• next thing u know theyre going to make the chest of this guy and put it on the shirt!damn.

• The contest is over, so i dunno who's actualy reading this, but i wanted to share my little story. When i was about 5, i saved UPC's and change for weeks and sent away for Captain Crunch. I can't remember even quite KNOWING what i was getting, but weeks went by before i finaly got a stuffed Captain Crunch in the mail. He's itchy, and not well stitched. I have him to this day.

• Amarygma's stroke puppy deserves honorable mention at least. That not only sucks as a prize, that's an indictment of the entire industry. "Eh, this one's all focked up. Nevah mind, I'll just wedge it down in there good and no one'll be able to see." ANd that lazy bastard was just the last in a long line of I-don't-give-a-crap employees who let quality control take a backseat to digital nasal inspection.

• After running in a community fun-run and doing pretty well as an under 12 (coming second for my age group) I was ecstatic when notified that because I was in the top three for my age, I would be eligible to receive a smashing prize. The winners were announced for the various categories, and everyone went up to get prizes. Gift vouches, books, cash etc etc. Then I was called. I tore up to the podium and was awarded... ... a 3 litre tin of pink paint. This was the prize as offered by the hardware store. A single tin of salmon coloured housepaint. I can't think of a worse prize for an eleven year old. I get angry thinking about it now, and it has been over a decade and a half since. ZZ

• When I was little, I lived for our trips to The Old Spaghetti factory. The spaghetti was pretty decent, and they included ice cream with the meal, and I really couldn't have given a pair of fetid dingo's kidneys about any of that. The draw of The Old Spaghetti Factory was the kids' menu. On one side, it had the menu, which consisted of one option, Spaghetti. No tough decisions. On the other side was the evening's entertainment, my sole reason for existing that entire week. The menu itself was an awesome punch-out-and-fold trolley, complete with people in recessed punch-out windows, and punch-out train wheels. It was an orgasmic 15 minutes of joy to assemble, following the easy instructions printed on the leftover scraps of children's menu (the first couple times I got help from Dad, but soon I was a pro). There is still a photo up at my parents' of me, in my Sunday best, intently assembling the Old Spaghetti Factory Children's Menu Trolley Of Joy And Wonder And Possibly Unending Bliss. One day (it was some sort of special occasion), my parents, sister, and I arrived at the OSF, and I was smiling ear-to-ear at the prospect of the evening's activities. We were seated, and the children's menus were distributed. One side had the menu with one choice, Spaghetti, but the other side did not have a trolley, nor did it have the only other acceptable option, some surprise project that would have been MORE awesome than a trolley, like a DOUBLE DECKER TROLLEY WITH LASER TURRETS! No. The other side of the menu had not a punch-out trolley, but a punch-out conductor's hat. I was heartbroken. Bambi's mother dying was small potatoes compared to the travesty, the crimes against mankind, the cause of sheer and utter pain against all that is right and good in the world. I bawled. Parents tried to do damage control, to no avail... though thankfully I was not a very loud bawler. They knew it sucked too, and no amount of talking with the staff could find a lingering trolley menu in the back room. We even sat at a table in an actual trolley, but that didn't matter. They had replaced an awesome toy with a piece of clothing. It was like trading a Hot Wheels playset for a Burger King crown. Defeated, red-eyed, and dripping in boogers, I assembled my conductor's hat in 30 seconds flat, and was bored out of my mind for the next 20 minutes, with the final instruction for hat assembly playing over and over in my head, where it haunts me to this day: "Wear your hat with a smile because you look so nice!"

• @ Kayla I'm pretty sure the Nerd-Rage Nation would rise up to help someone in your situation. That whole "hero fantasy" and whatnot coming into play. Least you kept your wits enough to get out of that before too long. No one deserves that.

• Ethnic Redneck you fool! Hasbro made gijoe and the steel brigade trooper was/is awesome

• @ Kayla Those are the WORST, the happy meal bad relationships that take you FOREVER to find out what cheap crap you've ended up with. Ugh, you know what makes a man manly? The opposite of that. Go out this halloween, find a boy dressed as a D100, because that will make him nerdier than you, and he'll KNOW it. So he'll know how lucky he is right out of the box.

• Since it's too late to enter, i'll talk about a great prize I won. It's October 1990 and the Nintendo PowerFest (the one in "The Wizard") was coming to town in November, and there was a contest on TV to win 4 VIP passes. Being a huge Nintendo nerd, I sent my entry and crossed my fingers. A few weeks later, I get a call from the TV station to come PICK UP MY 4 VIP POWERFEST PASSES! I took my best friends Joe, Rick and Ralph, and it was FUCKING AWESOME! I got to play Mega Man 3, Castlevania 3, and Dr. Mario weeks before release! I even got to play California Raisins, which Capcom never released. I ate my first gyro, and I've been hooked since. I did compete, but I blow at Rad Racer, so I didn't get too far. Otherwise, it was a day i'll always remember.

• I have never been the most atheletic child. I often prefered reading or playing nintendo 64 over playing some kind of sport. Even when I tried, my coordination and speed sucked to the point that the only thing I played and was "good" at was pretend Quidditch (even then I was never fast enough to catch the ball) . So it comes no suprise that when it was Sports day at school, I was expecting to walk away tired and empty handed no matter how hard I tried. Event after event passed. The potatoe sack race? Fell down within two hops, came in dead last. The marathon? Ran as fast as I could as I watched friend and enemies easily glide past my exhausted body. Then came the egg catching contest. All I had to do was toss and catch. Taking out the factor of speed, me and my partner managed to defy all odds and win! I was estatic. Never before had I won at a sport (though I would be hesitant to call egg catching a sport) No longer was I in last as I watched others get the prize. I ran up to lady with my mind racing. "Will it be a trophy?" "Will it say congradulations or you're #1 like they do on T.V.?" I didn't expect a big shiny trophy, just a small something that told me I didn't suck at every sports related thing. I was so young back then, so naive. I extended my hand, heart pounding. The lady smiled and put my prize in my hand. I looked down to see my earnings and found... a rock with googly eyes on it. All that toil, all that effort and what do I get? A goddamned flipping rock with googly eyes. Ooh, googly eyes, that sure changes the fact that you teachers just gave me a rock and told me it was a trophy! I know it was only a sports day and that I wasn't going to get anything big. It wasn't a tournament and it wasn't a big deal to anyone; it was just to have fun. It was, however, a big deal to me at the time and I won't forget the dissapointment of getting a rock as a bloody prize.

• I believe that in every person's life, you're only allowed a certain number of prizes to be won by random chance. Here's how I lost one of those chances and got a really stupid prize. I was 7 years old, and it was December. Every year, the city we were living in (Highland Park, IL) would have a huge citywide raffle with all kinds of toys and prizes donated by the local businesses. The raffle came at the holiday party, and to say that there were thousands of great prizes, nearly half of them big-ticket toys, would be a gross understatement. The year before, my brother had won a really cool Matchbox car carrier (he promptly stole half my cars to fill his carrier) and had been lording it over me the whole year that I had never won anything at the raffle. My brother, Mom and Dad were all at the party when the raffle started. About three quarters of the names were called, and kid after joyous kid came up to claim their huge boxes of expensive swag. My hope was diminishing greatly, but there were still a few really big prizes left. Suddenly, I heard my name get called! Come up to claim your prize! You won! I don't remember how I got up on the stage, but I know I was totally elated to finally! win! something! Expecting a cool toy or television for my room (there were three of them left!) I was told that I was the proud winner of... A needlepoint kit. Of the Marx Brothers. I was seven! What the f**k would I know about the Marx Brothers, or needlepoint? I could barely tie my shoes right, much less do needlepoint! However, there is a bright side to this story. Both my parents were avid needlepointers - my Dad who, despite being a burly 400 pound giant of a man, also crafted many beautiful pieces of needlepoint - and they were thrilled that I had won a very expensive needlepoint kit. I had to pass that damn needlepoint of the Marx Brothers every damn day for the next ten years, as they hung it in the hallway right outside my room. Now that I'm older and know who the Marx Brothers are (and like them), I kind of wanted to get the needlepoint, considering it was mine, and it was kind of cool now that I could appreciate it. I asked my Dad whatever became of the needlepoint they did, and he told me they threw it away when they moved. Tim "toy geek"

• Argh at time zones (and my inability to keep up with deadlines...)! I was going to say about the time when I read about 50 books for school only to win a peice of paper with the date written on it that was described as a "fashionable bookmark", but I think I'm too late. :-( Ah well, I'll quickly say about a good thing I won instead, just for the sakesies. The only other time I won anything. It was at McDonalds and we had to design in a clown and my two cousins and I entered because each entry got a free milkshake (yeah, they don't do that any more and it sucks). So I won, I'm pretty sure it was because I was the only person to design a female clown...but anyway, I got a game about Tigger, which didn't work, but I also got an Alice in Wonderland video and that did work and still does. I sometimes get it out and watch it for the nostalgia....So yeah....

• Well played Lincolnparadox,well played indeed. [/thumbs up]

• Many years ago as a young child, Canadian Tire had a Christmas promotion where they gave out licensed coloring book pages. they said you could bring in the colored page and receive a free toy!!! Now the coloring pages where of awesome toys of the times like Sectaurs and Thundercats. Me and my older brother gave my younger brother (who was too young to know any better) the My Little Pony pages to color since we wanted the awesome boys toys to ourselves. So we colored like we never colored before and our parents took us back to get our awesome Sectaur toys and were instead we are given a no name brand hot wheels car torn out of a no name brand dinky car 30 pack. I'm a young gay boy, I don't want a shitty dinky car. I want action figures so I can create stories with drama!

• I kid you not, I got a toothbrush and toothpaste for winning a writing contest (school district wide, no less) in the fifth grade. The teachers told us it would be a worthwhile reward if we applied ourselves to the effort, so I did. I worked diligently on that goddamn piece for almost three weeks. I skipped doing other homework to polish that essay until it shone like a turd lacquered over many times (talk about polishing the old road apple). What did all my hard work get me: a fucking toothbrush and toothpaste... and not even the good Colgate kind of toothpaste, but rather Crest. Crest had a harsh taste at the time and Colgate was considered near candy-like in its essence. I felt I got royally screwed but learned a hard lesson: Good work, like good deeds, gets punished in full! Homer Simpson had it right when he told his children "The lesson is 'never try'."

• @Rivka I was thinking more on your "there's always the hand puppet." I don't know why I feel compelled to tell this, but in the relationship with my ex, I was the hand puppet. He was a nerd as well, and he was teased and what have you (hey, we ARE nerds, and I DID dress up like a D20 one year) so when we got together he thought he'd try to show his dominance and manliness with his fist and my face. So, shit deal, right? Right. Unfortunately, he didn't start the fist-face action until year 4 of our relationship. I wasted FOUR YEARS OF MY LIFE. Ugh. Why does it have to be Monday? I have to work on Mondays. I can't drink on Sundays. Bah.

• @Doctor Death -- Awesome. Maybe you should stop going as a ghost for Halloween?

• Being born was a pretty crappy prize...

• All I got was a rock... and a broken tooth.

• This actually wasn't that long ago, but 2 years ago they were giving away light up spoons in some cereal, and if you took up the plastic spoon it looked just like a crappy Sonic Screwdriver ala Dr. Who. I fucking spent $27 bucks getting all colors, only for their batteries to run out 2 weeks later. And guess what, you couldn't replace the batteries. I still don't have a Sonic Screwdriver. Or lipstick for that matter. :(

• all i got was fucking cereal...

• Wow reading these brought back some memories of things i wanted as a kid. See I grew up in a large family and we were what most people would call poor. Well I remember when they would put records (remember those?) on cereal boxes. Being the sci-fi Star Wars nerd I am i about freaked when I saw that C-3POs cereal had a special Star Wars related record on the box I begged my parents to let me get the cereal instead of our usual bag of "puffed rice" So I finally convince them to get me the cereal and I rush home to listen to the record. I cut out the record as soon as I got home and placed in on the turntable....only to learn that you cant really make a music record out of cardboard.....the part that made it even crappier was i had to pretend to my parents that it worked and was a good record so they would not realize they spent the money on crap.

• The worst prize I ever got was when I ate cracker jacks for the first time in like ten years. The caramel popcorn was just as shitty as I remembered, and the peanuts were just as delicious and in-abundant as I remembered, I wondered if the toy would be as cool as I remembered, back when they gave you little plastic cars and shit to put together. But no, it seems that sailor and his dog on the Cracker Jack box have fallen on hard times. The food itself must be cheap enough to produce, but apparently they can't afford a nickle's worth of plastic anymore and have ever since started putting shitty little pieces of paper in the boxes. You don't even build little cardboard cars, you get fucking (lame) jokes and "card tricks" and shit... That box of Cracker Jacks was the end of my childhood.... well, the Cracker Jacks related part of it, anyway...

• At the time nobody thought anything of it. The middle-aged man with the bad hair was a miracle man, a small town Willy Wonka with all the material goodness we could ever desire. I still remember the school assembly, him in front of the stage with a table laden with small lava lamps, inflatable furniture, boxes of candy. All we had to do was fill out some cards and send them to our friends and family. Yes, we were one of many victims of a stupid magazine subscription fund-raiser thing (except I don't think the money went to our school...). It was like going to a bad arcade. If you sent out 4 subscription cards you got a keychain, 8 you got a slightly less shitty key chain, 200 you got a koosh ball etc. The Grand Prize was a ride (in a limo!) to a mcdonald's drive-though, which I didn't get but my friend Jimmy did (his description made us all the more envious). I must have filled out at least twenty of those stupid cards, yet all I remember getting was a "weeble" (tiny pom-pom sticker with feet) and a handful of stale tootsie rolls. Then the magic man left town, and in his wake only a tarnished trail of disappointment and shame. And we've got "American Girl" mags in the mail ever since.

• It was the early 90's and the Disney afternoon was at the height of it popularity. I read my cerial box one morning that said I can mailaway for 4 PVC figures based on ducktales. You bet your sweet ass I jump on that. Once I had them all I had to get the ones based on Chip n Dale, Talespin, and Gummie Bears. I had my parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, everyone buying a certain brand on cerial and saving those UPCs for me. The reason I am writing about this is because I was two UPCs away from getting the Darkwing Duck ones before the offer expired. It didn't matter because they were so cheaply made that my little brother broke them as soon as he touched them. That was the disappointment. All the time wasted, all the promises made to relatives for the UPCs, all the extra chores I did for the shipping and handling, and they broke with one throw against a wall.

• I came in third in the first- and second-grade spelling competition at the local fair. I got a gigantic trophy, pimped out in bling, which I had to carry around the fair for the rest of the day. Invariably, people asked me what I'd won it for. "Spelling." Nonplussed, they congratulated me on winning. "Naw, I came in third." Cue disappointment all around. To this day, when I look at the trophy, I feel like the smartest slow kid in the class.

• y2jbrak; I admit nothing. I do however believe my body of work speaks for itself.

• @ Bradley547 Thanks for the apology but does that mean you also happen to be admitting to being Satan? Or that you being Satan have "collector nerd friends". That second part I feel is more troubling.

• Fuck novelty spoons! Furthermore, fuck Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of The Crystal Suck!

• Man, reading all these posts makes you depressed. I will never go to a church or eat at McDonalds again. :(

• ... Shit, I actually did drunk comment. Um, sorry? :) Please don't hate me. @Rivka Thanks for the support!

• When I was stll in Cub Scouts, we had our big dinner at the end of the school year. There was also a "Chinese auction", where you signed bought tickets and put the into drawings for prizes in different containers for each. Being a kid, I of course put tickets in to a drawing for a large stack of comics. I also put in for things I thought my parents would like for the house, cuz I was a....well, I wouldn't say I was a good kid but I was an "okay" kid. Anyway, the drawing comes around at the end of the night. I got my mom the curio cabinet she saw and wanted. I won a "decorative fireplace shovel." I'll repeat that: a "decorative fireplace shovel." Then the "big" drawing came down: the one for the stack of comics. I was on the edge of my fifth-grade seat as they drew the ticket out of the bowl. Then they read my name. I ran up, grabbed the comics, thanked the guy who took out my ticket, and ran back to my chair. We got home, and I took stock of the comics I now owned: ten AstroBoy comics (U.S-style, not manga), a single WildStorm comic, and...an Archie comic. Yes, I won a stack of comics. But they were comics no one reads. It was like they dug out a stack from the dumpster behind a comic shop. I think there was even a Liefeld comic in there, but I may have blocked that out.

• In my house when I was young we took turns getting the prize in the cereal box. We would empty out the cereal slowly into a big bowl and then after the prize was found pour it back into the box. My mother had bought a big box of Rice Krispies, and it was my turn for the prize, After emptying out the box like I done before I found my prize: NOTHING!!! The item was to have been a figure, I think an eraser, in the shape of one of the RK Elves. And I lost my turn and had to wait for three turns before I could get the next prize next time.

• SO.. When i was 9 or 10, I was persuaded to attend the Vacation Bible School at the big evangelical church my neighbors went to, rather than the one at the liberal, small, Epsicopal church my parents normally took me to. It was fun, there were tons of kids, games, singing, and enough other entertainment to block out all the hellfire and brimstone they were shoveling at us. Once a day they would send us into the big main assembly area (it may have been a gym, or an all purpose auditorium, for some reason I remember it as being like a school cafeteria with no tables.) and give us their "Jesus" talk, along with passing the hat. The very first day, they announced a "contest". The boys would be on one side, and the girls on the other, and which ever side brought in the most shiny new quarters, got a SPECIAL PRIZE! OH BOY A SPECIAL JESUS PRIZE! You just KNOW it's gonna be a frisbee if it's a special JESUS prize. This church is WAY better than my church, we NEVER got JESUS FRISBEES!!! All they ever promised at Mom and Dad's church was to help poor people and make the church better and help poor people, who didn't have food. Screw them...JESUS FRISBEE! So I went home that afternoon and pulled every damn quarter I could out of my piggy bank, a whopping SEVEN DOLLARS worth! Being that if i was 9, it would have been 1980 (yes, I am old) that was a hell of a lot of money, considering that Star Wars action figures cost all of 2 bucks, at most back then, and I was gonna get em ALL! But it was ok, because I was CONVINCED I had a JESUS FRISBEE coming. The next day we all gathered in the big room, and divided up, and I dumped my quarters from allowances, extra chores, couches and anywhere else I could into the plate, and waited while the overly happy counselor types counted the money. After what felt like an eternity of agony, they announced the tallies, and WE WON, by like ELEVEN DOLLARS! SWEET! WE WON! COME ON JESUS FRISB.....what the crap? They handed us out the prizes and there wasnt a jesus frisbee... it was A DUM DUM LOLLIPOP. are you freaking kidding me? I could have gotten FOUR of those from the bank teller that looked like Cheryl Ladd for dropping those quarters in the bank! The worst part, we won by ELEVEN DOLLARS!! I could have easily just dropped the 50 cents my Mom gave me for the collection plate in and had my money! I didn't know what it was called, but I knew damn well that there was irony in the fact that it was a DUM DUM lollipop. By this point the reality, and the irony of neither having a Jesus frisbee, or star wars people to show for my savings was apparent, and that stupid DUMB DUMB lollipop actually did give me a stomach ache. I went home and recounted the whole story to my parents, and know what, they didn't hook me up, and refill my piggy bank. No, they let me do extra chores to earn the money back, all damn summer, just to teach me that you can't just blindly give your money away, you have to know where it's going. Or maybe it was to teach me not to expect things in return from charity giving. Or maybe just not to trust that big ass evangelical church. I still want my fuckin Jesus Frisbee.

• @ Kayla That's a lame prize we've all gotten. Life with such boys is no box of chocolates, it is a happy meal. Shit that's no good for you stuffed in a crappy package, but oh, is there a Sonic the Hedgehog electronic mini game at the bottom? No. There's a fucking Ronald McDonald hand puppet. There's always a hand puppet. Drink up!

• well i actually paid extra for some crappy cereal just to get that exact same indiana jones spoon at the top. it broke the day i got it and every time you tried to eat cereal, it would fall into the milk and be lost until you sifted through it with your hands. oh and the light worked for like a week. it was just recently thrown away for being worthless.

• I remember working my ass off for Cub Scout shit prizes, Happy Meal transformers, and mailing in UPCs for some Silverhawk that was on one episode of the short-lived show. Today, I have a boy of my own. When he starts begging me to buy another 6 cases of popcorn so that he can get a glow-in-the dark frisbee, I put it into perspective: Those 6 cases will cost me $50. If you stop asking, I'll blow $25 on you at Nobbies ("Your Ultimate Midwest Party Superstore"), no questions asked. Not only does this strategy get me out of buying popcorn and candy bars, but it even keeps me from waiting in line for skeeball ticket prizes at Chuck E Cheese. Plus, I even picked up a little something for myself: a knock-off Sword of Omens shaped like a Walrus. I'm not sure if there ever was an anime about the Lightning-Pinnipeds, but I like to imagine the adventures that SeaLion-O and his companions have had fighting the evil Peruvian despot "Chinchorro."

• What? Jonesy!? You mean to tell us you didn't go spelunking through that reptomammal's innards to retrieve that head? You are a disgrace to all nerd everywhere. =[ I shall call for your naD'Ha before the High Council immediately! =\

• I collected enough Star Wars figure proofs-of-puchase to pre-order a Boba Fett figure with a spring loaded missile launcher on his back. BEFORE Empire was released, and A GODDAMN SPRING LOADED MISSILE LAUNCHER!! Sadly, some doof-clown must have choked on one of the missiles because I got one with with a fixed missile pack. Some nights I wake up and weep for what could have been... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_r06o57BzQ8

• So the other day, I was traveling back home from vacation with my family, and we started getting hungry so we stopped over at Wendys for lunch. Me, being the uber teenage nerd that I currently am, got a kids meal all the while looking foreward the toy that I was promised! The pictures show'd it being a cute little doll, maybe a beanie baby or something. So I get my meal, reach in for my toy... and I find a 'Magic Tree House' book on CD. Not just ANY book on CD! One about Gorillas. I just sat their staring at it for about 3 minutes, till my mom told me to eat. One of my sister's got a diffrent one to, her's was about Shakespeare. Now... you guy's might be thinking, "Oh! That's not so bad! A book on CD!" Well we put it into the car's cd drive, and start listening to the narraration by a strange woman, maybe the author, as she tries to make diffrent voices for the character's, though the only thing I was imagning was a couple of kids with a cold. Plus her gorilla story was pretty jacked up as it is. And just to add icing to this pathetic excuse for a toy... At the end was a song from the new "The Magic Treehouse Musical" And it's the brother singing to the sister about how he'd be 'lost' without. First off, these kids are about 10 of 11... The older brother sounded like he was about 20 and the girl sounded like she was a ditzy brain dead cheerleader. And then they started comparing each other to things like peach's and cream, cornflakes and milk, and even a saddle and a stirup... like a 10 year old kid's gonna know what a stirup is! But it was pretty funny when everytime the brother said "What would I~~~~~ do without you!" my mother would say "Get a girlfriend." And heck, if I had a light up spoon, I would eat all my meals in the dark, just so I could use it to it's full potential.

• I begged my parents to take me to a Pizza Hut because they had a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles promotion going on. When I left, I left with a double whammy of ass; both the shittiest promotional prize I ever got and the most shameless, shittiest albums I ever got. Ladies and Gentlemen, I apologetically present my worst promo prize. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Coming Out of Their Shells Picture, if you dare, the rabid youth market of the early 90's TMNT fans. Slap 'Ninja Turtles' on anything and we'd buy it. There were the toys, VHS tapes, comics, clothes, and hell, even vanilla pie snacks. Why not a shitty album? The music sounded like 4 yuppie hacks cashing in on tongue-in-cheek, randomly inserted 'turtle' or 'ninja' references to sub-par 3 chord songs. It was like listening to Nickelback after a serious cocaine and TMNT bender. It was terrible.

• Hmm, I can't remember too many instances of being burned for prizes. I rarely won anything in an actual contest, so whenever I did, I usually didn't complain. I did win some costume contests, often returning a prize to Walmart for more than the top cash prize was worth, though. Happy Meals and cereal boxes, I figure I knew what I was going for. If I got something I didn't want, it was most often incidental; I saved the "we HAVE to go!" trips for the stuff I really wanted. But what I hated, absolutely <em>hated</em>, was when there would be a certain number of types of prize, and there would always be the one you couldn't get. Back when Garfield was well-loved, there were some pencil-toppers which would make a movement, usually by pushing on the tail; Garfield would kick or smile, and Odie's ears and tongue would move. Ironically, getting the orange Garfield was a cinch; in fact, I probably got more of him than any other. Yellow Odie was nearly impossible, but I think I got the pink Odie (who I originally thought to be Arlene when it was briefly shown on the commercials) often enough as well. Had to trade out at school for the yellow Odie. I think the blue Garfield (who, for the same reason, I thought was Nermal) was rather elusive as well. That was bad, but not as bad as what I guess my "official entry" is (not that it can compare to the tales I've read this day): Even worse were the lenticular cards in the boxes of Nintendo Cereal System. There were a whopping two different cards to collect, as I recall: Link from The Legend of Zelda, and Mario. And while I liked Link, I liked Mario all that much more; in fact, I felt guilty that I actually preferred the Zelda berry flavored cereal to Mario's fruit flavor. And all I EVER got, from box after box, was damn Link. I had to trade something for a Mario card, and I think I somehow lost that one by accident. Kind of ticks me off to this day, frankly. As an aside, I remember one of those stupid "sell stuff for school" bits where they took us into a trailer classroom full of prizes. There was a plush Mario there, one of those old Acme amusement park ones. Wasn't so good in hindsight, and I got a better one later, but at the time, <em>I wanted it so bad</em>. The way his eyes were looking off to the side, it was as though he was looking right at me; I thought it was my destiny for me to own one of those. Turns out, my destiny was discovering that people were stingy bastards when a 4th grader comes to your door, desperately trying to make his sad little dream come true, and they don't buy a single blasted thing. I never bothered with such utterly futile crap again.

• You know what Rob? I'm going to say it. It may be the 75percent moonshine talking.... but the absolut (haha!!) shittiest prize I ever gotten wsas my ex boyfriedns number. You hear that! yeah, that's right./ Wow, new low? Drunk-TR-commenting? sorry but I'm drinking away the pain of not winning a TR shirt coupled with the memory of not ever winning a prize ever. Thanks Rob. Now to go and drink more from the Moonshine Lightening bottle. I don't care if that makes sense or not. It's 11:13pm and I've been drinking since noon. Be thankful I'm still a little coherent.Sadly, I know I'll remmeber this in the morning. Expect an apology comment.

• So about 5 or 6 years ago I got Dragon Ball Z gummies and I only got them to get the Dragon Ball Z Temp Tattoos. But to my disappointment my shitty box didn't have any. Later I wrote a angry letter and never heard from them of got my tattoos.

• I won a very large, stuffed Tony The Tiger toy in a raffle when I was 5 or so. The thing must've been twice as big as me from what I can recall. The worst part is that it looked like someone had tried to have sex with it. There was a taped up hole in the rear to keep the beans from spilling out.

• Once, when I was little, some meddlesome kids disturbed Lucky in the act of conjuring his Lucky Charms. This caused to marshmallows' colours to become as topsy-turvy as a Gilbert & Sullivan opera. Non-jerkwad kids were implored to restore the cosmic order by letting lucky know what colours they were supposed to be. I sent in my letter post haste! For my dedication to the Leprechaun cause, I received a colour letter of congratulations ... and absolutely nothing else. They ran a contest where the grand prize was a letter. Why even bother asking for entries if your prize isn't worth a pair of dingo's kidneys or even a tinker's damn? I can't believe I wasted my time, envelope, and stamp on it. Lucky's a cheap fucking prick. That's the last time I help a leprechaun. This never would've happened if Warwick Davis was the spokesperson for Lucky Charms!

• My school (Private) used to promote academics by creating competition among the students. Something about keeping GPAs high and some other snobish private school crap. I busted my ass getting good grades and hopefully winning the top prize (A full year scolarship.)In 5th grade I came in third. I recieved an invitation to that year's Graduation Ceremony in which they were going to hand the prizes. My prize for being the third highest ranking 5th grader in my school... A Pencil with my school's logo and a note from the school praising my Academic performance.

• 1. I'm lactose 2. I love milk Well as a child I loved to get those cereals with any "free" prize inside, in the end I had collected quite a few. Who wants to eat dry cereal that taste like blood, so I would always eat my breakfast with milk. So yeah I got many shitty prizes, coupled with the runs.

• Anyone remember surprise packages? Those paper bags that you bought for a dollar that were filled with cheap candy and horrible monstrosities that the Chinese tried to pass off to us as "Toy Prizes"? These things traumatized me as a kid. I'm convinced that ending up in these bags was the fate of defective stock that factories knew they would never sell if people could actually see what they were getting. Part of what made these things so terrifying was the randomness of the whole thing. The worst offender (and my "WORST PRIZE EVER!!!!") requires a little history. When I was a kid I loved Maya the Bee. I adored Maya and her happy fun adventures that reminded me of summer and all that was good in the world. For a brief while these surprise packages had little Maya the Bee pencil toppers. I was aware that the Maya one was out there, and I had already collected Flip the grasshopper. To set the scene, the day is grey and cloudy, and I'm a child of five walking to the playground with my older sister, about to enjoy a package of surprise and wonderment that she has bought me. But the joy of that candy, those colourful swings and the merry-go-round will not be mine this day, for I open the HORROR package at the halfway point of the walk. Inside is a green Maya the Bee Pencil topper! Jubilations! But wait, what's wrong with her face? What THE FUCK is wrong with her face?! It's like she looked into the ark of the covenant while being casually mauled by a finicky grisly bear! I dropped it to the brown gravel road, horrified, distraught, and somehow too saddened to venture much further. Soon, I wanted to turn around and go home, my sister, not knowing what the topper represented, tried to comfort me by telling me that it was behind us. Yes, Maya, the image of my happy childhood innocence was behind us, in the gravel, lifeless, faceless, with her plastic brains spilling unto the dirty ground.

• I don't know about worst prize, but my worst childhood experience with prizes is when I had to buy the super deluxe mega jumbo sized box of cereal I don't even like to get my awesome crappy piece of plastic, only to realize the prize isn't in the box. You have to collect multiple box tops and mail them with a filled out form and $5.95 for shipping and handling to get the damn prize, and then it takes months to arrive. That was some serious BS! The only thing as bad as this is the modern trend of putting codes in pop bottle caps. I am NOT going online to check to see if I might have won a mail out coupon to buy 1 get 1 half off on my next 20 oz bottle of pop!

• OK set your "Yesteryear" machine to 1982. I'm 10 yearas old and going to be a "hard worker" for the corporate machine... that is my school was starting it's Helen Grace Chocolate sales drive! Joy of fucking joys!!! This year was new for every box you sold you could get a prize... and my HOLY GRAIL was on the sell three boxespage! For a buck you got a chocolate and almond bar but also a little piece that was my new dream... the "turn you am/fm walkman into a street stereo!" YESSIREEE BOB for the small price of probably $240 (yep my parents ended up buying all the chocalte and forcing epole they worked with buy it from them! HA!!)I was going to get my first full fledged GHETTO BLASTER style STREET STEREO!!!! I recieved in the following months a small box that contained my "STREET STEREO". It was two CARDBOARD speakers that you needed to glue together and then add some wiring that made this piece of shit into what was a paper cup telephone!!! How was this little white boy going to turn into a local blaster of ghettos???? He wouldn't! That street stereo sucked my balls two times!

• Teagan Blackthorne, I feel your pain. I did something really similar. I wanted this walkman knock-off as a prize, but you had to sell 750 boxes of cookies to get it. I spent weeks walking door to door until I had blisters on both my feet. I forced my dad to drive me to the other side of town. I begged; I pleaded; I cried on people's doorsteps; I made both my parents sell at work too. I even bought 20 boxes of Apple Cinnamons (which I couldn't even eat, thanks to an allergy) from myself (it would have been cheaper to buy the walkman). Any way, I ended up selling 753 boxes. Not only did I get my fake walkman, I got the prize from the troop as well. I waited 3 months for my prize (so much for "3-5 weeks"), and as soon as I opened the box and picked up my walkman-thing, the front cover fell off and the head phone cord snapped in half. It was a a total piece of crap. I figured what the heck, I was getting another prize any way. That prize turned out to be 5 boxes of Apple Fucking Cinnamons. So at the end of this, I had one broken and useless walkman thing and 25 boxes of cinnamon cookies that I couldn't eat and I couldn't even sell because they tasted like cinnamon flavored cardboard. Thanks Girl Scouts of America!

• When Taco Bell had the board game you had to collect pieces for Episode 1, I found an instant winner piece. I sent it in and in a few weeks received a padded envelope in the mail. What was it you ask? A Jar Jar figural key chain. Nuff said.

• Oh my gosh, I am almost crying because these posts are so funny. You've made my whole day. What a great idea for a blog. Thanks!

• The custom GI Joe action figure you could order with a certain number of UPC's. I remember being so stoked that the 9-12 weeks just crawled by - and when they did finally pass - what came out of the mail? A pathetic little masked man with a cheesy little gun and all my hard work was basically re-written on an index card tucked in with him. I could have done the same thing with a Cora Commander, a sharpie, and some construction paper. Thanks Mattel, ya heartless bastards.

• I remember a while back, there was a contest at school for an iPod. At the time an iPod was the coolest thing ever, so my little childish mind was just about ecstatic at the idea of having something that my parents would never even think of buying me. So the contest was a pretty ordinary contest, stuff your entry slip in a box, attend class on time every week (which I did anyway), and don't miss any days. So I fulfilled all the requirements, stuck my slip in there, and awaited the news. Many of my friends had missed a day here or there, so I hoped my chances where better because of this. Haha. So finally the day arrived and I'm sitting in my desk pumped like crazy, can't wait. Then they read the name of the winner: not me. Some other girl in my class. Oh well, I thought, that's not too bad. But the girl goes up to claim her prize AND SHE IS LISTENING TO AN IPOD SHE ALREADY OWNS WHILE SHE ACCEPTS HER NEW IPOD PRIZE. That made me pissed. Later she told me that with this new iPod she had, it brought her iPod total up to four. FOUR FUCKING IPODS. And my poor childish soul (and everyone else who entered) felt awful. To this day, my friends and I still crack jokes about "the iPod girl."

• My brother got a CD player out of one of those cheezy "hit the button at the right time" arcades. Lasted him a whole month, too.

• 1) Everyone here got fucked harder than a nympho at a porn convention. 2) Bill: Your parents are the reason they invented bad nursing homes. 3) McDonalds should change the name "Happy Meals" to "Fuck You Meals" 4) mythbri: You should have shoved that CD up his ass. SIDEWAYS.

• I'm not going to lie, I'm the luckiest person I know. I win things generally pretty often (except on here, apparently!). When we went to the arcade when I was a kid my brother would play all the bloodiest games, but I would only play games that gave tickets or prizes. I thought I was wasting my money to play a game that didn't give you anything when there were some that did. As I was generally bad at video games, this was a sound strategy. I was 16 or so and saw a cute stuffed dog in the grabber machine somewhere (Kmart I think?). He was pretty well wedged in there but had the right head size and I knew I could get him. His little exposed eye beamed up at me adorably. I scooped him up and plucked him out of the prize shoot to check him out and hold up my glory for my disbelieving friends. He.... he was deformed. The person who stocked the machine must have noticed and tucked away his secret shame. He was sewn wrong so that his left side was all kiddywhompus and even his mouth kind of stopped on that side. There was a hole where the seam couldn't be sewn because of the error. He was also missing that side's eye and the ear only stood straight up instead of cocked cutely like the other side.

• Back when gogurt was still new and cool they ran a contest for prizes in order to boost sales. the contest worked along the lines of the golden ticket from willy wonka; a fabulous prize was to be awarded to anyone that found a silver tube of gogurt filled with confetti and instructions. the box the gogurt came in advertised cell phone quality XTREME GOGURT 2 WAY RADIOS. i went through these things like crazy trying to win. one day i reached for a frozen gogurt and instead of a delicious icy treat i had a foil packet with winner all over it. apparently it was something like a one in 16000 chance of wining. i wasted pretty much a lifes worth of luck for this contest. i sent the stub inside the tube to yoplait. 6 weeks and 3.95 shipping and handling later there was a box on my doorstep. i tore open the box to get my radios. they were in reality closer to plastic sculptures in the shape of radios. no battery hatch to unscrew, no holes for sound to come out, not even buttons that depress. even those cell phone toys for baby's make noise or record sound, these were the shittiest things ive ever seen. i was so enraged that i tied one to the top of a roman candle and lit it up. in the end i got two lumps of plastic and was short a tube of gogurt. yopliat owes me a fucking tube of gogurt to replace that fucking foiled abomination

• My vote for the winner is Superoceanlad. He sold over $1000 of chocolate, and all he gets is a plastic rosary? FUCK THAT SHIT! I wouldn't blame Superoceanlad if he converted to Satanism after that raw deal.

• My vote for the winner is Superoceanlad. He sold over $1000 of chocolate, and he gets is a plastic rosary? FUCK THAT SHIT! I wouldn't blame Superoceanlad if he converted to Satanism after that raw deal.

• I think I got this one...how about those horrible foreign coins they used to give out in Fruity Pebbles in the late 80's. I think they gave away coins from Canada, Brazil, Ecuador???. I'm ten years old, why in the hell would I want coins from around the world, especially from Brazil and Ecuador. I remember they looked like pennies and put them in the give a penny, take a penny at 7-11.

• I'd have to say it was back in the 70's when I finally got my mom to break down and buy a box of Captain Crunch. It was my first ever box of sugar coated junk cereal. And it would become my last as history turned out growing up as a kid. Anyway, the only reason I wanted it was for this little plastic submarine that you had to snap together. Somehow, it was supposed to go up and down in water by itself. I think you had to add baking soda into a tiny little reservoir in the sub. As it turned out, the thing was a big piece of crap and never, ever, not once, EVER did what the instructions said it was supposed to do. The Captain lied to me. Lousy pirate bastard!!! That and the Star Wars collector trading cards I got in Wonder Bread in the 70's and they were ALWAYS stained from grease coming out of the bag! Must have been from whatever they used at the bakery to keep the loaves from sticking.

• I haven't got much of a story, but the worst prize I've ever won is the PC game of Disney's Dinosaur. At least I didn't slave my ass off trying to win it.

• Let's face it, the crappiest prize we all won in our youth was Disillusionment.

• OOOOH! I got an idea. OK. No more heroin jokes. Does it have to be a real, physical prize? Because when you beat the Ruby Weapon, some geezer tosses you a gold chocobo. It is extremely unlikely that you've come this far in FF7 without already having bred a gold chocobo. So really, the reward for beating the toughest boss in the game is just a new shiny chicken companion to mate with your other shiny chicken to make even shinier chickens, which are all past having any kind of use at this point. And yes, I know you could have just used the 7777 trick, but what are you, a weirdo? KOTR FTW.

• This is clearly not an entry, but I'd just like to point out that a "light-up spoon" is definitely something you use to shoot dope.

• &#64;Tank-n-Spank: damn, you get points for a totally nerdy name, and for linking to a roller-derby site (my cousin was a Derby Doll back in the day). Well done! Ronald McDonald can eat a bag of McDicks, also.

• Wow...one thing I've learned from this talkback is that we were ALL fucked over by McDonalds at some point in our lives. Fuck you Ronald....I hope the Hamburgler moves up to Home Invasions and puts a cap in your clown-ass one night while you're sleeping in your own bed.....

• My worst mail order prize was a glow-in-the-dark 7UP watch. To claim the prize all you had to do was cut the UPC codes off of the metal can (resulting in trips to the ER for stitches), and send in a check to cover the shipping. Green has always been my favorite color, so I sent in my order for the regular 7UP green watch. Several weeks later I received it in the mail. It was white, said DIET 7UP and did not glow. Way to kill the dreams of a 7 year old girl, give her diabetes, and scar her hands for life.

• A wee third grader went round the block Selling "Gold C" coupon books for prizes that would rock "The more you sell, the better the prize!" Oh the treasures that befell my eyes There were R/C cars and even cash money So much goodness it wasnt even funny So I worked and sold and sold and worked There were some nice people, but mostly jerks "Get out kid, I dont wanna buy your junk!" But yet I persevered and didnt get in a funk "I can do this!" I thought. I can sell a few more! And so I did, going door to door to door. Finally after two weeks time I sold enough booklets for something divine Turned in my money and waited and yearned Oh what would I get with all the cash I earned?? The prize that I got certainly wasnt to me estimate Twas a mini green Bible with just the New Testament. I mean cmon, I was fuckin 9! What was I gonna do with that? Least it could have been a complete Bible with the interesting part. Sweet baby Jesus works in mysterious ways. *nervous laughter*

• *sigh* the only contest I ever entered was Pizza Hut's gorram Book-It! competition, where you got free pizza for reading books. I never got the top prize, but I got free pizza from time to time. My parents taught me very early that most adults were happy to exploit kids' desires to take advantage of them, so I knew form the start that most contests were scams. So I never even got to experience the excitement of entering a contest. Wow. Fuck my life.

• Many years ago, after Star Trek V [shudder] came out, there was a mail-away opportunity to buy an official Star Trek marshmallow ejector (true story), like they used at the [in]famous camping scene in that movie. I ordered it, got it, and tried it out. I wasn't expecting it to solve all my problems, or cure malaria or anything, but dammit, it SHOULD have had the ability to actually eject a marshmallow. No dice. SIGH. I had to resign myself to eject marshmallows the old-fashioned way. Which way is that? I dunno, it's a stupid concept to begin with, and I was a stupid person to even order it.

• Honeycomb cereal was giving away these honeycomb walkman radios. I wanted one so bad that we saved all the proof of purchases and sent them in. I never even GOT It. Jerks.

• Back when I was 14 or 15, my school decided to have a "Healthy Eating" week, complete with various quizzes and competitions. My friends and I entered the solo quiz where we had to choose between regular food and low-fat versions, which was, in reality, a chance to eat free cookies and pudding. We also took part in the group quiz, in a team of 4. Again, an excuse to eat free food. Then, at the end of the week, we had a whole school assembly where the winners of the various competitions were announced. Of course, we won the team quiz. Only problem was our team name - "The Hammersmith Hardmen", taken from an episode of 'Bottom'. The fact that we were all a bunch of stereotypical nerds didn't help. We prayed they wouldn't read out our details, but sure enough not only was our team name read out, but our real names. We then had to come down in front of the whole school to recieve our prizes. Which was a packet of fucking dried fruit. Seriously, like one of those lunchbox-sized ones. Between 4 of us. As the rest of the school sat there, laughing and jeering at us. It was the single most humiliating experience of my life, and the main reason I didn't enter another contest for at least 15 years afterwards.

• I'd say my worst experience was with McDonald's. It had to be. When they were going through their little phase of having girl and boy meals available, I'd spend every chance I could up there fighting to get the boy's version. I hate Barbie. I didn't want a fucking Polly Pocket. I wanted the boy options. They wouldn't give them to me though, so I wound up with a drawer-full of Barbies because my mother insisted I not throw them out. One of my older cousins agreed to get me a happy meal and trade it out if I broke down and did the chores for a week, but I refused (mind you, we were on a farm for the summer and doing both of our shares was basically slaving your whole week away). At least, I refused until the hot wheels Dark Riders one was apparently in stock at the one near us. It'd always been the one with flames, which I didn't mind missing out on, but I was strangely obsessed with collecting the Dark Rider one. So I broke down and agreed, letting him order my meal when we went through the drive thru. I had the kind of family that kept the food in the front seat, so I wasn't able to go through my bag until we got back, but I don't think anything could have ruined my childhood high when I was handed the bag decorated in hot wheels. At least... not until I opened it and found a barbie staring me in the face. Apparently, they'd given me a girl's toy by mistake.

• A few years back I was working at McDonalds and in my city they start selling coupon books for things like cones, shakes and cookies around October. I guess they dont do this at all of them only at the particular chain of McDs that was owned by some local jackass whom I've learned to loathe. Apparantly for years they've been running a contest among the ones he owns where the cashiers get points every time they sell these books or a gift card or get a supersize. To keep track you actually had to print out your own reciept and keep it so you could be in the contest. This meant you would be keeping THOUSANDS of reciepts from any order you scored a point on and if you got more than anyone else between the beginning of October and the end of November, you could win the TOP PRIZE at the employee christmas party. At first I wasn't interested until I heard that the top prizes were hundreds of dollars in cash. Big news to a guy making $5.80 an hour. So for months I whored myself out for McDs and probably personally contributed to a heart attack or 2 in the hopes that I could win enough money that I could get my car fixed and get a better job. Finally the christmas party came and it's pretty much exactly what you would expect a McDonalds christmas party to look like. Thoroughly broken lifers wishing there was an open bar, high school dropouts getting high in the bathroom and looking for a free meal and self important assholes in cheap suits thinking that we're there for anything even remotely resembling company spirit. And before you ask, yes they served McDonalds food. ... The winners of the contest were announced and I got shafted. Turns out that less than half of my reciepts were counted and the others were lost. I came in 10th. My manager (whom I had turned in my reciepts to) came in first in the management division. Then came the ultimate insult. Turns out the cash (and cruise and Flat Screen TV when that was still a huge deal) was only available to the management division. What did I get? I got an mp3 player. This was a few years after the Ipod came out and I got a cheap knock off brand that broke within a week and needed to be held together with duct tape. Plus it only held 64mb. To this day I cannot eat at McDonalds and the mere memory of working there tends to make my eye twitch.

• When I was 11 years old my elementary school had this contest where you'd guess how many friggin jelly beans they had stuffed into some jar. They said whoever could guess the closest would win an awesome prize, I wanted that prize. So we ended up lining up in the library to look at a jar of jelly beans and then wrote on these tiny pieces of paper our name and how many we thought were in the jar. Turns out I won they called it out in the middle of class so I ran out all stoked as I walked into the office I awaited my prize and what do ya know it's a water bottle(fuckers didn't even put water in the plastic piece of shit) ...I was pretty pissed I ended up throwing it away on the way back to class, basically fuck Granger Elementary.

• In my distant youth, I think I was around 10 years old, I went with a number of friends on a birthday trip to the local waterslides. It so happened that a local radio station was on site that day hosting races to see who was the fastest. After numerous heats, and many asthma-inducing trips up the enormous staircase, I was triumphant. Now, being the fastest water-slider in my age group, of course I deserved the best prize, right? Well, imagine my excitement, when I was presented with two bright shiny tickets to the invite-only advance screening of the newest (and only) movie featuring 'Weird' Al Yankovic in a starring role. That's right! I got to see UHF before anyone else. And on the way out of the theatre, they were actually handing out spatulas! What an exciting day for a young 10 year old. At least I got a free spatula.

• When I was in elementary school, my not-that-Jewish mother made friends with an epically-Jewish mother, who sent her kinder to a local Hebrew day camp and persuaded my mom to do the same. Judaism is maybe the lamest theme for a summer camp, because kids at chess camp probably like chess, and girls at Girl Scout camp (why NOT girl scout camp, mother?) enjoy braiding yarn into jewelry. But no kid likes wearing ankle-length tees over their swim suits, or saying hour-long thankful prayers in a language they don't understand for a kosher burger that had no cheese on it. There were fitness activities each day. Once I got smacked in the face by a counselor's hockey stick, which might be the lamest prize for being elected goalie. Another day they held a jumping jacks contest. The winning kid would get a mystery prize, a sizable wrapped package the counselors kept watch over. I was kind of fit and it was a pretty big box, so I jumped 110 jacks if I jumped one. So many, I got sick during the modest swim lesson that followed, but I won. Or did I? I unwrapped the mystery box to discover a smaller wrapped box inside. And so on. As the size of the mystery prize dwindled, so too did my hopes. When I unwrapped the last child's fist-sized layer, my prize was uncovered. It was one of those stupid, sickly colored helicopters that came in Happy Meals, which we all know were lame. But the lameness of this prize was two-fold. One, I had killed my small self with jumping jacks for a stupid McDonald's prize. Two, clearly the real prize had been the delicious, not Kosher nuggets that came in the Happy Meal my helicopter was ripped from, and clearly our counselors had gorged themselves on these nuggets while we campers were eating Challah with salt for lunch. This happened. I bear witness.

• This is more about a kid that I never even met than it is about myself, but here goes... In 1997, around the release of "The Lost World: Jurassic Park," some cereals carried in them a "Dino-chomping spoon." They looked dinosaur-ish and essentially worked like scissors: the lower "jaw" stayed stationary while the upper "jaw" (with the eyes and nose and everything) opened up so you could scoop out the cereal in the bowl, then you could close it so... the dinosaur could chomp, I guess. Yeah, pretty lame. Well, on the sides of these cereal boxes they had little trivia games you could play. One was a dinosaur identification game where you would fill in the blank with the name of the dinosaur. Well, as far as I can remember, one of the dinosaurs was a Stegosaurus, but the box identified it as a Dilophosaurus. I knew this was wrong, but didn't really care. However, I heard on the radio that some kid from another state wrote into the cereal company and told them about their mistake, so they were going to reward him with a free dinosaur plush toy. I thought that was kind of cool, and thought nothing else of it. However (again), a few days later, I heard another story on the radio about the same kid and how now, instead of a plush toy, they were giving him a free dino-chomping spoon. So this kid was getting shafted twice by the same cereal with the same cruddy toy. I'd say that's a pretty crappy prize, especially considering the boxes with the changed answers had a different picture hastily shopped in instead of just changing the answers. Lame.

• &#64;Stephan: AHAHA! Loves it. I'd say "Ha ha! I'm Canadian," but really Harper is not much better. It should be noted that I also have never gotten a prize out of a cereal box. I am an only child but think of it this way: You know Sheldon from "The Big Bang Theory?" How he has fiber cereal and all that healthy crap? Yeah. That was my parents. No Lucky Charms, no Frosted Flakes, not even god-damn Count Chocula. Shreddies and Mini-Wheats. Please God, Baby Jesus and the Giant Castle Fucking Squiddy with the Facebook Fan Page, let me win.

• I have nothing to add here right not, but had to say that the archive is fucking awesome. I will now be away, spending many, many hours drinking and reading.

• I seriously thought about this all day at work. I guess I liked all my childhood prizes. I can't really recall a shittier prize above another. I did enter one contest when I was 18 though( not youth obviously) which yielded horrible results. 2004 presidential election. Worst prize ever.

• OK...I damn well better win this one,for NO ONE can top the crappiness of my one and only win. When I was a kid,I entered contests and sweepstakes like CRAZY!!! This was back in the day before identity theft,plus I was like 8 anyway so it didnt matter how many times I gave out my personal info....I never won anyway. NEVER. I was starting to get bummed out and one day my Grandpa and I went to McDonalds...there on the counter was a giant stuffed chicken McNugget...wearing a sombrero. It was some kind of a promotion for Mexican McNuggets or some such crap,and Grandpa and I IMMEDIATELY decided that I had to win it...no matter the cost. We went to McDonalds every damn day and STUFFED that ballot box. After awhile it became a huge joke...it was ugly as hell and I didnt really want the damn thing so...of course I won it. I dont know why the hell we worked so hard to win something so stupid,but to this day its the one and only thing I've ever won. Despite me doing the same ballot stuffing trick years later in an attempt to win one of those Frito-Lay Ewoks(damn I really wanted one of those). Guess I'll go dress up my crappy McNugget in a hood and pretend he's Wicket....

• When I was about 9 or 10 there was a Halloween costume contest in my neighborhood. I worked on my Raggedy Ann costume for weeks, and on the day of the contest I made sure everything was absolutely perfect. I was so determined to win, when my mother screwed up the make up, I scrubbed my face and made her do it again. We paraded ourselves threw the streets, hoping to win lots and lots of candy. Well, I did win the contest, goddammit, and did I win bags and bags of candy? No. I won a 2-liter bottle of Diet Coke. Not even Coca-Cola. Diet fucking Coke. I never entered that goddamned contest again.

• My Indiana Jones spoon rules! you must have gotten a lame one, like the ant; if you had the one with a crystal skull on it, you'd be happy. The spoon delivered like the film wish it could have.

• Demon- I'll have to think of something else since you beat me to it, but DAMN! I tried my ass off to get those soggies. I had tons of PVCs, like most of us, Smurfs, Astrosniks, even fucking Care Bears, but for no reason I was thrilled with those Cap'n Crunch figures. I even built a Lego fort during the time I was obsessed with those things, the battlements ready to be manned with those sweet Glow-in-the-dark(!) Soggies. Despite having arms entirely attached to his torso, the Captain was going tonkick their asses for messing with his crunchtastic breakfast. I even managed to get Sogmaster, who was a pretty awesome guy. I actually got him twice(I ate a LOT of cruchberries) I must have like 7 Cap'ns somewhere, all worn out from practice battles with Sogmaster, and his retarded twin, Sog...Mister? The troops never arrived and the real war never began. There were 2 soggies. Out of 4 figures, with a 50% chance of getting one, is even fucking possible to come up empty after like 12 boxes? Glow. In. The. Dark!!! I bet my armada of Cap'ns laughs at the root canals they've helped cause me.

• I was a Girl Scout. Cookie sales was a big part of the Girl Scout experience. There was always a massive competition to sell the most boxes. Every year the same girl always sold the most and received the "special prize". I was determined to beat her one year and win that "special prize". I sent my father to work with the form. I walked door-to-door. I hit apartment complexes. I sold over 200 boxes of cookies and beat her. The day comes to get the prizes for the cookies. My "special prize" for selling the most was a patch that said I sold the most. A patch! My special prize for busting my butt and hocking cookies was a patch. I tiny little 1" x 2" patch.

• I remember sending off for this great offer, all for a dollar!!! You got a creepy, realistic vampire bat with glow-in-the-dark eyes to scare your friends! A Frankenstein Monster! A Life-Size Ghost! And...... on and on. I finally got this box full of shit. A tiny plastic GREEN Frankenstein's Monster like 3 inches tall. The 'amazing' bat was on a string like a yo-yo, you had to stick the 'glow-in-the-dark' eyes on it and it was like about 6 inches across. The Life-Size Ghost was on a folded up piece of paper and all the other things (I believe there were spiders and rats and such) looked like dinky-prizes out of gum-ball machine of the late '60s. Oh yeah, I figured out later that probably all this cost about like 25 cents total even with the s&h so, imagine a million kids sending away for this shit and you can see the money those bastids made. Scarred for life, dammit!!!

• I have the Indiana Jones Adventure Spoon. It's green and I just can't bring myself to throw it out.

• It's 1994. I'm in 4th grade. My school is holding a charity fundraiser hop-a-thon. Yes, a bunch of elementary school kids had to get people to sponsor them and then hop for 3 minutes. For each time you hop, your sponsor donates a certain amount to charity. The grand prize to the kid who raised the most money? A BOOM BOX. Now, for those of you who did not grow up electronically deprived, this may not be a big deal. But to 9-year-old me, whose only way to listen to music was a crappy cassette Walkman from the local Walmart, the idea of getting an actual large boombox was really fucking cool. You can bet I got my entire family and neighbors to sponsor me and then I hopped my little heart out. My hard work and ambition paid off. I raised the most money and won the GRAND PRIZE...<p> Imagine my shock, confusion, and bitterness (a feeling I would get to know well as I grew into a full blown nerd) when the "boombox" prize was placed in my hands. It was a boombox all right--A BOOMBOX PENCIL CASE. Yes, a cheap, tiny, pink, plastic pencil case in the shape of a boombox. What a scam. The fundraiser had promised the world, but delivered about as much as the Avatar trailer. The only entity that "won" that day was charity. A sad day indeed.

• When I was a kid, my parents would bribe me to get good grades on my report card by letting me pick cool stuff out of the Sears catalog and they would order it for me. At least, thats what I was told. So, I work my young bootie off and I get all good grades! Probably the best I ever got, overall. Now, I open right to the toy section, obviously, and choose the action figures of the Universal Movie Monsters (Dracula, Frankenstein, Wolfman, Mummy, Creature from the Black Lagoon and Phantom of the Opera), complete with this cool-ass looking monster playset! Man, I was stoked! I was already planning the crossover potential with my 1982 batch of G.I. Joe figures! We're talking some EPIC shit here! I had already begun steering my G.I. Joes adventures to include the introduction of the Universal Movie Monsters. The weeks ticked by. I tried my best to wait patiently. More weeks. Then, one day I FINALLY get news on my hard won reward for all my hard work and good grades. Sears said that, due to popular demand, they didn't have any more. No offer to get more, no raincheck, no apology...just NOTHING. No monsters, no playset, nothing. My parents treated it as a good time to teach me the "world sucks" lesson with this. I got no back-up prize. My reward was my good grades. What kind of lesson is that for a kid in second grade?? I can't begin to express how dejected I felt. I never bothered to get good grades anymore after that. What was the point? The lesson I learned was, "Don't try too hard for anything, because you get nothing for it in the end." AT LEAST YOU ALL GOT SHITTY PRIZES! I GOT NOTHING! Maybe I will go check evil-bay...

• Way back in the 80's there was some damn toy prize you could win in the cereal box. It was a little plastic submarine. The box showed two colors Green and Red. Well being the green color loving fool I am. I was dead set to get the green one. Well my dad looked through the cereal and could not find it. I started to get mad with it thinking they cheated me out of it til my dad stuck his hand down in the bottom of the box "in between the plastic and the cardboard". He said he found it. Pulls it out. Only for it to be ORANGE. Well at the age of 5 you really did not care. So we read the instructions on how to use it. You put baking soda in a little compartment of it and sat it in a bowl or tub with water in it. When the baking soda would get wet it would sink. Then create a gas that would lift it back up. It worked. I played with that thing for about 5 mins and it broke. The compartment top snapped right off. I finally got a cereal toy that worked like it was suppose to and it broke. After that I started eating the adult cereal. You know Honey Nut Cheerios or Whatever. Cause I hated what they did to me as a kid.

• Elementary school fair. Make it in the hole, win a gold fish. Pay 15 tokens/tickets/whatever get a little home for him. It took my $15 + the cost of the home and he died when I got up for school the next morning. Now, I can't kill off my damn fish. . .

• This requires a bit of backstory to fully appreciate. I was in Third Grafde at the time. Back when i was a kid, my school held a reading contest where everyone got into teams to read the most pages of books. You didn't get to choose your team, but you could read whatever you wanted. The winners got "The Big Mystery", which was kept secret throughout the event. Only the winners were even allowed to know what they were winning. Also, everyone, regardless of whether or not they won, got a free Arby's Kids Meal. The allure of "The Big Mystery" got the better of my fragile young mind. I had to know what it was, and it dropped me to new lows I had never knew I was capable of. After skimming through everything even remotely interesting, I took to reading books well below my age level. then I "borrowed" books from other teams. then I jusyt outright lied about the number of pages in the books I read. It certainly brought out the worst in me. Of course, none of my teammates knew about this, they thought I was just a supernerd (Which I was not at the time. My nerdiness came later. I was just an evil little bastard back then). We won the reading contest by a landslide, and could finally find out just what "The Big Mystery" was. We were all very anxious to see what it was. My team was led into a hallway by some teachers. We were about to find out what we had won. Suddenly, a guy who smelled like rotten cheese in a Babar outfit jumped out. "Why don't you kids play with Babar? He loves to dance." My teacher said. "The Big Mystery" was a dance with fucking Babar, the lamest motherfucking elephant anyone had heard of. I shouted, "NO!" at the top of my lungs, punched Babar in the gut, and ran like hell. I wanted nothing to do with "The Big Mystery" anymore. I still feel bad about punching Babar to this very day.

• The crappiest thing I ever won came out of a cereal box. It was a little lego set that included a pirate and a raft. Only the lego's weren't the standard size. What the fuck is the point of that? So when I went all nerd-like and built cool starships and such out of my other legos, my poor pirate lego sat in the sidelines and watched.

• some time ago, in the backs of science magazines--maybe even regular magazines- there was a page or two of black and white ads for gadgets and gizmos, plans for a one-person helicopter for instance, or a sitdown bicycle, or a personal favorite, plans for a hovercraft. it ranged from the scientific to the outright goofy: a 6 foot tall, glow in the dark, tentacled alien that hung from the ceiling. i saw an ad for 250 magnetic bricks. the picture was of a horse made of these bricks, beside it a man looking shocked and dwarfed by the creation. so i begged, and begged, and begged. it took weeks, but i stayed on it til mom finally gave in. i was unstoppable, unappeasable of anything else but these magic bricks and what i was to build and astonish with them. i don't remember how long it took. it could've been two weeks, but felt like much longer. when it came i was sure that they got the order wrong. the package was the size of my fist. it was a bunch of rectangles cut from magnetic tape, little giblets that would barely sit right, one on another. i went straight to the trash can. as long as it took to beg and wait for it, it took longer before i heard the last of it from mom.

• First off, I have to apologize to y2jbrak. The reason you got the crappy happy meal toys is because when I went on break from the grill, I'd go to the back room and grab anything remotely cool from the stash of happy meal toys and hide it in my car to give to my collector nerd friends. Sorry dude. My big disappointment was when I was in middle school a dude from Nasa came in and said if we studied hard and got good grades we could become astronauts. Well I studied my ass off and the closest I got to being an astronaut was when my mom packed Space Food Sticks in my lunch. Lying Nasa bastard....

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