
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Ok, this news kind of softens the blow about Monopoly.
Buzzing to get some hash browns down us.
Topics: Tasty Food, Food And Drink, mcdonalds