Come October, spooky treats are always floating about. Your old pumpkin spiced everything, your Reese’s pumpkins, the momentary return of Ecto-Cooler. It’s the right time for cozy foodie nostalgia — and we’re hearing a rumor about a particularly exciting one for fans of the spooky food aesthetic and collectors of pumpkin buckets alike.
Fittingly, Nightmare Nostalgia reported that McDonald’s beloved Happy Meal Pumpkin Pails may be making their return beginning in October, just in time for your trick-or-treating needs. The blog shared that several McDonald’s employees got the heads up via a company calendar. If true, we can see the buckets hit stores for two weeks only — October 18th through 31st.
After first being introduced in 1986 as a trio of orange jack-o-lanterns, the Pumpkin Pails have gone through many design iterations, including a Ghost-Witch-Pumpkin set, classic McDonaldland characters, and more recently, as movie tie-ins like “Scooby-Doo” and “Monster High.” The most recent appearance of the Pumpkin Pails was in 2016, when they took on a Charlie Brown-inspired design.
While the fast food chain hasn’t made any public announcements regarding the potential return of the pails, we’re making some room on the shelf for a plastic pumpkin bucket — or three.
