The Super Mario franchise and McDonald's Happy Meals are regular buddies, with promotions through different territories over the past few years. Super Mario is now coming back to UK Happy Meals in early 2017, which will be good timing with Nintendo planning its big Nintendo Switch reveal around that time - brand power and public awareness can be useful when combined around major announcements and launches.

A Nintendo Life regular has kindly forwarded us an image of a McDonald's note on the promotion, which will run from 11th January to 7th February; it will include balloons and activities along with an eBook promotion (which is a regular feature in current UK Happy Meals).

It seems that activities, the balloons and foldable paper things will take the place of conventional toys, but we'll see nearer the time when the range is announced. [Update: We've since been told that toys are very likely also included, they're just not confirmed yet]

It's time to think up an excuse for ordering Happy Meals, then. If you want to see grown men doing just that, we made 'unboxing' videos on two previous occasions when Mario Happy Meals came to the UK; this writer still shudders at the memory of the first video below.

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So, will you be grabbing one of these Happy Meals in the New Year?