I shop at Rainbow Foods because it’s close by and the only other grocery stores around are either super expensive Lunds and Kowalski’s or hippy natural organic Co-Ops. Every few months Rainbow has some promotions contest where you get little scratch off tickets to win free groceries or whatever and this time around they’re doing a Monopoly game. Awesome! I enjoy games and winning stuff and I shop at Rainbow anyway.
There’s just one problem. It’s not Monopoly. It’s not a game. It’s hell.
First off. The board isn’t a Monopoly board. It’s not a square, no passing go, collecting yada yada. I know they’re not going to be an exact replica of the Monopoly board but even the McDonalds game makes the pieces look like the property squares. On the Rainbow game you get a ticket –
you get one for shopping there an extras if you buy specially marked items.
Tear off perforations on both sides and open it up and you get four slips –
Right side: Four “game pieces” that have some grocery item on them. Left side: Shitty $0.25 coupon for some thing you’ll never buy like single serving frozen french fries.
Each game piece has a letter (A-Z) and a number. You find where each of your tickets goes on the 107 possible spots on the board, lick the back of the piece and place it there.
The back side of the board is covered in places to put game pieces, too. You have to look all over both sides and usually you just find that you’ve already filled the spot that piece goes to.
The only thing that even relates this game to Monopoly is that the Monopoly guy is on the board, you’ll spend hours “playing” it and you’ll end the game frustrated and angry. Honestly, though they could have as easily just called it Jenga or Twister.
There’s plenty of great prizes to win, though. A $250,000 “dream home”. 25 grand in cash, 5 grand in groceries. There’s also plenty of shitty prizes available, too, like $5.
They had the Monopoly game last summer, too and I played. I got the board, a bunch of tickets and put them all in. I usually just waited until I had like 50 of them because I was lazy and spent the better part of an hour finding the right place for the 200 game pieces. I won two dollars. When I brought it in to get my sweet reward the cashier said that I was like the third person to ever come in with a winning board and the other two people were two dollar winners as well.
What’s even worse is that I’m playing again. Of course I am. I’ve got a pile of tickets just waiting to be licked –
Looks like I know what I’m doing all afternoon.
That’s not even all of them. I usually shove them in my pockets when I leave the store an forget about them. Find them 2 hours later at home and just put them on the nearest flat surface. On the bright side looking for them will give me an excuse to clean the place.
So that’s what I’ll be doing. Licking dozens of ticket backs and placing them on a game board like a goddamn factory worker thinking of ways this game could be even less fun. Here’s what I’ve come up with so far –
*Put something on the back of the tickets to make it taste bad like fish oil.
*Instead of pictures of grocery products on the tickets have pictures from concentration camp prisoners.
*All the coupons that come with the game pieces are for sardines.
Off to work! I’ll let you know if I win anything (of course I’m not going to win anything).
When McDonald’s had one of those Monopoly games going I spotted the weakness right away: they distribute as many copies as they want of all the non-winning pieces, but they print exactly ONE winning piece and then hand deliver it to the winning location. But how do they know that the person receiving the winning piece won’t pitch it in the trash? The valuable single-copy winning piece that grants a million dollars when presented along with one of each of the ubiquitous non-winning pieces? Simple: they simply notify the winner in advance, making sure that the winner is someone they know.
And of course that’s exactly what ended up happening.
Once you get to the point where you only have one or two open spots on each prize you can just make a list of the missing numbers and compare each ticket to the list instead of flipping back and forth.
Last time Rainbow did it’s “Monopoly” game I dutifully peeled, sorted, and stuck hundreds of pieces to the board. I won exactly nothing. I strongly considered mailing my board (which was so full of the hundreds of non-winning pieces that it wouldn’t fold correctly) to them along with a note asking if there was a prize for the person who collected the most pieces without actually winning anything. This time I’m happily doing most of my grocery shopping at Target where I get 5% off for using my Target credit card. That is a far better reward than a dry tongue and half a dozen “instant win” “coupons” where i win two more crappy tickets to peel apart and still not win a real prize.
Lets list the one’s we dont have in an attempt to make a rare list:
A606;B603;C599;D593;E588;F584;G582;H577;I575;J570;K567;L560;M;557;N555;P550,551;Q543,544;R538,540;S534;T526;U522,524;V518,519;W514,515;X508,511;Y501, 505
maybe we can trade the number or seperate the prize if we exchange our own information. how do u all think,
I played this last summer too. I collected so many pieces that I figured out what the “rare” piece was for every single prize. I didn’t win SHIT.
The fact that you won $2 last time will keep me playing this time. Pshaw, like I wasn’t gonna anyway.
Checked on Rainbows website and most of the winners are in WI. Damn cheeseheads! Why do I even play this stupid game!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It’s waste of time rainbow monopoly
I have T527. if anyone has the other rare T530, we can split. reply to blog