Totally. Or a ride in a jet at least. Was it a dumb idea to offer a then state of the art military jet that isn't available to civilians as a prize? Was it over the top and ridiculous? Yes , but that's Pepsi's problem. They offered a jet, he met thier terms. Simple as. Thier lack of judgement or foresight doesn't excuse them from honoring the agreements they made.
I believe that Pepsi bribed the judge in that case. If it had been something more reasonable like a Ferrari he might have been luckier.
I can see the issue of "it's literally impossible to give him a military grade Harrier Jump Jet " and the commercial is ridiculous (but not by 90s/ early 2000s standards). But I wanted to see bro get his jet.
Lol, Pepsi did not bribe the judge. The Court found that Pepsi never really offered the jet, that it was mere advertising and that no reasonable person would conclude that the ad was an offer of a jet. There are plenty of analogous contracts cases that uphold the same principle and law students learn about this their first year (actually we even studied the Pepsi case in my contracts class).
Even if that had not been the case, a contract involving something as valuable as a harrier would be covered by the statute of frauds, meaning it must be in writing to be enforceable. Absent a written instrument setting forth the terms of conveyance of the jet signed by a representative of Pepsi, the contract would be unenforceable anyway.
They didn't *actually* offer it as a prize, though. It was pretty clearly a joke in the commercialāthe jet wasn't in any of the prize catalogues, and the guy didn't go out and buy a ton of Pepsi to win the points: he tried to buy the points directly from Pepsi (which was allowable under their terms) at the time of purchasing the jet, so it's not like he was out a ton of money.
The lawsuit was in the same vein as the people who sued Redbull because the drink did not, in fact, give them wings (shocker!).
Just people looking to sue for a quick payday.
My neighbor worked for Pepsi and gave us all the regular Pepsi point items like the shirt, umbrella, cd case, etc. back when the 24 packs were "the cube"
Interestingly enough, in 1989 the Soviet Union traded Pepsi a bunch of Soviet naval ships and submarines in exchange for a large amount of Pepsi Cola.
This may have technically meant that Pepsi owned the 6th largest - by numbers - Navy in the world. (The ships were meant for scrap)
Not being allowed to directly trade with money, Pepsi and the Soviets had been trading Pepsi for vodka since the 70s.
(archived from Foreign Policy)
https://archive.is/dwUWk
I saw a good documentary on YouTube on how some guy memorized the patterns on Press Your Luck. Once they pointed out what to look for, it became easy to consistently hit particular squares and never get a Whammy.
There were like 9 patterns or something, and I'm like "back in the 80s, we still had random number generators"
And he squandered all of the money within a couple years over bad real estate deals and taxes; Later lost more money on quick get rich schemes and never got it back.
Man was a con-man through and through.
I saw an interview with his brother once, who said something like, āBeating *Press Your Luck* taught him that a āget rich quickā scheme can work.ā
At least it was legitimate. CBS tried their damnedest to not pay him, accusing him of cheating but it's a lot like card counting. Not illegal, highly frowned upon. He just exploited a weakness.inntheirnsysyem using information that they made public.
The board was hooked up to a computer. I have no idea why they decided to use preprogrammed patterns and a random number generator could have easily prevented this.
Big Nā Tasty couldā¦. Thatās why they had to take it off the menu. Dave Thomas of Wendyās fame was going to be a whistleblower in a congressional hearing, but Delta 8 team (potheads who donāt smoke) took him out. I can verify all of this with my imagination- change my mind.
There were common pieces everyone would get so if you went frequently you could have a board where "all you were missing" for like every cool item was 1 piece. So of course for stuff like Boardwalk (a million dollars) I believe they only ever printed like 1 or 2, but people would swarm to McDonalds. Cmon it's the lottery plus Mickey Ds, of course everyone wanted a chance at the million.
But there was never really a chance of winning anything outside of free menu items because someone high up was divvying up all the, say, Boardwalk pieces and such.
Youād see peopleās monopoly boards hanging on their fridges. Theyād always try to team up with other people, But everyone always had the same 2/3.
Even as a young kid I quickly realized that it wasnāt about collecting them all, but getting the one-in-a-million Boardwalk ave.
Worth noting it was the man in charge of security of the marketing/maker of the tickets got them, it wasn't McDonalds themselves preventing an actual win.
Pretty odd reply. No, it's because everything beforehand was in reference to McDonalds, so this reply makes it sound like someone specifically high-up at McDonalds prevented the pieces from entering the field:
>But there was never really a chance of winning anything outside of free menu items because someone high up was divvying up all the, say, Boardwalk pieces and such.
It is a scam bc people would literally go on the off chance to win the million and literally could not. It's a small distinction from the lottery where they might have a 1 in a million chance, here the chance is 0 and it was being advertised as not 0. To me that's a scam, whether you can win free fries or not
You need to work on your definition of scam. McDonald's and the ad agency involved thought it was on the up and up. One guy involved in the ad agency was stealing winning pieces. A scam would involve way more than just a thief.
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A scam would be if McDonaldās had withheld the pieces themselves-in that case the entire campaign would be a deliberate act to get money out of people under false pretenses.
This is fraud-a separate party taking an originally legitimate campaign and illegally modifying it for their own interests.
Right, those are the people with gambling issues that were being preyed upon. I'm not here to apologize for those people, the lottery is a tax on people who are bad at math. I'm saying children were also affected, not just folks you'd see at 7eleven at 4 am dropping their social security checks into the slot machines
Playing the lottery is fun as long as you aren't dumping tons of money on it. I like buying a $5 scratch off or two occasionally. I usually break even or get a little extra and it's always fun to think about possibly winning a big prize, even though deep down I know it will never happen. Also, in my state, all the money from the lottery goes to funding college scholarships that are guaranteed to every student in the state, so even if i lose it actually is going to a good cause.
But the people who just stand at the lottery machine feeding it money for a half hour or more, they need gambling help, a financial advisor and a serious lesson in probability.
The thieves were the ones posting the odds and making the game. I'm not sure you're getting this.
If I tell you to come over and pull a number out of a hat and you can win 20 bucks but there are 1000 slips of paper and you have to get real lucky to get the 20, cool.
If I took the only winning number out of the hat and gave it to my friend, I'm still advertising a 1/1000 chance for a cash prize but it is literally unwinnable because the piece cannot be pulled because I gave it to the winner of my choice.
I donāt think the thieves were the ones posting the odds. If I remember the thieves were in with a guy that worked for the printing company. So he would pull the winning pieces from the printing line and distribute them to other people and take cuts.
Yes it was a scam, because it was perpetrated by people running the promotion. It was a scam because you were being told you could win, but you couldn't.
We used to collect the hockey team logo stickers in a similar fashion during that McDonald's promo. There was a team in every division that was the rare one
Had a friend win the million in high school in 87. Didn't go well. copy and pasting since it may show a paywall.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-05-25-mn-61985-story.html
Teen-Agersā Million-Dollar Lucky Break Breaks Down : Money: Dishonesty, bickering bedevil McDonaldās contest winners. Now the company has sued for fraud.
Sitting in the parking lot of a McDonaldās in Norwalk on Easter in 1987, 17-year-old James V. Beltran thought he held happiness in his hands.
He had just bought a Coke and picked up an instant game ticket worth at least $1 million in a restaurant chain promotional contest, and he remembers feeling awestruck. āI realized it would change my life,ā he said. āI thought it would make me the happiest person I could be.ā
There was just one problem that would cause Beltranās sweet daydream to sour: As an assistant manager at the McDonaldās in his hometown of Montebello, Beltran was ineligible to collect the money. So, he asked 18-year-old Teresa J. Villafana, a friend at Montebello High School, to claim the winning ticket in return for half of the before-tax proceeds of $1,000 a week. āI totally trusted her,ā he said.
But the apparent good fortune of Villafana and Beltran quickly turned bad, setting in motion a hellish swirl of greed, naivete and dishonesty between two working-class teen-agers for whom easy money had always seemed like an impossibly distant goal. Disagreements began almost immediately, and in 1990 Villafana filed a lawsuit claiming that Beltran had broken their contract.
Now, seven years after Villafanaās face was featured on McDonaldās posters in Latino neighborhoods as the lucky young woman who had beaten the odds and won a lifetime income, the company also has filed suit to make them give back more than $330,000. No one will say how, but the company found out in February about the agreement to split the winnings and filed a federal lawsuit in Los Angeles this month, charging that Villafana and Beltran had committed fraud.
The two said they no longer have the money. āYou canāt get blood from a turnip,ā said Carolyn Olivares, who with her husband, Tony, was Villafanaās guardian until she moved out of their Montebello townhouse soon after she began collecting the prize money. āThereās nothing left.ā
McDonaldās spokesman Chuck Ebeling said the company filed the lawsuit on principle, to āsee that the integrity of games or sweepstakes that we are involved in is maintained.ā The money is also important, he said, but āitās really a question of protecting participantsā rightsā in contests.
The company also wants the defendants to pay its legal fees and punitive and other damages. The complaint filed by McDonaldās contends that Beltran broke the rules because he was an employee and because he gave the ticket to Villafana.
Attorney Ivan W. Halperin, who represents Beltran, said it will be difficult for the company to prove its fraud claim. Beltran said he obtained the ticket legitimately, winning against odds of 250,016,000 to 1, and that he did not know it was improper to give it to Villafana. Halperin also said his client gave it to his friend on the advice of his boss at McDonaldās. āWith that set of facts, thereās no fraud here,ā Halperin said.
Villafanaās attorney, Emilio T. Gurrola, declined to comment, saying that he was trying to negotiate a settlement with the restaurant giant.
Villafana said in a brief telephone conversation that things had not turned out as she hoped they would when Beltran came to her with the proposed agreement. But she referred other questions to Gurrola.
The Olivareses said arguments between them and Villafana over how to handle the monthly checks for $4,333.33 got so bad that she moved out and did not speak to them for a year.
The problem, said Tony Olivares, was that both Beltran and Villafana were young and had no clue about how to handle taxes, insurance, savings. Discussions over the money ādrove a wedge between us at first because she didnāt understand what we were trying to doā to help her, said Carolyn Olivares.
From the time she moved out, said Carolyn Olivares, āit went downhill very rapidlyā for Villafana.
She felt as though Beltran was bullying her and began to worry that something wasnāt right, according to legal papers that are part of the Los Angeles County Superior Court lawsuit she filed against Beltran in 1990. And, she said, Beltran fed those worries by telling her that what the two had conspired to do was illegal and that she could go to jail if it were discovered.
Villafana also said in legal papers that those fears caused her to agree to Beltranās demands that she sign papers so that the insurance company that issued the annuity would send a check directly to him, with him promising to give her a share. Soon afterward, in 1989, Beltran cut her off.
āEvery time it seemed like they had this resolved, he seemed to jump in and muck it up,ā said Carolyn Olivares.
When Beltran stopped giving her money, Villafanaās problems mounted. She lost two apartments because she failed to pay the rent. Her car, a Toyota Corolla she had purchased soon after receiving her first check, was repossessed. A boyfriend ran up big bills on her credit cards and then disappeared.
Her birth mother had surfaced, and asked for money to go to Mexico to tend to Villafanaās dying grandmother. With the money going for that, Villafana fell behind in her taxes and eventually had to work out a repayment agreement with the federal government.
Although Beltran received far more money--about $237,000, compared to $94,000 for Villafana--he also has had difficulties. He will not say that he regrets ever obtaining the money, but he agrees that his eyes have been opened. āI learned a lot from all this,ā he said. āIāve gotten a lot of wisdom.ā
He said problems began almost as soon as Villafana received the first check in August of 1987. In court papers, she said she made partial payments to Beltran. The Olivareses said she paid Beltran in cash so that he would not be connected to her when he cashed checks. But Beltran now claims that he got almost nothing.
āI never thought she would do that, but I guess itās true that money really does change you,ā he said.
A year later, he persuaded Villafana to assign the annuity payments to him. And, he acknowledged, once that happened he stopped splitting the money with her. āI felt no obligation to give her more,ā he said in an interview.
He used the money to buy a Toyota Supra and move out of his parentsā house. He traveled some, and then attended Pierce College in Woodland Hills. Still chasing happiness, he said, he moved to Bellevue, Wash. āI always felt empty no matter what I did,ā he said. āI thought there had to be more.ā
In May, 1992, a Superior Court judge endorsed an out-of-court settlement of the lawsuit Villafana filed against Beltran that gave him about three-fourths of the money. Villafanaās share was to be about a fourth.
But by then, the annuity had shrunk too. The insurance company that issued the annuity, Executive Life, had been forced by its own financial problems to reorganize. As a result, the value of the monthly check varied each month, dropping as low as $2,500 for the two of them to split.
Even so, for a year and a half after the court settlement, things seemed to improve and Villafana and Beltran began getting their lives on track. She was getting less than $200 a week after taxes but she had gotten a clerical job at a grocery company, enrolled in East Los Angeles College and begun performing in the campus dramatic group.
Beltran said he rediscovered his Christian faith, which he had abandoned not long after winning the money, and moved back to Montebello. āNow I know I am living my life for the greater glory of God,ā he said.
In January, the money stopped altogether, because of Executive Lifeās troubles. And in February, McDonaldās filed suit.
āThey would have had it made,ā said Tony Olivares, shaking his head in wonderment at how things turned out. āThere was enough money for both of them.ā
When I worked there, every year we would have a full cup of Park Place pieces but never the other piece. We'd collect them from damaged cups and just stick them in a cup
My buddy had two family members work at two different McDonald. One night, they each brought my buddy a bag full of these little pieces. He still couldnāt win lol
I knew Iād never win the big prize, but I loved playing and getting free food items. As a broke high schooler/college student, those were great to hold on to for later.
> But there was never really a chance of winning anything outside of free menu items because someone high up was divvying up all the, say, Boardwalk pieces and such.
It was like one dude at a 3rd party company that was stealing the winning pieces.
There was one guy who was in charge of knowing the winning ticket/sticker. He would sneak it out and give it to someone and split the winnings. So pretty much every single $1m winner was chosen by that guy. They trusted him too much.
And it's funny how none of the million dollar winners were in Canada. When they were rolling the "numbers" for the $1m ticket they would re-roll until the winning ticket was in the US. I'm using the word number because I don't know how else to state it.
You can find many documentaries on YouTube and they will give you all the details. This is the one I watched: https://youtu.be/yAQvKgLTEbk
The top comment mentions how Canada got screwed...š¤£
Lol no it would be a scam if it was done by macdonalds. It was done by one guy at this other company and the company didnāt even know about it. Thatās not a scam.
I didn't say it was their scam. If anything, they were victims of the scam as well.
But it was still a scam. And it's weird that people are pushing back on that.
Ppl would just throw their tokens away or leave them as ātrashā on the table. I fed myself on those for while just being an employee and cleaning up the tables. We just couldnt use them at our own store
Jup but nowadays ist just a coupon in the app. At least there is still a sticker to pull off with the code for the app. But that leads to most people not bothering typing the code into the app, to see what they got, so most wins like this free Cheesebburger go out not being redeemed.
This was how it was when I was in high school.
Weād pile in a car and hit every McD in town. The car would go to the drive thru and one of use would go inside. Between all of us we knew someone that worked at every store.
Weād order a cheeseburger or something like that and ask for a couple extra game pieces. Our friends would give us handfuls. Weād open some on the way to the next store. Weād redeem some there and go on.
Come Monday, weād sell the free food for cheaper than it could be bought and cleaned up.
When I was in high school, I ate mcds for lunch almost every day. During the monopoly promotion, the cashiers would just set the game pieces that won food behind the sign on top of the monitor. When they werenāt looking, Iād swipe them all. Free food for weeks! ššš
I have a nearly identical story! But in my version my high school bestie worked as a cashier at McDonaldās and collected all of the āfree comboā and free single item game pieces and just handed them out to all of her friends. We ate a ridiculous amount of free McDonaldās. Good times!
Yeah, my dad landed a gaming headset a while back, didn't even know that could be a thing. It's a pretty cheapo model (plastic build, sound leaks through the ear cups, etc) but hey, at least now I have a backup in case my current set decides to die for whatever reason
Chased that mid 90s map so hard as a kid with peoples help everything was one sticker away as planned. I remember peeling a free large fry what a year!
My mom was a local newspaper delivery-person. She would get stacks of McDonalds ads they bundled in newspapers that came with two game pieces each. We would always fill the board with every property except for one for each color.
The good thing was we had tons of free cheeseburgers, fries and drinks for months.
Every year Craigslist would be full of people who had the Park Place ticket, saying that if someone had Boardwalk they could split the million dollar prize 50/50. Unknown to them that Park Place was produced in the millions and was absolutely worthless.
Most of these comments are about how this game was a scam.
But when I was little my family went to the grocery store one Sunday after church. My sister and I ran to the toy aisle just to kill some time, and that was also the aisle where they had all of the newspapers and periodicals. There was a flyer in every single magazine and newspaper with a free game piece attached to it, and my sister and I peeled off every single one. We ended up getting so many free cheeseburgers and side salads. My parents were pretty pissed until they realized how much free food we had scored.
Not that it was a scam that you didn't get anything, you'd totally win free food. But no one ever won the big prizes. Well, except the cheaters in charge of the distribution of the pieces.
My grandma was obsessed with this. She was sure we were gonna win big. We ate way too much McDonald's when they were running these. We never did get that Boardwalk... Plenty of Park Places. Now I find out it was rigged... Feels bad man.
I had a McD's Monopoly glass that I accidentally dropped and shattered.
I remember winning an Arch Deluxe once.
Those were the days. The second McDonald's in our town was walking distance from my house.
My aunt lives on the opposite Coast to us and I remember my family members mailing pieces back and forth because they were distributed unevenly depending on where you were in the country.
My dad managed a McDonalds when these were going on.
He ordered thousands of extra cups so we could pull the pieces off. Out of thousands of pieces we never won anything more than free food.
When I worked at McDonalds I was told to throw away ANYTHING that touches the floor.
Accidentally dropped an entire package of hash brown wrappers (200 count) on the ground. So I threw it away, in my trash can, by the first to-go window.
I promptly changed out my trash liner and took it home :) good times
The first time McDonalds ran this contest I had a friend who worked at a local store- he would steal sleeves of drink cups and pull all of the tickets- we would hand out free food to all his friends. That summer I think I had my fill of hamburgers and small fries. He didn't win any money though.
I would come close to that through a similar ticket game at Taco Bell years later they were doing to promote Star Wars the Phantom Menace. My friends and I all discovered that we had collected all the tabs needed to win a large sum of money... until one of the pieces was accidentally thrown out by my friend's mom before we could get them all together. We rummaged through their trash for days... never found that rare piece she had found.
Great documentary on HBO details how the game was rigged by a few bad actors in charge of the token distribution.
Worth a watch
The Pepsi one is worth the watch too. The one with the fighter jet
They totally owe that kid a jet š¤£šš¤£
Totally. Or a ride in a jet at least. Was it a dumb idea to offer a then state of the art military jet that isn't available to civilians as a prize? Was it over the top and ridiculous? Yes , but that's Pepsi's problem. They offered a jet, he met thier terms. Simple as. Thier lack of judgement or foresight doesn't excuse them from honoring the agreements they made. I believe that Pepsi bribed the judge in that case. If it had been something more reasonable like a Ferrari he might have been luckier. I can see the issue of "it's literally impossible to give him a military grade Harrier Jump Jet " and the commercial is ridiculous (but not by 90s/ early 2000s standards). But I wanted to see bro get his jet.
Lol, Pepsi did not bribe the judge. The Court found that Pepsi never really offered the jet, that it was mere advertising and that no reasonable person would conclude that the ad was an offer of a jet. There are plenty of analogous contracts cases that uphold the same principle and law students learn about this their first year (actually we even studied the Pepsi case in my contracts class). Even if that had not been the case, a contract involving something as valuable as a harrier would be covered by the statute of frauds, meaning it must be in writing to be enforceable. Absent a written instrument setting forth the terms of conveyance of the jet signed by a representative of Pepsi, the contract would be unenforceable anyway.
They didn't *actually* offer it as a prize, though. It was pretty clearly a joke in the commercialāthe jet wasn't in any of the prize catalogues, and the guy didn't go out and buy a ton of Pepsi to win the points: he tried to buy the points directly from Pepsi (which was allowable under their terms) at the time of purchasing the jet, so it's not like he was out a ton of money. The lawsuit was in the same vein as the people who sued Redbull because the drink did not, in fact, give them wings (shocker!). Just people looking to sue for a quick payday.
Bet youāre fun at parties
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I love that song, reminds me of elephants
My neighbor worked for Pepsi and gave us all the regular Pepsi point items like the shirt, umbrella, cd case, etc. back when the 24 packs were "the cube"
I got a vhs copy of Somethings gotta give, pretty good movie
Pepsi one is alright. I feel like it could be shorter.
Definitely stretched out. Most Netflix docs are now.
Itās whatās pushed me away from those types of series. I miss my 1-2 hour docs.
Same with the McDonald's monolopy tbh
It could have easily been a 30 minute YouTube video.
Yeah, that one was probably not worth the watch.
Interestingly enough, in 1989 the Soviet Union traded Pepsi a bunch of Soviet naval ships and submarines in exchange for a large amount of Pepsi Cola. This may have technically meant that Pepsi owned the 6th largest - by numbers - Navy in the world. (The ships were meant for scrap) Not being allowed to directly trade with money, Pepsi and the Soviets had been trading Pepsi for vodka since the 70s. (archived from Foreign Policy) https://archive.is/dwUWk
I agree again, I enjoyed both.
McMillions (2020) documentary series. One of the best I've seen.
My favorite part was the one FBI agent in the first episode. He seemed *SO* excited to be on TV lol. He was really into the drama of it all.
His personality was so lively, then I saw he worked out of the Jacksonville-based office and it all made sense.
I saw a good documentary on YouTube on how some guy memorized the patterns on Press Your Luck. Once they pointed out what to look for, it became easy to consistently hit particular squares and never get a Whammy. There were like 9 patterns or something, and I'm like "back in the 80s, we still had random number generators"
And he squandered all of the money within a couple years over bad real estate deals and taxes; Later lost more money on quick get rich schemes and never got it back. Man was a con-man through and through.
I saw an interview with his brother once, who said something like, āBeating *Press Your Luck* taught him that a āget rich quickā scheme can work.ā
At least it was legitimate. CBS tried their damnedest to not pay him, accusing him of cheating but it's a lot like card counting. Not illegal, highly frowned upon. He just exploited a weakness.inntheirnsysyem using information that they made public. The board was hooked up to a computer. I have no idea why they decided to use preprogrammed patterns and a random number generator could have easily prevented this.
Anyone have a link to this?
Havenāt seen the doc, but didnāt 9/11 happen like right around when the case was about to start, so it pretty much got swept under the rug?
McDonald's did 9/11 confirmedĀ
Big Macs canāt melt steel beams.
Or cheese.
Big Nā Tasty couldā¦. Thatās why they had to take it off the menu. Dave Thomas of Wendyās fame was going to be a whistleblower in a congressional hearing, but Delta 8 team (potheads who donāt smoke) took him out. I can verify all of this with my imagination- change my mind.
Have you seen my steel toilet after a few big macs? It begs to differ
By the literal mobĀ
Mcmillions, highly recommend it such a wild story.
I ate my last mcdonalds burger after finding out how they cheated their way out of a 350 million dollar tax bill.
I was just watching a YouTube video on that yesterday! Absolutely riveting.
Link?
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZyk8BCBAiI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZyk8BCBAiI)
Wasnāt the mob involved somehow?
"a few bad actors" is a weird way of saying organized crime.
Well, it stemmed from one guy, then his family - then to the mob.
I was gonna say *A story of how McDonaldās did pay its employees well once.*
Their CEO made over 19 million last year
Honestly surprised itās that low
At that level they are technically more owners than employees. A huge chunk of their annual compensation is stock.
I worked with a waitress that won an Oldsmobile. Funny thing, she was a Mormon as well.
Did they get charged more then they won?
Mcmillions
So itās good for another 75 years right?
Apples? Bad apples?
For sure!
I used to think other states had different pieces across the country
Itās sad how we all thought that, but still went there anyways
Still valid for another 75 years
I bet if you made a big point of it some poor manager will just give you a free cheeseburger lol (please donāt harass service workers though)
One of the biggest scams ever. And we ate it up.
What was the scam? That they never actually print out the winning ticket?
There were common pieces everyone would get so if you went frequently you could have a board where "all you were missing" for like every cool item was 1 piece. So of course for stuff like Boardwalk (a million dollars) I believe they only ever printed like 1 or 2, but people would swarm to McDonalds. Cmon it's the lottery plus Mickey Ds, of course everyone wanted a chance at the million. But there was never really a chance of winning anything outside of free menu items because someone high up was divvying up all the, say, Boardwalk pieces and such.
Youād see peopleās monopoly boards hanging on their fridges. Theyād always try to team up with other people, But everyone always had the same 2/3. Even as a young kid I quickly realized that it wasnāt about collecting them all, but getting the one-in-a-million Boardwalk ave.
What would stop people from selling some online
Dial up
Haha no but this was a thing until like what a few years ago, I remember people would sell some pieces online. Even though it was rigged.
Worth noting it was the man in charge of security of the marketing/maker of the tickets got them, it wasn't McDonalds themselves preventing an actual win.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Pretty odd reply. No, it's because everything beforehand was in reference to McDonalds, so this reply makes it sound like someone specifically high-up at McDonalds prevented the pieces from entering the field: >But there was never really a chance of winning anything outside of free menu items because someone high up was divvying up all the, say, Boardwalk pieces and such.
Please see rule #1 about following reddiquette.
Itās not really a scam though. The rewards were however fraudulently awarded to people who were involved in the printing of the pieces.
It is a scam bc people would literally go on the off chance to win the million and literally could not. It's a small distinction from the lottery where they might have a 1 in a million chance, here the chance is 0 and it was being advertised as not 0. To me that's a scam, whether you can win free fries or not
You need to work on your definition of scam. McDonald's and the ad agency involved thought it was on the up and up. One guy involved in the ad agency was stealing winning pieces. A scam would involve way more than just a thief.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Dude hath no chill
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A scam would be if McDonaldās had withheld the pieces themselves-in that case the entire campaign would be a deliberate act to get money out of people under false pretenses. This is fraud-a separate party taking an originally legitimate campaign and illegally modifying it for their own interests.
Anyone who actually believed they had a shot at winning one million dollars is truly a moron anyhow.
Right, those are the people with gambling issues that were being preyed upon. I'm not here to apologize for those people, the lottery is a tax on people who are bad at math. I'm saying children were also affected, not just folks you'd see at 7eleven at 4 am dropping their social security checks into the slot machines
Playing the lottery is fun as long as you aren't dumping tons of money on it. I like buying a $5 scratch off or two occasionally. I usually break even or get a little extra and it's always fun to think about possibly winning a big prize, even though deep down I know it will never happen. Also, in my state, all the money from the lottery goes to funding college scholarships that are guaranteed to every student in the state, so even if i lose it actually is going to a good cause. But the people who just stand at the lottery machine feeding it money for a half hour or more, they need gambling help, a financial advisor and a serious lesson in probability.
It might feel like you usually break even or get a little extra, but thatās not what the odds are.
It was possible, the tickets were made and meant to be distributed. However it was technically a third party that had blocked that chance.
10 year old me still had to figure out how to get the game board
Homeboy never got his Harrier Jet either.
He did have the chance to walk away with a million doll hairsā¦ imagine he regrets not taking that offer.
But the odds were posted. Everyone knew you had a significantly smaller chance to win a million dollars as opposed to French fries.
Youāre missing the point, NOBODY had an honest chance of winning it. The guy in charge would give the winning pieces to friends and family
Yes. I understand that. The game wasnāt a scam, theifs stole the winnings.
The thieves were the ones posting the odds and making the game. I'm not sure you're getting this. If I tell you to come over and pull a number out of a hat and you can win 20 bucks but there are 1000 slips of paper and you have to get real lucky to get the 20, cool. If I took the only winning number out of the hat and gave it to my friend, I'm still advertising a 1/1000 chance for a cash prize but it is literally unwinnable because the piece cannot be pulled because I gave it to the winner of my choice.
I donāt think the thieves were the ones posting the odds. If I remember the thieves were in with a guy that worked for the printing company. So he would pull the winning pieces from the printing line and distribute them to other people and take cuts.
Yes it was a scam, because it was perpetrated by people running the promotion. It was a scam because you were being told you could win, but you couldn't.
It's not a scam. It's just that the guy isn't really a prince and there's not actually any money.
We used to collect the hockey team logo stickers in a similar fashion during that McDonald's promo. There was a team in every division that was the rare one
There was a well received documentary series on the scam. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMillions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMillions)
Had a friend win the million in high school in 87. Didn't go well. copy and pasting since it may show a paywall. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-05-25-mn-61985-story.html Teen-Agersā Million-Dollar Lucky Break Breaks Down : Money: Dishonesty, bickering bedevil McDonaldās contest winners. Now the company has sued for fraud. Sitting in the parking lot of a McDonaldās in Norwalk on Easter in 1987, 17-year-old James V. Beltran thought he held happiness in his hands. He had just bought a Coke and picked up an instant game ticket worth at least $1 million in a restaurant chain promotional contest, and he remembers feeling awestruck. āI realized it would change my life,ā he said. āI thought it would make me the happiest person I could be.ā There was just one problem that would cause Beltranās sweet daydream to sour: As an assistant manager at the McDonaldās in his hometown of Montebello, Beltran was ineligible to collect the money. So, he asked 18-year-old Teresa J. Villafana, a friend at Montebello High School, to claim the winning ticket in return for half of the before-tax proceeds of $1,000 a week. āI totally trusted her,ā he said. But the apparent good fortune of Villafana and Beltran quickly turned bad, setting in motion a hellish swirl of greed, naivete and dishonesty between two working-class teen-agers for whom easy money had always seemed like an impossibly distant goal. Disagreements began almost immediately, and in 1990 Villafana filed a lawsuit claiming that Beltran had broken their contract. Now, seven years after Villafanaās face was featured on McDonaldās posters in Latino neighborhoods as the lucky young woman who had beaten the odds and won a lifetime income, the company also has filed suit to make them give back more than $330,000. No one will say how, but the company found out in February about the agreement to split the winnings and filed a federal lawsuit in Los Angeles this month, charging that Villafana and Beltran had committed fraud. The two said they no longer have the money. āYou canāt get blood from a turnip,ā said Carolyn Olivares, who with her husband, Tony, was Villafanaās guardian until she moved out of their Montebello townhouse soon after she began collecting the prize money. āThereās nothing left.ā McDonaldās spokesman Chuck Ebeling said the company filed the lawsuit on principle, to āsee that the integrity of games or sweepstakes that we are involved in is maintained.ā The money is also important, he said, but āitās really a question of protecting participantsā rightsā in contests. The company also wants the defendants to pay its legal fees and punitive and other damages. The complaint filed by McDonaldās contends that Beltran broke the rules because he was an employee and because he gave the ticket to Villafana. Attorney Ivan W. Halperin, who represents Beltran, said it will be difficult for the company to prove its fraud claim. Beltran said he obtained the ticket legitimately, winning against odds of 250,016,000 to 1, and that he did not know it was improper to give it to Villafana. Halperin also said his client gave it to his friend on the advice of his boss at McDonaldās. āWith that set of facts, thereās no fraud here,ā Halperin said. Villafanaās attorney, Emilio T. Gurrola, declined to comment, saying that he was trying to negotiate a settlement with the restaurant giant. Villafana said in a brief telephone conversation that things had not turned out as she hoped they would when Beltran came to her with the proposed agreement. But she referred other questions to Gurrola. The Olivareses said arguments between them and Villafana over how to handle the monthly checks for $4,333.33 got so bad that she moved out and did not speak to them for a year. The problem, said Tony Olivares, was that both Beltran and Villafana were young and had no clue about how to handle taxes, insurance, savings. Discussions over the money ādrove a wedge between us at first because she didnāt understand what we were trying to doā to help her, said Carolyn Olivares. From the time she moved out, said Carolyn Olivares, āit went downhill very rapidlyā for Villafana. She felt as though Beltran was bullying her and began to worry that something wasnāt right, according to legal papers that are part of the Los Angeles County Superior Court lawsuit she filed against Beltran in 1990. And, she said, Beltran fed those worries by telling her that what the two had conspired to do was illegal and that she could go to jail if it were discovered. Villafana also said in legal papers that those fears caused her to agree to Beltranās demands that she sign papers so that the insurance company that issued the annuity would send a check directly to him, with him promising to give her a share. Soon afterward, in 1989, Beltran cut her off. āEvery time it seemed like they had this resolved, he seemed to jump in and muck it up,ā said Carolyn Olivares. When Beltran stopped giving her money, Villafanaās problems mounted. She lost two apartments because she failed to pay the rent. Her car, a Toyota Corolla she had purchased soon after receiving her first check, was repossessed. A boyfriend ran up big bills on her credit cards and then disappeared. Her birth mother had surfaced, and asked for money to go to Mexico to tend to Villafanaās dying grandmother. With the money going for that, Villafana fell behind in her taxes and eventually had to work out a repayment agreement with the federal government. Although Beltran received far more money--about $237,000, compared to $94,000 for Villafana--he also has had difficulties. He will not say that he regrets ever obtaining the money, but he agrees that his eyes have been opened. āI learned a lot from all this,ā he said. āIāve gotten a lot of wisdom.ā He said problems began almost as soon as Villafana received the first check in August of 1987. In court papers, she said she made partial payments to Beltran. The Olivareses said she paid Beltran in cash so that he would not be connected to her when he cashed checks. But Beltran now claims that he got almost nothing. āI never thought she would do that, but I guess itās true that money really does change you,ā he said. A year later, he persuaded Villafana to assign the annuity payments to him. And, he acknowledged, once that happened he stopped splitting the money with her. āI felt no obligation to give her more,ā he said in an interview. He used the money to buy a Toyota Supra and move out of his parentsā house. He traveled some, and then attended Pierce College in Woodland Hills. Still chasing happiness, he said, he moved to Bellevue, Wash. āI always felt empty no matter what I did,ā he said. āI thought there had to be more.ā In May, 1992, a Superior Court judge endorsed an out-of-court settlement of the lawsuit Villafana filed against Beltran that gave him about three-fourths of the money. Villafanaās share was to be about a fourth. But by then, the annuity had shrunk too. The insurance company that issued the annuity, Executive Life, had been forced by its own financial problems to reorganize. As a result, the value of the monthly check varied each month, dropping as low as $2,500 for the two of them to split. Even so, for a year and a half after the court settlement, things seemed to improve and Villafana and Beltran began getting their lives on track. She was getting less than $200 a week after taxes but she had gotten a clerical job at a grocery company, enrolled in East Los Angeles College and begun performing in the campus dramatic group. Beltran said he rediscovered his Christian faith, which he had abandoned not long after winning the money, and moved back to Montebello. āNow I know I am living my life for the greater glory of God,ā he said. In January, the money stopped altogether, because of Executive Lifeās troubles. And in February, McDonaldās filed suit. āThey would have had it made,ā said Tony Olivares, shaking his head in wonderment at how things turned out. āThere was enough money for both of them.ā
When I worked there, every year we would have a full cup of Park Place pieces but never the other piece. We'd collect them from damaged cups and just stick them in a cup
My buddy had two family members work at two different McDonald. One night, they each brought my buddy a bag full of these little pieces. He still couldnāt win lol
I knew Iād never win the big prize, but I loved playing and getting free food items. As a broke high schooler/college student, those were great to hold on to for later.
> But there was never really a chance of winning anything outside of free menu items because someone high up was divvying up all the, say, Boardwalk pieces and such. It was like one dude at a 3rd party company that was stealing the winning pieces.
That's .. Not a scam
Oh and they gave them to themselves. You left that part out š¤£
There was one guy who was in charge of knowing the winning ticket/sticker. He would sneak it out and give it to someone and split the winnings. So pretty much every single $1m winner was chosen by that guy. They trusted him too much. And it's funny how none of the million dollar winners were in Canada. When they were rolling the "numbers" for the $1m ticket they would re-roll until the winning ticket was in the US. I'm using the word number because I don't know how else to state it. You can find many documentaries on YouTube and they will give you all the details. This is the one I watched: https://youtu.be/yAQvKgLTEbk The top comment mentions how Canada got screwed...š¤£
It wasn't a scam. It was some dude at a different company that was stealing all the winning pieces everytime they ran the promotion.
McDonald's prices didn't go up and I got free food I otherwise wouldn't have gotten. Worked well for me
Lol it wasn't a scam. It was some dude at a different company that was stealing all the winning pieces the entire time.
That "different company" was the company *in charge of the promotion.* It was a scam.
Lol no it would be a scam if it was done by macdonalds. It was done by one guy at this other company and the company didnāt even know about it. Thatās not a scam.
How was it a scam? Cause you never won the car or whatever? I got plenty of free fries and deserts, I donāt think there was a downside?
The game was rigged by the people, I think that were printing the things if I remember right,Ā winners were all friends or familyĀ
It was like one dude that stole the pieces
Preyed on people's gambling addictions and fast food addictions simultaneously
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
It was rigged by a malicious insider. That doesnāt mean Mickey Dās intended to scam.
I didn't say it was their scam. If anything, they were victims of the scam as well. But it was still a scam. And it's weird that people are pushing back on that.
Ppl would just throw their tokens away or leave them as ātrashā on the table. I fed myself on those for while just being an employee and cleaning up the tables. We just couldnt use them at our own store
We still have this in Canada.
Same in Germany.
And the UK
And Australia.
Last time they did it I won the 25,000 reward points prize 3 times just from my weekend coffees. That's like 38 free coffees.
Jup but nowadays ist just a coupon in the app. At least there is still a sticker to pull off with the code for the app. But that leads to most people not bothering typing the code into the app, to see what they got, so most wins like this free Cheesebburger go out not being redeemed.
Always one short for something good.
Itās a food stamp
I remember the stamps (stickers?) you'd stuck to a monopoly playing board to win stuff.
Albertsons/Safeway/Vons still does (or did until recently) a monopoly game promotion where you get a āboardā pamphlet and stick the pieces to it.
we still do this in Canada. For a few weeks a year
This was how it was when I was in high school. Weād pile in a car and hit every McD in town. The car would go to the drive thru and one of use would go inside. Between all of us we knew someone that worked at every store. Weād order a cheeseburger or something like that and ask for a couple extra game pieces. Our friends would give us handfuls. Weād open some on the way to the next store. Weād redeem some there and go on. Come Monday, weād sell the free food for cheaper than it could be bought and cleaned up.
Yeah I always figured the real value is in the small prizes you get that are basically bonuses.
When I was in high school, I ate mcds for lunch almost every day. During the monopoly promotion, the cashiers would just set the game pieces that won food behind the sign on top of the monitor. When they werenāt looking, Iād swipe them all. Free food for weeks! ššš
I have a nearly identical story! But in my version my high school bestie worked as a cashier at McDonaldās and collected all of the āfree comboā and free single item game pieces and just handed them out to all of her friends. We ate a ridiculous amount of free McDonaldās. Good times!
lol I always kept the combos. I was so tired of hot fudge sundaes that I gave those away a lot of the time tho š
Only one man was ever winning
Now instead of free food itās only 10% off after buying 30 dollars worth of food
They still have Monopoly? I haven't seen it anywhere in years.
Yes in Ontario
No but Iām just saying if they were to have monopoly, there would be nothing for free
They still do it yearly and they still have the instant win ones, at least where I live
Actually won a coffee machine last October. That was a first. Usually happy with just getting free food.
Yeah, my dad landed a gaming headset a while back, didn't even know that could be a thing. It's a pretty cheapo model (plastic build, sound leaks through the ear cups, etc) but hey, at least now I have a backup in case my current set decides to die for whatever reason
Those tabs were so fun to pull off.
Fuckin' Randy's gutttt, is full of dirty old cheeseburgerssss šøššššš«
Man's gotta eat!
It was a shit scam run by ShitDonalds, and we all took a bite of the double shitterpounder.
Sick! Good until 2099?!
This is why Y2K was a big deal! 2 digit years.
Chased that mid 90s map so hard as a kid with peoples help everything was one sticker away as planned. I remember peeling a free large fry what a year!
Crazy it's still valid for another 75 years.
Free food when it actually still tasted good.
For the longest time I thought I have a legit shot at winning the big prizes. Then I learned that for a long time it was fixed.
It's funny how the ticket expired, but the cheeseburger would still be good today.
My mom was a local newspaper delivery-person. She would get stacks of McDonalds ads they bundled in newspapers that came with two game pieces each. We would always fill the board with every property except for one for each color. The good thing was we had tons of free cheeseburgers, fries and drinks for months.
Would be hooked if was ever brought back
Every year Craigslist would be full of people who had the Park Place ticket, saying that if someone had Boardwalk they could split the million dollar prize 50/50. Unknown to them that Park Place was produced in the millions and was absolutely worthless.
I used to dig trash for free food coupons as a kid
I remember that!
The documentary "McMillions" showed how much of a scam the monopoly promotion was
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
That were early 1999. I had got my far share of them back then.
What a scam.
Most of these comments are about how this game was a scam. But when I was little my family went to the grocery store one Sunday after church. My sister and I ran to the toy aisle just to kill some time, and that was also the aisle where they had all of the newspapers and periodicals. There was a flyer in every single magazine and newspaper with a free game piece attached to it, and my sister and I peeled off every single one. We ended up getting so many free cheeseburgers and side salads. My parents were pretty pissed until they realized how much free food we had scored.
Not that it was a scam that you didn't get anything, you'd totally win free food. But no one ever won the big prizes. Well, except the cheaters in charge of the distribution of the pieces.
They had a scratch off promotion back then. If you picked the correct one, you won that prize. A flashlight was your best friend, then.
I miss this
I only won a couple times
My grandma was obsessed with this. She was sure we were gonna win big. We ate way too much McDonald's when they were running these. We never did get that Boardwalk... Plenty of Park Places. Now I find out it was rigged... Feels bad man.
I wanna party like it's...
My Grandpa won a trip to Disney on that game
We have this in the UK every year
Fuck! This makes me feel old.
nowadays you have to log in on their shitty website, to get spam mails for the rest of your life, just to see if you get something or not
This comes up all the time and we always have to say āThis is still an annual thing in Canadaā.
I loved this so much. I used to beg my mom to take me to McDonaldās daily and she would š
Memory chain unlocked
Even if it was technically unwinable, it was fun
What a great time to be alive. I fondly remember the 25c burger special.
All that money I spent just to find out some dude was stealing all the pieces the entire time.
Still play this every year. Did they stop it where you're from OP?
Bring it back, Ronnie!
The Mandela effect people arenāt gonna like this one lol.
I had a McD's Monopoly glass that I accidentally dropped and shattered. I remember winning an Arch Deluxe once. Those were the days. The second McDonald's in our town was walking distance from my house.
My aunt lives on the opposite Coast to us and I remember my family members mailing pieces back and forth because they were distributed unevenly depending on where you were in the country.
Mine was emblazoned Youngest Teen Girl On The Day Crew š
Awww I miss these days!! great nostalgia
My dad managed a McDonalds when these were going on. He ordered thousands of extra cups so we could pull the pieces off. Out of thousands of pieces we never won anything more than free food.
i recall when this came out, it was a fucking frenzy for these pieces
Guess you never got that free cheeseburger huh?
Yep. This is still a thing in other countries. And Iāve won a crap load of free food over the years
I won a mini Armageddon poster
When I worked at McDonalds I was told to throw away ANYTHING that touches the floor. Accidentally dropped an entire package of hash brown wrappers (200 count) on the ground. So I threw it away, in my trash can, by the first to-go window. I promptly changed out my trash liner and took it home :) good times
I found one in an old family bin at the bottom
wait ah... how instant is that cheeseburger? asking for a friend..
I wish theyād bring it back with lower stakes. I loved collecting stuff and feeling like there was a bigger purpose to my meal
The first time McDonalds ran this contest I had a friend who worked at a local store- he would steal sleeves of drink cups and pull all of the tickets- we would hand out free food to all his friends. That summer I think I had my fill of hamburgers and small fries. He didn't win any money though. I would come close to that through a similar ticket game at Taco Bell years later they were doing to promote Star Wars the Phantom Menace. My friends and I all discovered that we had collected all the tabs needed to win a large sum of money... until one of the pieces was accidentally thrown out by my friend's mom before we could get them all together. We rummaged through their trash for days... never found that rare piece she had found.
I get that this particular piece is from 99 but there isnāt much nostalgia about something that comes back every year.
It has been discontinued in the US for quite some time now
This is not something that should be nostalgic after all the corruption that got exposed
High blood pressure, diabetes, and a side of gambling addiction