You haven't seen a date because we're still hashing out when exactly it will be. Quite a few of your teamlers have scheduling conflicts in the near future, what with the upcoming holiday. We'll post when we know.
Side note: I was under the impression that in-game events were trash if they didn't give PoMs. Right, wurdking?

The halloween invasion gave away 50 badges, and the hide-and-seek regularly gives away 5 or 10. Events like 'log in every day for a free something in the mailbox' often start with low level foods and end with 100 badges, or at least the last several have done this. Board events sometimes give badges as reward. Really there's lots of opportunities for extra badge income even if there's not an NPC that trades for them.