Yeah I was shaking my head back then too. The story itself is a bit puzzling too. The stuff sells out in a day and is then cancelled? I assume they had longer plans for it and cancelled that.
Most Happy Meal promos officially last a month, with 4 waves of prizes coming over 4 weeks. Officially because they usually don’t sell out for a bit, sometimes never. So they just spiked the next 3 weeks of stuff.