McDonald's Boo Buckets Are Coming Back Just In Time For Halloween

Ghosts, pumpkins, and goblins are again popping up at McDonald's this year, just in time to celebrate Halloween 2025. The fast-food chain has announced the arrival of this season's Boo Buckets — a collection of Halloween-themed containers that have periodically replaced the traditional design for Happy Meal boxes since 1986. Five Boo Buckets will be available this year, and the designs are a far cry from 2024's more abstract monster-themed Boo Buckets. They have a more retro look, and there are plenty of designs to choose from.

Classic characters are coming back to McDonald's Boo Buckets starting October 21, but you'll also be able to find two new characters on these buckets: cats and zombies. Each character has three different faces featured on the outside of the buckets, which come in orange, green, black, white, and red. The buckets also come with stickers so that you can decorate your Boo Bucket just in time for trick-or-treating.

McDonald's Boo Buckets have been around long enough that they're considered vintage now, and some are worth a bit more than the cost of a Happy Meal. eBay has a 1986 glow-in-the-dark ghost Boo Bucket listed for $18.96, and a separate listing is asking $45 for a trio of vintage Boo Buckets. They're collector's items, a Halloween fast-food hit that's gone over much better with customers than other spooky attempts — like that one Burger King Halloween burger that caused loads of controversy.

Just like McDonald's broke the mold with the first Happy Meal in 1977, McDonald's was the first fast food restaurant to swap out their regular meal packaging for a Halloween bucket. It's not the only restaurant giving customers a spooky treat during the season of the witch, though. Other fast-food restaurants are sending customers home with spooky souvenirs – and those little seasonal gifts aren't just limited to restaurants. Dunkin' and Burger King are just two fast food restaurants that have jumped on the trend, handing out Halloween-themed buckets with meals. Home Depot is doing the same thing.

Boo Buckets aren't free — everywhere that offers these plastic Halloween pails is charging a little bit to take them home. Traditionally, McDonald's charges between $5 and $7 to get a Boo Bucket with your meal. Burger King's come with a $2 charge, and Home Depot's Halloween buckets are around $3. McDonald's seems to have the widest variety of characters for its 2025 Boo Buckets, so be sure to put the fast-food giant on your list for collecting all of this year's themed Halloween buckets.