If you live in Australia you can count yourself lucky: The 2016 Happy Meal MLP figures will also be coming to your local McDonalds soon! They come only 1 month after the original US release and gives other countries some hope too. In some US McDonalds restaurants these figures were released all together from day 1, but under the ad on the Australian website is explicitly says new figures every week. The exact release date is not mentioned anywhere, but it will be the next line of Happy Meal toys.
Thanks to Leanne for the info!

The new My Little Pony Happy Meal figures are now available at McDonalds in the US. We've had various reports of people finding either two figures (Pinkie Pie & Rainbow Dash) or the complete set.
During the coming few weeks you can get: Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, Twilight Sparkle, Rarity, Fluttershy, Suri Polomare, Starlight Glimmer and Coco Pommel.
Thanks to Larysa, Vincent for the heads-up!

After a sidestep to masks, Hasbro and McDonalds are once again going to release a set of My Little Pony figures to come free with Happy Meals. As commonly seen in previous years, the My Little Pony toys will be released alongside a Transformer line of toys and feature 8 figures per brand. This year we'll see new faces including Coco Pommel, Starlight Glimmer and Suri Polomare alongside Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, Twilight Sparkle and Rarity (no Applejack this time).
While the image we have isn't very clear, it seems to be the usual style of semi-brushable figures with a molded mane and brushable tail.
The source shows a release date of February 16th, but it's unsure for which country that date is meant. we hope to find the original source soon to give out some more details and a better picture of the figures.