McDonald’s began using Monopoly as a promotional game in the United States in 1987.
The promotion adapts the board game’s property and prize concepts to McDonald’s packaging. Customers collect or reveal game pieces associated with menu items, and matching sets can qualify for prizes. This transformed ordinary purchases into a recurring brand promotion built around collecting and chance.
The campaign became one of McDonald’s best-known promotional properties and was later adapted for markets outside the United States. Its branding relies on the visual language of Monopoly while adding McDonald’s restaurants, products, and prizes.
The promotion is sometimes discussed together with the 2001 fraud scandal involving stolen high-value pieces, but that later criminal case does not mark the campaign’s beginning. The U.S. promotion itself dates to 1987.