If you have been cracking into physical Pokémon packs lately, you probably know that buzz when a rare holo slides out, and before long you are also thinking about how those little code slips turn into digital pulls or useful Pokemon TCG Pocket item cards in your favourite app.

McDonald's Hourglass promo

One thing that has got Pocket players talking right now is the McDonald's tie-in that kicks off on 21 January 2025, because it gives you Hourglasses instead of more cardboard or straight-up gems, which sounds odd at first but makes sense once you have sat staring at pack timers for half an evening waiting for them to tick down.

The way it works is pretty simple but not super obvious if you just stroll into the restaurant, since you actually need to order a Happy Meal through the official McDonald's app and then watch your inbox, because the Hourglass gift code shows up in the email and not on the paper receipt that gets tossed in the bin after you have finished your fries.

Where those codes usually come from

Outside of that promo, most players still grab their codes the old-fashioned way from physical stuff like booster boxes, tins, or prebuilt decks, and every so often you will see a wave of people racing to type in a limited-time code that popped up in the official newsletter or on a livestream if they happened to be watching at the right moment.

If you are really into the grind, it is worth keeping an eye on social channels and email because the company likes to drop surprise codes or small bundles here and there, and you do not want to be the one person in your group who missed a free batch of packs just because you never scrolled through the promotions section.

Redeeming codes in Pokémon TCG Live

On Pokémon TCG Live, the actual redeem step is dead easy and you get used to it fast, since you just open the app, tap the Shop tab, and hit the Redeem option that lets you either type the code in by hand or use the camera to scan the QR code off the little insert card that came with your pack.

Most people end up relying on the camera because punching in long strings of letters over and over feels painful if you have a pile of codes sitting on your desk, but you still need to remember there is a rough cap of about 400 codes per expansion, so hoarding stacks of older set codes for years is not always the smartest move if you are hoping to redeem all of them.

How Pokémon TCG Pocket handles it

Pokémon TCG Pocket goes a different way and that catches new players off guard, because at the moment there are basically no public codes floating around on social media and, more importantly, there is no in-app screen or scanner for you to paste or scan a code, which leads a lot of people to dig through every settings tab wondering what they are missing.

The trick is that any redeemable Pocket codes, including the McDonald's Hourglass ones, have to be entered through the official website in your browser rather than inside the app, so once you know that, you stop hunting for a hidden button and just plug them in online when they show up in your email or wherever you got them from.

Keeping your collection moving

In the end, these codes are really about keeping your momentum going when the physical pack luck is cold or when you want to experiment with a new list without dropping a huge amount of cash all at once, whether that means chasing one specific immersive card, padding out your staple pool, or picking up enough currency to craft a deck that can actually hang in ranked.

Some players lean on promos and gift codes, others are happier to buy singles, and quite a few mix both with external options like grabbing extra game currency or items through platforms such as RSVSR so they spend less time waiting on timers and more time actually jamming games with decks they care about.