6 ms·

A well-written and well-sourced article. I found it quite interesting. It's amazing how people seem to find a way around any regulation or control to satisfy ba

A well-written and well-sourced article. I found it quite interesting. It's amazing how people seem to find a way around any regulation or control to satisfy basic greed.

roywiggins 8y ago
The game itself is basically a thinly veiled scam anyway: "McDonald’s makes one piece from each set of properties extremely rare, so while thousands have three of the four railroads, the odds of pulling the Short Line Railroad—and winning a PT Cruiser—were 1 in 150 million." Sure, it's all written down in the rules somewhere but it's an elaborate effort to disguise the actual odds of winning to get people to buy more cheeseburgers. You think you are 3 quarters of the way to a PT Cruiser when you are in fact barely more likely to get it that you were before you got the first three.
- joezydeco 8y ago
  Every season you would see classified ads (or, later on, Craigslist ads) with people that had Park Place and were willing to share the jackpot if they had Boardwalk...as if there were only 1 of each piece being printed. In reality there were millions of Park Places tickets in circulation.
  - SamReidHughes 8y ago
    God, I remember a kid at day camp telling me he had Park Place.
- joering2 8y ago
  1 in 50,000,000 is still better odds than “winning” a Harrier Jet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_v._Pepsico,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_v._Pepsico,_Inc.
  - slavik81 8y ago
    It really grinds my gears that Pepsi won that case on the basis that no reasonable person would really believe you could get a jet. I believed you could get a jet. Granted, I was maybe ten years old, but so was the kid in the ad who won it. Not that I thought I'd ever get the jet myself. It just didn't really stand out as ridiculous when a mere mountain bike required 2,750 points. A 24-pack of Pepsi was worth 4 points. So, you'd need to drink roughly 16,500 cans of Pepsi for the bike. Or 45 cans per day for a year. It all seemed effectively impossible to me. But, somebody figured out how it could be achieved. That's amazing. I'd pefer they held Pepsi to their word on that one, but I would have settled for a big fine for marketing their product through lying to children.
    - ghein 8y ago
      There's a reason why most contests state that you have to be 18 to participate. It's generally overlooked for free fries but for real prizes you need an adult to claim them. Like teenagers that sneak in to a casino - they can win a few hundred bucks but if they win a big prize there will be a demand for ID, they'll be kicked out, and no prize awarded. Kids can't be encouraged to gamble because they aren't going to make mature decisions.
      - TheCoelacanth 8y ago
        Seems like they should need to prevent kids from seeing the marketing or prevent kids from buying the products that are associated with the contest. If kids aren't mature enough to decide whether or not to participate in the contest, they also aren't mature enough to realize that they aren't allowed to participate.
      - jessaustin 8y ago
        In both cases it seems we're comfortable exposing children to harms of gaming but not to giving them the prizes they've won at gaming? And this is viewed as better for the children? Pull the other one.
    - gowld 8y ago
- glibgil 8y ago
  > barely more likely to get it that you were before you got the first three exactly as likely
  - roywiggins 8y ago
    I mean if you need all four for a PT Cruiser, and you have three, it's more likely you'll win the prize than if you have none of them yet. But since that fourth one is so rare, you will vastly overestimate how "close" you are to winning.
- ocdtrekkie 8y ago
  Our grocery store chain also does Monopoly annually, and I generally just download the list of rare pieces off the Internet, and check for them before the contest expires. I figure there's no point in picking out the commons unless I find a rare one.
- mikec3010 8y ago
  Most state gaming commissions have rules against these "almost got it" jackpot combinations for slot machines. If the jackpot is 1-10^6, then each jackpot symbol should be weighted about 1-10^2 (assuming a 3 reel one line machine). You can't taunt the player with many non-paying combos like JP-JP-(one space from JP)
- greedo 8y ago
  The odds of winning a free hashbrown, Big Mac, or Egg McMuffin were pretty decent. Most people with have a clue realized that they didn't really have a chance to win $1M.
  - gowld 8y ago
    McDonald's isn't the size it is because it caters to the clueful.
  - panda530 8y ago
    This is very similar to Safeway's Monopoly game started 4 or 5 years ago. The first year I had every category on the board filled in all except for the final piece. After that I would get the tickets but I knew my chances of winning anything were slim to none & would often forget to open them. One thing I think is interesting is they allow employees to play but they have a different color for their tickets, which for consumers are handed out at the cash register based on certain items bought. I'm guessing this is to keep employees from taking a huge stash of tickets home at the end of a shift.
    - jandrese 8y ago
      I've played that game three times and ended up with tons of tickets each time because my wife shops their for her classes. I've never won so much as the $5 Safeway Gift Certificate from the board. I'm not entirely sure that game is on the up and up. The coupons are sometimes alright. We've got a huge collection of small cans of tomato sauce and small boxes of tissues. The online second chance thing is mostly a scam too sadly. You basically win entries into a sweepstakes for movie/tickets or a cruise. You can win $5 Fandango tickets, but it's a royal hassle to redeem them. You can also win gas points, but I'm not sure they redeem properly. It takes hundreds of dollars of purchases to even get the single gas point on average. The whole thing is mostly a waste of time. The other promotion they do where you can earn up points to buy cookware is a lot better. Got a decent pot and a usable knife out of that last time.
- lotsofpulp 8y ago
  The idea of having a PT Cruiser as some kind of prize is hilarious.
  - paulpauper 8y ago
    it's like they went to consumer reports and picked the absolute worst cars in terms of reliability and satisfaction. prize or curse?
    - acranox 8y ago
      More likely that Chrysler offered the car to MCDonalds as a way to promote the car. I suspect Chrysler thought the car would be a hit for being unique and retro. But when it flopped they hat to scramble to make it into a hit or cancel it and take a big loss.
    - i386 8y ago
      My family had a PT Cruiser and we loved it. Unusual looking car and was a comfortable ride.
- ryandrake 8y ago
  Plus the internal rigging so that nobody in Canada could win. Why would they even do that? It sounds like everyone involved with this Monopoly thing, including the people running it, was crooked as a bag of snakes.
- ajhurliman 8y ago
  At this point, I think it's fairly common knowledge that there are rare and common pieces.
- scarface74 8y ago
  So in other words, it’s no different than state sanction gambling - ie the lottery.
  - roywiggins 8y ago
    Sure, but the odds for a lot of lottery games are much less opaque.
    - scarface74 8y ago
      In theory yes - but I suspect if you draw a Venn Diagram of people who spend the most on lottery tickets and the most on McDonalds you would find a large overlap. A lot of people think the lottery is the best way for them to achieve financial freedom.
      - gowld 8y ago
        A lot of people are correct about that.
        roywiggins 8y ago
        The UK runs a scheme that's essentially an attempt to trick people into saving by turning it into a lottery. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premium_Bond https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premium_Bond
zawerf 8y ago
There's a frequently recurring thread on askreddit about exploiting loopholes. You'll be surprised at human ingenuity when it comes to cheating at corporate promos! https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/44tard/what_was_a_loophole_that_you_found_and_exploited/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/44tard/what_was_... https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/search?q=loophole&restrict_sr=1&sort=top https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/search?q=loophole&restric...
paulpauper 8y ago
He got caught after only 5 years and kept none of the money, so it's not like the system completely failed...
masonic 8y ago
It actually has a lot of key gaps (and a lot of typos). The game style (shrouded game pieces used to make winning combinations with a smattering of instant winners) predated the Monopoly branding by years, maybe a decade. We had several such games in the McDonald's I worked at in the 1970s, none with Monopoly branding.

A well-written and well-sourced article. I found it quite interesting. It's amazing how people seem to find a way around any regulation or control to satisfy basic greed.

roywiggins 8y ago

The game itself is basically a thinly veiled scam anyway: "McDonald’s makes one piece from each set of properties extremely rare, so while thousands have three of the four railroads, the odds of pulling the Short Line Railroad—and winning a PT Cruiser—were 1 in 150 million." Sure, it's all written down in the rules somewhere but it's an elaborate effort to disguise the actual odds of winning to get people to buy more cheeseburgers. You think you are 3 quarters of the way to a PT Cruiser when you are in fact barely more likely to get it that you were before you got the first three.

joezydeco 8y ago
Every season you would see classified ads (or, later on, Craigslist ads) with people that had Park Place and were willing to share the jackpot if they had Boardwalk...as if there were only 1 of each piece being printed. In reality there were millions of Park Places tickets in circulation.
- SamReidHughes 8y ago
  God, I remember a kid at day camp telling me he had Park Place.
joering2 8y ago
1 in 50,000,000 is still better odds than “winning” a Harrier Jet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_v._Pepsico,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_v._Pepsico,_Inc.
- slavik81 8y ago
  It really grinds my gears that Pepsi won that case on the basis that no reasonable person would really believe you could get a jet. I believed you could get a jet. Granted, I was maybe ten years old, but so was the kid in the ad who won it. Not that I thought I'd ever get the jet myself. It just didn't really stand out as ridiculous when a mere mountain bike required 2,750 points. A 24-pack of Pepsi was worth 4 points. So, you'd need to drink roughly 16,500 cans of Pepsi for the bike. Or 45 cans per day for a year. It all seemed effectively impossible to me. But, somebody figured out how it could be achieved. That's amazing. I'd pefer they held Pepsi to their word on that one, but I would have settled for a big fine for marketing their product through lying to children.
  - ghein 8y ago
    There's a reason why most contests state that you have to be 18 to participate. It's generally overlooked for free fries but for real prizes you need an adult to claim them. Like teenagers that sneak in to a casino - they can win a few hundred bucks but if they win a big prize there will be a demand for ID, they'll be kicked out, and no prize awarded. Kids can't be encouraged to gamble because they aren't going to make mature decisions.
    - TheCoelacanth 8y ago
      Seems like they should need to prevent kids from seeing the marketing or prevent kids from buying the products that are associated with the contest. If kids aren't mature enough to decide whether or not to participate in the contest, they also aren't mature enough to realize that they aren't allowed to participate.
    - jessaustin 8y ago
      In both cases it seems we're comfortable exposing children to harms of gaming but not to giving them the prizes they've won at gaming? And this is viewed as better for the children? Pull the other one.
  - gowld 8y ago
glibgil 8y ago
> barely more likely to get it that you were before you got the first three exactly as likely
- roywiggins 8y ago
  I mean if you need all four for a PT Cruiser, and you have three, it's more likely you'll win the prize than if you have none of them yet. But since that fourth one is so rare, you will vastly overestimate how "close" you are to winning.
ocdtrekkie 8y ago
Our grocery store chain also does Monopoly annually, and I generally just download the list of rare pieces off the Internet, and check for them before the contest expires. I figure there's no point in picking out the commons unless I find a rare one.
mikec3010 8y ago
Most state gaming commissions have rules against these "almost got it" jackpot combinations for slot machines. If the jackpot is 1-10^6, then each jackpot symbol should be weighted about 1-10^2 (assuming a 3 reel one line machine). You can't taunt the player with many non-paying combos like JP-JP-(one space from JP)
greedo 8y ago
The odds of winning a free hashbrown, Big Mac, or Egg McMuffin were pretty decent. Most people with have a clue realized that they didn't really have a chance to win $1M.
- gowld 8y ago
  McDonald's isn't the size it is because it caters to the clueful.
- panda530 8y ago
  This is very similar to Safeway's Monopoly game started 4 or 5 years ago. The first year I had every category on the board filled in all except for the final piece. After that I would get the tickets but I knew my chances of winning anything were slim to none & would often forget to open them. One thing I think is interesting is they allow employees to play but they have a different color for their tickets, which for consumers are handed out at the cash register based on certain items bought. I'm guessing this is to keep employees from taking a huge stash of tickets home at the end of a shift.
  - jandrese 8y ago
    I've played that game three times and ended up with tons of tickets each time because my wife shops their for her classes. I've never won so much as the $5 Safeway Gift Certificate from the board. I'm not entirely sure that game is on the up and up. The coupons are sometimes alright. We've got a huge collection of small cans of tomato sauce and small boxes of tissues. The online second chance thing is mostly a scam too sadly. You basically win entries into a sweepstakes for movie/tickets or a cruise. You can win $5 Fandango tickets, but it's a royal hassle to redeem them. You can also win gas points, but I'm not sure they redeem properly. It takes hundreds of dollars of purchases to even get the single gas point on average. The whole thing is mostly a waste of time. The other promotion they do where you can earn up points to buy cookware is a lot better. Got a decent pot and a usable knife out of that last time.
lotsofpulp 8y ago
The idea of having a PT Cruiser as some kind of prize is hilarious.
- paulpauper 8y ago
  it's like they went to consumer reports and picked the absolute worst cars in terms of reliability and satisfaction. prize or curse?
  - acranox 8y ago
    More likely that Chrysler offered the car to MCDonalds as a way to promote the car. I suspect Chrysler thought the car would be a hit for being unique and retro. But when it flopped they hat to scramble to make it into a hit or cancel it and take a big loss.
  - i386 8y ago
    My family had a PT Cruiser and we loved it. Unusual looking car and was a comfortable ride.
ryandrake 8y ago
Plus the internal rigging so that nobody in Canada could win. Why would they even do that? It sounds like everyone involved with this Monopoly thing, including the people running it, was crooked as a bag of snakes.
ajhurliman 8y ago
At this point, I think it's fairly common knowledge that there are rare and common pieces.
scarface74 8y ago
So in other words, it’s no different than state sanction gambling - ie the lottery.
- roywiggins 8y ago
  Sure, but the odds for a lot of lottery games are much less opaque.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    In theory yes - but I suspect if you draw a Venn Diagram of people who spend the most on lottery tickets and the most on McDonalds you would find a large overlap. A lot of people think the lottery is the best way for them to achieve financial freedom.
    - gowld 8y ago
      A lot of people are correct about that.
      - roywiggins 8y ago
        The UK runs a scheme that's essentially an attempt to trick people into saving by turning it into a lottery. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premium_Bond https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premium_Bond

zawerf 8y ago

There's a frequently recurring thread on askreddit about exploiting loopholes. You'll be surprised at human ingenuity when it comes to cheating at corporate promos! https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/44tard/what_was_a_loophole_that_you_found_and_exploited/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/44tard/what_was_... https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/search?q=loophole&restrict_sr=1&sort=top https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/search?q=loophole&restric...

paulpauper 8y ago

He got caught after only 5 years and kept none of the money, so it's not like the system completely failed...

masonic 8y ago

It actually has a lot of key gaps (and a lot of typos). The game style (shrouded game pieces used to make winning combinations with a smattering of instant winners) predated the Monopoly branding by years, maybe a decade. We had several such games in the McDonald's I worked at in the 1970s, none with Monopoly branding.