Champ prize, or prize chump?
Sep. 5th, 2000 09:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexpgpOn the way to the airport yesterday, Lee and I stopped at an ATM and I picked up a drink from a vending machine. Something called Powerade, manufactured by Coca-Cola. The variety I picked was Fruit Punch, of a sort of a fire-engine red color that’s more a testament to a the skill of someone who knows way too much chemistry than to any hue Nature ever placed on any edible fruit on this planet
Anyway, about halfway through the drink - and halfway to the airport - I notice that this is one of those "look behind the label" promotional editions of soft drink. I peel the label and am momentarily nonplused with the words "FIRST PRIZE" followed by a long number, apparently to be used for redemption.
This is intriguing. First prize? Moi?
Then I start to read the weasel words on the label. I am invited to visit www.powerade.com and check out what I've won. The back of the label warns me that I can only use the redemption number once, which makes sense. I am also warned that I may visit the site no more often than five times in any 24-hour period. Wow, I think, a site that actually discourages visits! At the very bottom of the ukase stands the restriction, "Limit 1 Grand Prize & total 10 First Prizes per e-mail address/household.
Nuts. This is starting to look bad. They're placing a limit on "Grand Prizes" to one per household? So, how many, exactly, "Grand Prizes" are there; and how many "First Prizes" might there be? I begin to think that the momentary spurt of adrenaline I felt when I read the words "First Prize" was bogus, that the meaning of the phrase was being deliberately diluted by a bunch of marketing pukes whose idea was to furnish copious quantities of "First Prizes" to the thirsty multitudes. I am thinking I got more of a "gambler’s rush" back a long time ago when a friend and I searched an old, abandoned house on a mutual friend’s property in New Jersey and found three old silver dollars and a couple of dimes in a desk in the attic.
For some reason, I was also reminded of various and sundry offers my wife and I received, back ages ago when we lived up north in Jacksonville, to come down to this area of Florida to claim one of several alluring prizes. The only condition, mind you, was that we'd have to come - both of us, it was made clear - to listen to a time-share pitch. Invariably, among the large cash prizes, televisions, cars, and other prizes whose values are hard to fake, there would be prizes such as: a free vacation to Acapulco (to listen to yet another time-share pitch) or a "genuine" diamond pendant (a stone that would look small on a flea’s leg, mounted on genuine, um, metal). I remember one outfit even offering a real home computer as a "possible" prize if we'd only come down and listen to their pitch (some of you may remember this cute toy; it was the Sinclair 1000, which died commercially after dropping in price to about $10, suggested retail).
Anyway, this morning, I try to hit the Powerade site, only to find that the browser on this jalopy of a computer just can't handle all the bells and whistles the site designers embedded into the page. It’s no use, so I've stopped trying, and I'll be dipped if I'll waste a long distance call, as the back of the label suggests, to find out more. (I'm still feeling rotten about my Netcom experience of last night.) I'll try again when I get home. If the prize is, in truth, something cool, great. I suspect, however, that the game of collecting the prize will not be worth the candle burned to play it.
Cheers...
Anyway, about halfway through the drink - and halfway to the airport - I notice that this is one of those "look behind the label" promotional editions of soft drink. I peel the label and am momentarily nonplused with the words "FIRST PRIZE" followed by a long number, apparently to be used for redemption.
This is intriguing. First prize? Moi?
Then I start to read the weasel words on the label. I am invited to visit www.powerade.com and check out what I've won. The back of the label warns me that I can only use the redemption number once, which makes sense. I am also warned that I may visit the site no more often than five times in any 24-hour period. Wow, I think, a site that actually discourages visits! At the very bottom of the ukase stands the restriction, "Limit 1 Grand Prize & total 10 First Prizes per e-mail address/household.
Nuts. This is starting to look bad. They're placing a limit on "Grand Prizes" to one per household? So, how many, exactly, "Grand Prizes" are there; and how many "First Prizes" might there be? I begin to think that the momentary spurt of adrenaline I felt when I read the words "First Prize" was bogus, that the meaning of the phrase was being deliberately diluted by a bunch of marketing pukes whose idea was to furnish copious quantities of "First Prizes" to the thirsty multitudes. I am thinking I got more of a "gambler’s rush" back a long time ago when a friend and I searched an old, abandoned house on a mutual friend’s property in New Jersey and found three old silver dollars and a couple of dimes in a desk in the attic.
For some reason, I was also reminded of various and sundry offers my wife and I received, back ages ago when we lived up north in Jacksonville, to come down to this area of Florida to claim one of several alluring prizes. The only condition, mind you, was that we'd have to come - both of us, it was made clear - to listen to a time-share pitch. Invariably, among the large cash prizes, televisions, cars, and other prizes whose values are hard to fake, there would be prizes such as: a free vacation to Acapulco (to listen to yet another time-share pitch) or a "genuine" diamond pendant (a stone that would look small on a flea’s leg, mounted on genuine, um, metal). I remember one outfit even offering a real home computer as a "possible" prize if we'd only come down and listen to their pitch (some of you may remember this cute toy; it was the Sinclair 1000, which died commercially after dropping in price to about $10, suggested retail).
Anyway, this morning, I try to hit the Powerade site, only to find that the browser on this jalopy of a computer just can't handle all the bells and whistles the site designers embedded into the page. It’s no use, so I've stopped trying, and I'll be dipped if I'll waste a long distance call, as the back of the label suggests, to find out more. (I'm still feeling rotten about my Netcom experience of last night.) I'll try again when I get home. If the prize is, in truth, something cool, great. I suspect, however, that the game of collecting the prize will not be worth the candle burned to play it.
Cheers...
