There are people who have already stated their intentions of acquiring the new Happy Meal TOHUNGA in mass quantities, since at present PO-KORO is the only village where the TOHUNGA actually outnumber their TURAGA. This line has taken off like a rocket, and with that kind of instant popularity, these are guaranteed to be a hot item, but since BIONICLE™ is not nearly old enough to have instant name recognition, a lot of McD’s restaurants probably severely underordered these sets. Heck, one of the McD’s in my area that sits right on the local Interstate sold out of HUKI in a single day.

So, these are already a high demand, low supply item, but since there is no current indication that these will be released outside of North America, there will be a lot of collectors worldwide that will be clamoring for as many of these as they can get, and that means there will be scalpers trying to buy entire supplies to dump on eBay, which will only make them harder to find for the locals, especially kids that can’t just go out and buy them at whim.

This is a list of easy things to do that will help you in your TOHUNGA collecting madness.

1. Get a 3×5 card, a pencil, and your local business phone book. Write down the location of every McD’s that’s close enough to get to, and next to it write down the phone number. This will save you a lot of time fussing with the phone book as you track down the latest releases.

2. At least once every day, call around to every McD’s on your list to find out if they have TOHUNGA to sell, and if so, which ones they’ve got available. Some locations will sell only one flavor at a time while others will sell as many different types as they have supply for. Also, since this promotion lasts three weeks and there are six sets, don’t be surprised if you find out that only two flavors are available each week.

3. If you locate a McD’s that has one that you’re still looking for, asking them how close they are to running out can’t hurt, and you might be able to get them to hold some for you. Regardless, before hopping in the car, call through the rest of your list to make sure you know every location that claims to be selling the set(s) you’re looking for. I did when hunting ONEPU, and it saved me a lot of trouble, since there were only two locations that said they had him available, and the first one was out by the time I got there. Since I’d called the rest of the list, I was able to go to the other location and trade the four HUKI sets I’d accidentally bought for a matching number of ONEPU sets.

4. Learn from my mistake and don’t blindly order your toys without first double-checking to make sure they still have them by the time you arrive. I don’t really know if McD’s has a return policy on Happy Meal toys, but I’m pretty sure they don’t have one on food.

5. When you do track down a restaurant that has what you’re looking for, keep in mind that you can probably save a buck per toy by not buying the Happy Meal to go with it. This will also mean that you can buy ten or so without having to buy an entire chicken and a dozen potatoes.

6. If you’re planning to collect the Happy Meal containers, most register operators will probably comply if you ask them to put all the food in a separate bag so as to not grease up the insides of the container. Also, so far I’ve found two boxes in the Midwestern US, and I’ve heard of a bag being used in the Western regions of both the US and Canada. I don’t currently know if the packaging is regional in nature, or if both bags and boxes will be used in all areas.

7. If you can’t afford to buy as many of these as you’d like for village populating purposes, don’t sweat it. While I have heard nothing from anyone to suggest this, it is my own personal speculation that LEGO® will quickly realize how popular these little characters are and start producing them in droves. At least I hope they do. After all, this is the quickest, easiest, and cheapest way to get interesting new MASK variations into collectors’ hands. Besides, from the online MATA NUI game, we know that the villagers aren’t all clones of each other.

8. If you buy a bunch of these, but don’t want to have them all look like said clones; remember all of those MASK variations that you can pull out of the KANOHI packs. Sure, from what we’ve seen in both the seven released TOHUNGA and the online game, the legs and MASK are always the same color, but don’t let that stop you from creating some diversity.

9. Buy ONEPU. Make sure you don’t miss out on him. After all, he’s the coolest in the bunch. Why? Isn’t it obvious? He’s purple, and that’s never a bad thing. Take it from someone who knows…