Reports varied pretty broadly, but yes: They were generally "free." (The whole game was meant to drive customer interaction, and making the game pay-to-play w

Reports varied pretty broadly, but yes: They were generally "free." (The whole game was meant to drive customer interaction, and making the game pay-to-play would've been even stupider.) At the Radio Shack that I frequented, they weren't quite free: I had to take a paper catalog along with the barcode reader -- even though I already had a copy of that same catalog on my coffee table at home that they'd sent in the mail. I wound up with a couple of them that I never did much with. (I had some grand ideas of using them for automated shopping lists for pantry items that worked fine in my head...until I realized that the concept required very good compliance from the entire household or it became pretty useless. I didn't want to start that war so the concept went nowhere.)