With the official start of fall just a day away, most fast-food chains are already deep into their Halloween marketing phase with perennial autumn flavors like pumpkin spice and earl grey and new treats for the coming year.
In 2022, McDonald’s (MCD) first debuted the iconic Halloween Boo Buckets that those of the millennial generation remember from their childhoods. The plastic pails for collecting trick-or-treating candy first debuted in 1986 and were included with Happy Meal purchases as both a replacement to the regular red meal box and the toy during the fall season for decades. The pails were pulled and relaunched numerous times throughout the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s before McDonald’s officially discontinued them in 2016.
But after a six-year break, the chain once again brought back the Boo Buckets in 2022 in orange, white and green colors to a frenzy of nostalgic excitement. That year, many McDonald’s locations sold out of the pails just a few days after they became available.
How and when can you get a Halloween Boo Bucket this year?
McDonald’s then brought back the Boo Buckets in 2023 and 2024 and, as the chain confirmed in August, will also be returning them for the upcoming Halloween season.
As first reported by Instagram snack and fast-food industry watchdog Snackolator, the items will become available in stores on Oct. 21. Neither this date nor what the design of the buckets will look like — McDonald’s switched up the available colors and Jack-o-Lantern monster face drawn on them somewhat from year to year — this season have been officially confirmed by the chain.
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Unlike many other seasonal promotions that run for at last several months, the Boo Buckets have in the last three years been available for a very limited timeframe that contributed to the hype around needing to secure one or be left without for the coming year.
“BOO! We’re back… (but not for long),” McDonald’s wrote to announce the return in 2024. “[…] Get ready for a scary-good time as the iconic Happy Meal Boo Buckets make their return to participating McDonald’s restaurants nationwide.”
Image Source: McDonald's Corp.
Nostalgia sells (some other blast-from-the-past items to hit McDonald’s menus in recent years)
The popularity of the Boo Buckets, as well as anything else rooted in the chain’s past, has pushed McDonald’s to bring back or launch a number of other retro items over the last few years.
In 2023, the chain gave new life to the purple monster Grimace in a berry-flavored purple shake as part of a campaign inspired by the beloved character.
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The shake ultimately ended up going viral and prompted McDonald’s to launch many other retro-inspired items; the new McDonaldland meal that premiered in August 2025 was envisioned as an adult Happy Meal in which the toy is replaced by a collectible tin featuring more classic characters: Ronald McDonald, Hamburglar, and Mayor McCheese.
“It’s been 37 years since the nostalgic Halloween buckets entered our childhood Halloween fantasies and while these little pieces of big corporate plastic may seem trivial, they serve as a staple of our childhoods,” the author who writes the NightmareNostalgia blog under the Patti Paultergeist name, wrote of the Boo Buckets.
Related: Taco Bell to bring back five favorites after 20 years
