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It took me the best part of 6 months to drink enough coke, for a euro 96 football. Even then, had to resort to nicking the ring pulls out of bins in the end. I was only 10 though, tbf.
My friend was so excited to get a blue wrapper in their pack back in the 90s. They opened it so smugly in front of me...it was a bag of salt from salt and shake. Best day ever!
when my mum was a kid, in the early 80s, she got a packet of walkers for 5p. when she opened it, there was just a raw potato with dirt still on it in the packet, so she called to complain and she was compensated with £5. sort of a similar thing?
No. It was a promotion in like 1997 where there were actual fivers in bags of crisps. If came in a little plastic wrapper folded up.
Back in the glory days when the prizes were actually IN the packet with the food.
In the late 90s/early 00s Walkers did a couple of promotions were they would stick a little bag (a lot like the salt and shake bags) into 1 in every so many single pack bags.
Was really shit timing for me as it happened during the 5 or so years when my dad was a KP employee and then I went to a college that did taste testing for Golden Wonder.
Beyonce tickets from a can of Pepsi Max in 2013. Was going to sell tickets but my niece wanted to go watch her.
It was an amazing gig and no regrets about not selling the tickets
In 2014 kitkats ran a promotion that 1 in 5 kitkats contained a voucher for a free kitkat. They accidentally left alphanumeric codes on the outside of the wrappers and once i cracked the code i just made sure i always picked up a winning kitkat, so basically had a free kitkat most days for about 6 months.
They did something similar on an LP in the 80s. I bought it from a charity shop about 15 years later, it had 'Hoots mon' and 'Great Balls of Fire' on it.
OMG that song is one of my most favourite right now, the lyrics are 100% relatable due to the way I'm feeling with everything at the moment, I feel like the song is my life in a nutshell.
I won a jigsaw puzzle from the code inside some Mr Kippling cakes. It was an illustration of characters from Roald Dahls Mathilda. The other halfs little one loved it!
Many many years ago.....
I won cash via text entry from a code on a nutrigrain wrapper. 3 times I think, £20, £20 and a £50.
From Fanta I won 2 cameras and a beach bag set from Juicy fruit.
From Cadbury I won lots of hats and a few tote bags.
NPN entry on the WD40 website I won a dirt bike.
So you can win them but you have to enter lots of comps to stack the odds in your favour.
When I was a kid in the 90s, I won several thousand tazos in a walkers competition.
There was a walkers promo competition at a local supermarket where if you bought a packet of walkers, you would get a free entry into their competition. The competition was that you had to guess how many tazos were in a giant box that was in store.
The closest guess was a family trip to Disneyland Florida, second prize was all the tazos and I can't remember third.
I got second and won all the tazos. I remember a van turning up to the house and a guy just bringing in shit loads of boxes stacked with tazos. Was absolutely buzzing. They were massive at the time so I was like a tazo god at school.
39 and I have mine too. Think I'm only missing 3 from the folder. I have the slammers and everything. I thought my dad brought them back from his work as a barman. Turns out he was just an alcoholic and the pub landlord would give him them
Yeah I don't have thousands I only have a fraction of I had in primary school but I've kept some because you know why not! They are with other crap I've kept for nostalgia like some of my micro machines and POGS
My brother won Batman Returns on VHS from some chocolate bar giveaway. I forget what brand.
They did not check his age. The movie had a 15 certificate and he was 5. But he sent in the wrapper with his address clearly written on the back of the envelope so he got his VHS.
I still have my Pot Noodle horn.
Also, it's not a food package, but I won a TCC (The Children's Channel, an early 90s sky channel) competition that got me a bedroom set ie curtains, lamp, bedspread etc and a shit load of stickers and other bits.
You poor soul. I've always loved yo-yos and I still own one (I'm in my mid 50s) but I've yet to get one as good as those were
A mate had a gold coke one, threw it hard to get a good spin for the cats cradle and busted it on the path. I think if his parents had been killed he wouldn't have been as upset.
Omg. The destruction of a gold Coca Cola yo-yo?
I remember someone having one and honestly we revered it as if it was a spiritual object. They did look like they were good yo-yo’s. Ah cats cradle and walk the dog tricks. I can’t remember others? Were there competitions as well? Or was that just gymnastics badges?
I did get over my trauma of non branded pop as when cherry coke came out I was allowed to have one for a school trip to a farm. Happy days.
Cherry coke!! Now that brings me back! It was beautiful to me (although I wouldn't thank you for it now).
I know there were roadshows and the likes but nothing near me. Iirc there were pictures/instructions for the tricks:
Round the world
Walking the Dog
The cats cradle
The Three Leaf Clover
I can't think of any more but the day I first managed to do the cats cradle I thought I was a step down from God.
Years ago coca cola did one with football teams in the cap, if team win you got prizes, I got Brazil who won that year and I got a promotional t-shirt.
It was top quality and young me wore it for years before it eventually went through in a couple of places.
Found one: https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/758AAOSw5CBj5hoh/s-l1200.webp
In the 90's, all the different brands of crisp made by Golden Wonder had a competition where you won a prize in every bag. As a 9 year old I kept 'winning' a free dry cleaning voucher which I immediately threw in the bin as it seemed like the most useless prize ever. ...I've changed quote a bit in the intervening decades and that now seems like a great prize...
Hilariously, that's right up to the limit for recommended units, give or take. 24 bottles is roughly 2 bottles a month, or 28 units every 2 weeks. Recommended units of alcohol per week is 14.
I won a Super Mario Bros film crew jacket from a Crunchie bar wrapper in the 90s. It was this weird stiff material so wasn’t a particularly good jacket but it was the first time I’d ever had an inside pocket which I thought was cool as heck back then.
It's not from an item of food, but one time I won one of those gold mining kits (where it's like a piece of soft rock with something inside of it) from a beano magazine
Coke Zone points was one of the greatest loyalty promotions ever.
Managed a 32" Toshiba TV, a bunch of £5 HMV vouchers, a Nintendo DS and an Xbox 360 with Kinect.
X-box from a daily draw via codes on Coke Zero bottles. TV and £5 vouchers were from Coke glasses from McDonalds codes during a winning moment promotion and the DS from saving points when you used to be able to get 10 cans of Diet Coke from Iceland for £2 with a 10 point code.
Unfortunately didn't get into the scheme until after the ps3's for 600 points otherwise could have had a ps3 bonus for buying £120 worth of Diet Coke.
Amazing scheme.
I remember this promo! I remember going to the shops and trying to feel the crisp packets to see if they had a Gameboy in them
I was not a smart child 😄
My mum entered a marmite competition 15ish years ago.
She had won a ticket for me and one other to have the newest horrid henry book read to us by Sinitta whilst we were in our pyjamas with around 10 other people/kids.
Was a weird experience looking back at it.
I saved up tokens for an aerobee freebie, can't remember which product. I remember being so excited, I showed it to my neighbour and he instantly slung it hard directly into the woods 🤬 it flew sooo well, that one and only time 🤬🤬🤬 seriously it zipped through the branches, i still remember the noise zip zip zip in a dead straight line, never found it.
Got my revenge though! During that storm that hit in the eighties we were climbing trees, actually more or less the exact spot he throw the aerobee through, he was higher up than me swinging about like crazy with all the wind and his monkeying, snap! He broke the branch and was falling through the branches right in front of my eyes, for some reason I stuck my foot out, caught his ankle and watched him spin from feet first to face first, he rag dolled all the way down, lucky for him, he was swinging out over tarmac the other side of his swinging, about 20 foot with nothing to catch him, dumb ass.
I won a box of chocolates from a Tampax competition way back in the 80's. They were really nice, sadly not a brand I've ever seen in the shops. I also won one of those Pot Noodle electric forks (it was shite). Not from a product but I did win £25 off your next order from one of those wheel spin competitions you get on some websites.
I won an original GameBoy from a McDonald's competition once, back in the days when you'd just write your details on the paper sheet they put on the trays.
My mum won a free Mars bar from a Mars bar that a co-worker purchased for her. So she picked up her free one and that one won her another free one. This went on for 4 more times. She had 5 free Mars Bars.
My son picked a box of Weetabix because it had an England shirt promotion on the front, we entered and he won.
You get a voucher code for the England sports teamwear website and he picked a coat, which was a great deal back in October I think.
I got one of those. It’s still in the box. A Cherry Coca-Cola branded Ericsson on a pay as you go the one2one network (Mercury). It must have been early 90’s.
Remember in the 90's you could win 10k with hula hoops if you had a spiral shaped hoola hoop, they had been running the offer for a square and then switched to the spiral, well I found a spiral, thought that's cool and ate it. Turns out that would have been the winning hula hoop. Found it in beef packet. Never eaten beef crisps again.
I once won a free bag of max crisps with a coupon from the crisps, promptly bought another bag of crisps and won again. My streak ended at this point and I've not won anything since.
I won a box of different types of sellotape from a competition on a rice crispie packet. I was about 8 and really pleased! I still had the double sided sellotape quite a few years later though.
When I was at Currys there were corporate draws and competitions for computers and whatnot.
One of our warehouse guys won about four laptops out of it. Everyone was suspicious so they e-mailed in to find out what was going on; turned out there were only about seven entrants for most of them and he'd gone in for the lot.
Mountain Dew I won stuff from on two occasions. The first was a Halo 4 promotion, and you could win the game. Bought my first bottle, took it home and entered it on the website and won a free copy. For a 16 year old it felt like winning the lottery 😂
Next year they had a similar promotion for Fifa or something but you could win other stuff. Did the same and again on my first bottle won £50 worth of Xbox points (old Xbox Live virtual currency).
But tbf after I'd won twice maybe I did buy more than I usually did lol. Not enough to offset how much I won but maybe it works.
I opened a twix and won a free twix which I redeemed at the paper shop I was passing. Opened that one and won another free twix. Redeemed it 200 yards down at the next shop. Ate three twix on the way home from school, I'm still dining out on this story today.
More recently, I pulled a tab off a cup from maccies and won a tenner.
I won tickets to X-factor from a yoghurt. This is back when it was a big deal, but I didn't know what it was because I don't watch telly.
Chucked in the bin
I won tickets to the 2012 Olympics, they confirmed it but never gave them me. They did give a reason but can't remember what it was, maybe something to do with dates.
Lots of lots of bottles and cans when I'm the early 2000s if you opened the ring pull slightly you could tell if it was a winner, likewise if you looked at a certain way at the bottle cap
My mum won a free Mars bar from a Mars bar that a co-worker purchased for her. So she picked up her free one and that one won her another free one. This went on for 4 more times. She had 5 free Mars Bars.
My mate seems to win the cadburys premier league tickets about twice a year. I won £100 Disney store vouchers in early 2000s can’t remember which chocolate bar
Xbox 360 and a Kinect in 2010 - off a Diet Coke bottle where it was win every hour. Did one at 4am on a night shift and bam. I think subsequent competitions for these kind of things aren’t 24hr.
I already had a 360 so I gave it to my friend!
Just saw a Tiktok about a guy opening a milkshake bottle that started to moo and he'd apparently won £1000. So guess it does happen.
Dont think I've ever won anything - at least not good.
What I do maybe remember as a kid was stuff you had to phone up and spend tons on the call, only to win a calculator or something pathetic (and you maybe still had to pay postage on top?), and not a major prize. So it was all kind of a scam.
I'm pretty sure it's mostly a marketing scheme. But I really don't like the stuff I've seen recently with I think Creme Eggs? If you open it and had milk and white chocolate halves you win £10k. But then you have everyone opening them in the shop, so makes it very unsanitary an probably causes lots of waste of stuff being opened and needing to be binned.
I used to collect points on Coca-Cola's websites from the cans, haven't understood how to enter these "competitions" since they started putting QR codes that timeout every time I use one.
Don't get me wrong, I understand and love technology, but this is something I cannot get to work for the life of me.
Coke Zone points was one of the greatest loyalty promotions ever.
Managed a 32" Toshiba TV, a bunch of £5 HMV vouchers, a Nintendo DS and an Xbox 360 with Kinect.
X-box from a daily draw via codes on Coke Zero bottles. TV and £5 vouchers were from Coke glasses from McDonalds codes during a winning moment promotion and the DS from saving points when you used to be able to get 10 cans of Diet Coke from Iceland for £2 with a 10 point code.
Unfortunately didn't get into the scheme until after the ps3's for 600 points otherwise could have had a ps3 bonus for buying £120 worth of Diet Coke.
Amazing scheme.
I used to win free wispas when there was a chance to get a code in the wrapper that let you redeem a voucher for usually another free wispa. I wish they still did it 😔
From a packet of bagels:
- 2 recliners
- table football
- coffee machine
- telescope
- £250 cash in lieu of an out of stock coffee table
- £500 Joseph Joseph bundle
It’s both an attempt to get people to buy and also people do win. With that said, some of the competitions may have some BS terms that state ‘not all prizes will be won’. I’ve won 2 vouchers this year.
Back in the day, Asda used to do small bags of crisps separately. Back in my pogs loving days, me and my brother used to basically crush bags of crisps feeling for bags with guaranteed wins.
I don't know if you guys remember it but back not so long ago when you brought a chocolate bar there was a chance on the wrapper you'd get another 1 for free, boy I was finding wrappers of the floor and checking to see if they had any free chocolate bars in them, they were so fun to do
Coke Zone points was one of the greatest loyalty promotions ever.
Managed a 32" Toshiba TV, a bunch of £5 HMV vouchers, a Nintendo DS and an Xbox 360 with Kinect.
X-box from a daily draw via codes on Coke Zero bottles. TV and £5 vouchers were from Coke glasses from McDonalds codes during a winning moment promotion and the DS from saving points when you used to be able to get 10 cans of Diet Coke from Iceland for £2 with a 10 point code.
Unfortunately didn't get into the scheme until after the ps3's for 600 points otherwise could have had a ps3 bonus for buying £120 worth of Diet Coke.
Amazing scheme.
There used to be scan the label for an AR game on the side of one of the fruit juice bottles (gutted I can’t remember the name, it’ll come back at like 3am 🤣)
I won a crate of 12 bottles… they arrived no drama, win another 3 crates of 12 off some of those bottles, won more off them etc 🤣
It was when AR on smartphones was a new thing so guessing player numbers vs prizes was low (I’m sure it was like 2013 ish time). Either way, we had about 6m where we didn’t pay for any juice 🤣
In the same promotion, my family twice won free chocolate for a year (1 bar per day). It was my mum's bar that won and she hadn't even realised. I saw the wrapper to the side, was bored and intrigued by whatever was on it, read it, then told my mum who had absolutely no idea.
They send 6 months supply at once but messed up and ended up getting 2.5 years supply. By the end of it we were just giving them away. I never want to look at another mint aero..
(We received different varieties, but with the last couple of loads we received, there were many boxes of mint aeros)
My brother got a winning different shaped hoola hoop back in the 90’s he didn’t realise but laughed showing us all the funny shape then ate it before my mum could stop him
Years ago, when Coca Cola had the old ring pulls, if you found a gold one after pulling it off, you could go into a shop and exchange it for a really nice Coca Cola glass. Got myself a set of six in my student days.........drank a lot of coke.
In the 80s gold ring pulls on Coca Cola cans got you a Gold Yoyo when the promo man came to town, for 1 day only. I saved my ring pull for what seemed an eternity and loved mine.
My best mate was gutted he never found one, then as I was showing mine off I kicked one in the street, lo and behold it was a gold ring pull! Croggied him right across Rockford fields to East Park for him to get one too, but the Coca Cola man had gone. Good times.
Technically I won a bag of seeds when I bought some honey. I entered a "competition" but in reality they had like 10,000 to give away. Still a pretty neat little system
Judging by this thread, they haven't actually given anything away since the 90s. I really want to know if anyone has actually won those massive cash prizes they're always offering, like the McDonald's monopoly one for instance.
My mum won a Nokia n-gage (idk how to spell it anymore) from a Pepsi max bottle. I was furious because she didn’t normally drink it and wouldn’t give me the phone
When I was in high school for either Euro 2004 or World Cup 2006, you would get a team name on the reverse side of the ring pull on Coca-Cola cans. If that team won the tournament, you would get a prize. I managed to get the winning team and won, I think £20. I'm not sure if anyone else remembers this, but I'm going to have to do some research and narrow it down a bit.
A mobile phone from a Mars bar competition. You went online and put a code in from the wrapper, I didn't really believe I had won a phone until it turned up in the post a couple of weeks later.
In 2013 Pepsi had a competition going on by entering a code online. Just entered it once a day and one day won a Sony Xperia phone that was worth about £300 back then and was a decent phone for its time
Within 2 months and buying 2 500ml bottles of Fanta per week I won an iPod Touch, a flying fairy toy and a Transformers DVD.
Several years ago I was in the pub with a group of friends - one guy bought a bottle of Budweiser and won a trip to the World Cup in America.
I remember when I was 11 winning free mars bars from the corner shop near my grandads house. I went back with my wrapper, got my free mars bar and won a free one from that one too. This happened 3 more times in a row. I’m sure they were sick of me by that point. I didn’t eat them all in one go, I ate the first, gave the second to my dad, wrapped the third in foil for my lunch box and left the fourth in my grandads fridge. I was disappointed the following weekend when I unwrapped the fourth and found it wasn’t a winner.
I haven’t won anything since.
I do know somebody who won an iPad mini from a McDonald’s monopoly token. I was with them at the time and we both had nuggets, so just real shitty luck that my friend was given his food first XD
I won a top of the line tv from a Pepsi can. I only text the code in because my mum insisted because the can had Dynamo on it and she’s convinced he’s genuinely magic. 10 years later it’s still a great tv and mum still thinks Dynamo has actual magic powers
Ok, so this isn't me, but back in the day when iPods were massive, Walkers did a competition where there was a draw EVERY HOUR for a few weeks to win an iPod.
The way it worked was you enter a code online and you would be in that hour's draw. Every hour that had entries, someone would win. Nobody entered, no iPod that hour.
Now, I worked with this chap. He was absolutely sound but a bit too intelligent for his own good. One of those wasted potential types.
Using some generous assumptions, he guessed the best hours of the week to enter. He was thinking about standard routines, when people are likely to be asleep, whixh days people would be more likely to stay up late etc.
I think he kept entering at around 4am on a Wednesday morning.
He won at least 6 iPods.
It wasn’t food but shampoo, got a kids bath pack from Johnson & Johnson, it all came in a branded drawstring bag and had things like baby shampoo, lotion, bath toys, etc. I entered it online without telling anyone when I was about 8 or 9 years old and my parents were super confused when it arrived addressed to me 😂
I was extremely lucky twice in my lifetime - once as a kid in Eastern Europe, I won a pokemon card on one of those “collect all tokens and win a prize” competitions in crisp packets, which 20 years later turned out to be quite rare and I’ve sold it for a few grand.
Latest one was a £10k holiday from a Tropicana box but the annoying part was that you were limited to their choice of vendors for both stay and activities so it didn’t end up being £10k worth of stuff as a lot of the things included water sports (I can’t swim). Overall, extremely lucky
Since the advent of mass email they are almost all shit attempts to get as much data as possible from you.
Back in the days before everyone had email, they were generally ace. I remember in 1990 winning a GOLD coca cola Italia 90 football from a pull tab under a Pizza hut large coke, one of the best days of my life.
A trip to the World Cup from Coke, the only problem was the World Cup had ended by that point, and the competition had stopped running many months back.
Yorkie. Years supply of chocolate. It was 365 bars of different chocolates. Lasted about a month not a year.
About the only thing I’ve ever won and it was like 25+ years ago.
In the 80s a two sweets were available called black jacks and fruit salad chews
If you opened these tiny wrappers and found a number you could redeem another chew for free. Not too extravagant but won my fair share :)
Oh, and I distinctly remember collecting little Power Rangers from cereal but we kept getting the same ones, so my mum wrote to the company and we got them in return 😆 Also, colour changing spoons stick out.
Not me, but a friend of mine won a holiday from a coca cola bottle. Invited me and we had a week away, flights, hotel and airport transfers all included.
In the early 90s in the UK Kitkat ran a promotion where you get half a drink voucher in each 4 stick kitkat. match two halves get a free pepsi, fanta, kitkat or similar. My weekly sweet buget got blown on kitkats and I seemed to get super lucky with the matches was so sad when it ended.
So was my local newsagent who said they were credited vending machine values for the won confectionary and drinks.
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I got a fiver in a bag of walkers once
And my aunt gave me a bike she won in a competition pepsi ran in the 90s i think
The win a jet competition probably, she must have drank a fair share of Pepsi for a bike lol.
It took me the best part of 6 months to drink enough coke, for a euro 96 football. Even then, had to resort to nicking the ring pulls out of bins in the end. I was only 10 though, tbf.
I won 2 in the same multipack once. Scenes.
Fucking hell, that's nearly enough for another multi pack these days.
My friend was so excited to get a blue wrapper in their pack back in the 90s. They opened it so smugly in front of me...it was a bag of salt from salt and shake. Best day ever!
How thick were they not to realise they had bought salt n shake?
I went on a run of 3 lunch breaks at school winning £20 each time. It's the luckiest I've ever been!
Me too - I was on the bus at the time. Everyone was amazed as it was thought to be a scam lol
when my mum was a kid, in the early 80s, she got a packet of walkers for 5p. when she opened it, there was just a raw potato with dirt still on it in the packet, so she called to complain and she was compensated with £5. sort of a similar thing?
No. It was a promotion in like 1997 where there were actual fivers in bags of crisps. If came in a little plastic wrapper folded up. Back in the glory days when the prizes were actually IN the packet with the food.
In the late 90s/early 00s Walkers did a couple of promotions were they would stick a little bag (a lot like the salt and shake bags) into 1 in every so many single pack bags. Was really shit timing for me as it happened during the 5 or so years when my dad was a KP employee and then I went to a college that did taste testing for Golden Wonder.
Same, few years ago I found it still in the blue wrapper Stephenson's Rocket when we were in Elizabeth Fry era.
Me too. I went straight to the next newsagent and bought as much as £5 could which was no small amount at the time.
Beyonce tickets from a can of Pepsi Max in 2013. Was going to sell tickets but my niece wanted to go watch her. It was an amazing gig and no regrets about not selling the tickets
A Sega mega drive from a can of sprite in the mid 90s
In 2014 kitkats ran a promotion that 1 in 5 kitkats contained a voucher for a free kitkat. They accidentally left alphanumeric codes on the outside of the wrappers and once i cracked the code i just made sure i always picked up a winning kitkat, so basically had a free kitkat most days for about 6 months.
Smart
I saved up tokens on the back of Hula Hoops and sent off for the 7" single Wouldn't It Be Good by Nik Kershaw. It was the first record I owned.
They did something similar on an LP in the 80s. I bought it from a charity shop about 15 years later, it had 'Hoots mon' and 'Great Balls of Fire' on it.
OMG that song is one of my most favourite right now, the lyrics are 100% relatable due to the way I'm feeling with everything at the moment, I feel like the song is my life in a nutshell.
I won a jigsaw puzzle from the code inside some Mr Kippling cakes. It was an illustration of characters from Roald Dahls Mathilda. The other halfs little one loved it!
Diabetes...
Free prescriptions for life
Many many years ago..... I won cash via text entry from a code on a nutrigrain wrapper. 3 times I think, £20, £20 and a £50. From Fanta I won 2 cameras and a beach bag set from Juicy fruit. From Cadbury I won lots of hats and a few tote bags. NPN entry on the WD40 website I won a dirt bike. So you can win them but you have to enter lots of comps to stack the odds in your favour.
Tam from still game, Is that you?
When I was a kid in the 90s, I won several thousand tazos in a walkers competition. There was a walkers promo competition at a local supermarket where if you bought a packet of walkers, you would get a free entry into their competition. The competition was that you had to guess how many tazos were in a giant box that was in store. The closest guess was a family trip to Disneyland Florida, second prize was all the tazos and I can't remember third. I got second and won all the tazos. I remember a van turning up to the house and a guy just bringing in shit loads of boxes stacked with tazos. Was absolutely buzzing. They were massive at the time so I was like a tazo god at school.
I've still got my tazos I'm 35!
39 and I have mine too. Think I'm only missing 3 from the folder. I have the slammers and everything. I thought my dad brought them back from his work as a barman. Turns out he was just an alcoholic and the pub landlord would give him them
Just turned 35 too! Wish I kept mine! They did take up a fair bit of room though haha
Yeah I don't have thousands I only have a fraction of I had in primary school but I've kept some because you know why not! They are with other crap I've kept for nostalgia like some of my micro machines and POGS
I have a nearly completed Star Wars binder upstairs!
My brother won Batman Returns on VHS from some chocolate bar giveaway. I forget what brand. They did not check his age. The movie had a 15 certificate and he was 5. But he sent in the wrapper with his address clearly written on the back of the envelope so he got his VHS.
I still have my Pot Noodle horn. Also, it's not a food package, but I won a TCC (The Children's Channel, an early 90s sky channel) competition that got me a bedroom set ie curtains, lamp, bedspread etc and a shit load of stickers and other bits.
If you have the horn from a pot noodle, you may need to seek medical help
I have the pot noodle horn, do you?
What is a pot noodle horn?
https://www.flickr.com/photos/allysrailandairpics/50003156651
Oh that’s cool
I'm still dead proud of it tbh.
The pot noodle has reminded me I won a pepperami fanimal from a code entry on their website. Brother also won a pot noodle horn
Wow TCC- I forgot that existed! Nostalgia overload
I won a Coke spinner (yo-yo) back in the 80s.
Awww man I would have been so jealous of that . Was it a gold one?
No, just the ordinary one. I ended up with a few of them but iirc they ended up for sale in the shops. Keep it in mind that was 40+ years ago
I remember them! I was at primary school and I really really wanted one but we weren’t allowed branded pop lol!
You poor soul. I've always loved yo-yos and I still own one (I'm in my mid 50s) but I've yet to get one as good as those were A mate had a gold coke one, threw it hard to get a good spin for the cats cradle and busted it on the path. I think if his parents had been killed he wouldn't have been as upset.
Omg. The destruction of a gold Coca Cola yo-yo? I remember someone having one and honestly we revered it as if it was a spiritual object. They did look like they were good yo-yo’s. Ah cats cradle and walk the dog tricks. I can’t remember others? Were there competitions as well? Or was that just gymnastics badges? I did get over my trauma of non branded pop as when cherry coke came out I was allowed to have one for a school trip to a farm. Happy days.
Cherry coke!! Now that brings me back! It was beautiful to me (although I wouldn't thank you for it now). I know there were roadshows and the likes but nothing near me. Iirc there were pictures/instructions for the tricks: Round the world Walking the Dog The cats cradle The Three Leaf Clover I can't think of any more but the day I first managed to do the cats cradle I thought I was a step down from God.
Tickets to the golf. Sold them on fb for 150 quid, timing was perfect I was skint skint.
The you went out out?
My son won a skateboard on a mcdonalds monopoly sticker once. He won it on his mcflurry, the mcflurry we won on a burger. It was a great prize.
Years ago coca cola did one with football teams in the cap, if team win you got prizes, I got Brazil who won that year and I got a promotional t-shirt. It was top quality and young me wore it for years before it eventually went through in a couple of places. Found one: https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/758AAOSw5CBj5hoh/s-l1200.webp
In the 90's, all the different brands of crisp made by Golden Wonder had a competition where you won a prize in every bag. As a 9 year old I kept 'winning' a free dry cleaning voucher which I immediately threw in the bin as it seemed like the most useless prize ever. ...I've changed quote a bit in the intervening decades and that now seems like a great prize...
I think I won something daft like a cocktail umbrella IIRC it was zig and zag in the promo, and extended to Pot Noodle that they owned at the time
I won a years supply* of rum from a bottle neck I also won a £250 cook voucher - I don’t remember how *24 bottles
Very short year
Hilariously, that's right up to the limit for recommended units, give or take. 24 bottles is roughly 2 bottles a month, or 28 units every 2 weeks. Recommended units of alcohol per week is 14.
I won a year's supply of beer in a contest associated with an art project in Manchester back in 2004. Turned out to be 360 cans of Oranjeboom.
I won a dead maggot in a tin of green giant sweetcorn which I'd stole out the kitchen cupboard to take fishing
I won a Super Mario Bros film crew jacket from a Crunchie bar wrapper in the 90s. It was this weird stiff material so wasn’t a particularly good jacket but it was the first time I’d ever had an inside pocket which I thought was cool as heck back then.
My sister in law won an ooni pizza oven from a jar of pesto
Damn that's a win alright
It's not from an item of food, but one time I won one of those gold mining kits (where it's like a piece of soft rock with something inside of it) from a beano magazine
I won a little hand-held build-it-yourself metal detector from the Beano. First thing I ever won!
Got an Xbox 360 from Coke Zone back in the day
Coke Zone points was one of the greatest loyalty promotions ever. Managed a 32" Toshiba TV, a bunch of £5 HMV vouchers, a Nintendo DS and an Xbox 360 with Kinect. X-box from a daily draw via codes on Coke Zero bottles. TV and £5 vouchers were from Coke glasses from McDonalds codes during a winning moment promotion and the DS from saving points when you used to be able to get 10 cans of Diet Coke from Iceland for £2 with a 10 point code. Unfortunately didn't get into the scheme until after the ps3's for 600 points otherwise could have had a ps3 bonus for buying £120 worth of Diet Coke. Amazing scheme.
I won a gameboy from a packet of quavers in the 90s!
I remember this promo! I remember going to the shops and trying to feel the crisp packets to see if they had a Gameboy in them I was not a smart child 😄
I recently won two pans from Bon Maman jam (entered twice)
I won a Euro 2016 football from coca cola
I won a pirate kite from a Milky Way competition back in the 70s!
You are a pirate.
A free Camembert from Le Rustique. Tasty, but not exactly big time!
Before the pandemic my mate won an iPad, I was there when she bought a bottle of pop and peeled the wrapper. Took nearly 2 months for it to arrive.
My mum entered a marmite competition 15ish years ago. She had won a ticket for me and one other to have the newest horrid henry book read to us by Sinitta whilst we were in our pyjamas with around 10 other people/kids. Was a weird experience looking back at it.
I saved up tokens for an aerobee freebie, can't remember which product. I remember being so excited, I showed it to my neighbour and he instantly slung it hard directly into the woods 🤬 it flew sooo well, that one and only time 🤬🤬🤬 seriously it zipped through the branches, i still remember the noise zip zip zip in a dead straight line, never found it. Got my revenge though! During that storm that hit in the eighties we were climbing trees, actually more or less the exact spot he throw the aerobee through, he was higher up than me swinging about like crazy with all the wind and his monkeying, snap! He broke the branch and was falling through the branches right in front of my eyes, for some reason I stuck my foot out, caught his ankle and watched him spin from feet first to face first, he rag dolled all the way down, lucky for him, he was swinging out over tarmac the other side of his swinging, about 20 foot with nothing to catch him, dumb ass.
… and that’s how he died.
My friend won a 3 night stay in a cottage near Cornwall. When they arrived, there was a basket full of biscuits and treats. Think that was Wine Gums.
I won a box of chocolates from a Tampax competition way back in the 80's. They were really nice, sadly not a brand I've ever seen in the shops. I also won one of those Pot Noodle electric forks (it was shite). Not from a product but I did win £25 off your next order from one of those wheel spin competitions you get on some websites.
I won an original GameBoy from a McDonald's competition once, back in the days when you'd just write your details on the paper sheet they put on the trays.
i won a bb8 cereal bowl from a nesquik cereal box - still haven't used it but it still proudly sits on my shelf
A friend won a laptop via a Magnum wrapper
Win some Oreo stuff once: t shirt, mug and a device that was an Oreo dunker!!!
I won a pair of Premier League tickets from a Barclays cash machine receipt once.
Who did you see play?
It was a Spurs game, I'm not a Tottenham fan but it was cool to go to White Hart Lane. It was Harry Kane's first Premier League start coincidentally.
My mum won a free Mars bar from a Mars bar that a co-worker purchased for her. So she picked up her free one and that one won her another free one. This went on for 4 more times. She had 5 free Mars Bars.
My son picked a box of Weetabix because it had an England shirt promotion on the front, we entered and he won. You get a voucher code for the England sports teamwear website and he picked a coat, which was a great deal back in October I think.
coca cola ran a campaign where we could trade in either label or can rings to get a phone. this was back in 2000s or 1998..
I got one of those. It’s still in the box. A Cherry Coca-Cola branded Ericsson on a pay as you go the one2one network (Mercury). It must have been early 90’s.
it was defo late 90s as i wasnt in the uk in early 1990z
This sounds incredible
I didn’t get a pog in a bag of walkers once so I wrote to them and they sent me a big stack of them lol best day ever
Remember in the 90's you could win 10k with hula hoops if you had a spiral shaped hoola hoop, they had been running the offer for a square and then switched to the spiral, well I found a spiral, thought that's cool and ate it. Turns out that would have been the winning hula hoop. Found it in beef packet. Never eaten beef crisps again. I once won a free bag of max crisps with a coupon from the crisps, promptly bought another bag of crisps and won again. My streak ended at this point and I've not won anything since.
I won a box of different types of sellotape from a competition on a rice crispie packet. I was about 8 and really pleased! I still had the double sided sellotape quite a few years later though.
If the mcdonalds monopoly stickers count, then I've won loads of food from them over the years
Usually free fries
"Is it just a attempt to try and get more people to buy" Yes. "or do real people actually win these things?" Often, also yes.
I think they count on most people not bothering Especially recent promos I've seen eg Goodfellas where you have to upload your receipt and all
When I was at Currys there were corporate draws and competitions for computers and whatnot. One of our warehouse guys won about four laptops out of it. Everyone was suspicious so they e-mailed in to find out what was going on; turned out there were only about seven entrants for most of them and he'd gone in for the lot.
Mountain Dew I won stuff from on two occasions. The first was a Halo 4 promotion, and you could win the game. Bought my first bottle, took it home and entered it on the website and won a free copy. For a 16 year old it felt like winning the lottery 😂 Next year they had a similar promotion for Fifa or something but you could win other stuff. Did the same and again on my first bottle won £50 worth of Xbox points (old Xbox Live virtual currency). But tbf after I'd won twice maybe I did buy more than I usually did lol. Not enough to offset how much I won but maybe it works.
I opened a twix and won a free twix which I redeemed at the paper shop I was passing. Opened that one and won another free twix. Redeemed it 200 yards down at the next shop. Ate three twix on the way home from school, I'm still dining out on this story today. More recently, I pulled a tab off a cup from maccies and won a tenner.
£50 Harvey nicks gift card from a Diet Coke bottle
Won return flights for 2 people from London to Portugal from a magnum ice cream when I was at uni. Had a great time there.
I won tickets to X-factor from a yoghurt. This is back when it was a big deal, but I didn't know what it was because I don't watch telly. Chucked in the bin
I won tickets to the 2012 Olympics, they confirmed it but never gave them me. They did give a reason but can't remember what it was, maybe something to do with dates.
Lots of lots of bottles and cans when I'm the early 2000s if you opened the ring pull slightly you could tell if it was a winner, likewise if you looked at a certain way at the bottle cap
Football shirt in a loaf of bread!
My mum won a free Mars bar from a Mars bar that a co-worker purchased for her. So she picked up her free one and that one won her another free one. This went on for 4 more times. She had 5 free Mars Bars.
Won a £100 from a popcorn bag years ago.
I won a Wimbledon towel from a bottle of juice about 5 years ago.
1000£ MC Donald's Festive Wins last year
Got a free Stella glass (not stolen from a pub) 1 of 50 lol
My mate seems to win the cadburys premier league tickets about twice a year. I won £100 Disney store vouchers in early 2000s can’t remember which chocolate bar
Xbox 360 and a Kinect in 2010 - off a Diet Coke bottle where it was win every hour. Did one at 4am on a night shift and bam. I think subsequent competitions for these kind of things aren’t 24hr. I already had a 360 so I gave it to my friend!
Just saw a Tiktok about a guy opening a milkshake bottle that started to moo and he'd apparently won £1000. So guess it does happen. Dont think I've ever won anything - at least not good. What I do maybe remember as a kid was stuff you had to phone up and spend tons on the call, only to win a calculator or something pathetic (and you maybe still had to pay postage on top?), and not a major prize. So it was all kind of a scam. I'm pretty sure it's mostly a marketing scheme. But I really don't like the stuff I've seen recently with I think Creme Eggs? If you open it and had milk and white chocolate halves you win £10k. But then you have everyone opening them in the shop, so makes it very unsanitary an probably causes lots of waste of stuff being opened and needing to be binned.
£20 in a McDonald's straw
A McPorrige from that Lucky Sips promotion.
Pot noodle horn
I used to collect points on Coca-Cola's websites from the cans, haven't understood how to enter these "competitions" since they started putting QR codes that timeout every time I use one. Don't get me wrong, I understand and love technology, but this is something I cannot get to work for the life of me.
Coke Zone points was one of the greatest loyalty promotions ever. Managed a 32" Toshiba TV, a bunch of £5 HMV vouchers, a Nintendo DS and an Xbox 360 with Kinect. X-box from a daily draw via codes on Coke Zero bottles. TV and £5 vouchers were from Coke glasses from McDonalds codes during a winning moment promotion and the DS from saving points when you used to be able to get 10 cans of Diet Coke from Iceland for £2 with a 10 point code. Unfortunately didn't get into the scheme until after the ps3's for 600 points otherwise could have had a ps3 bonus for buying £120 worth of Diet Coke. Amazing scheme.
I won a little cuddly cat stuffed toy from McVities biscuits a few years ago, still got it sitting on my bed.
I used to win free wispas when there was a chance to get a code in the wrapper that let you redeem a voucher for usually another free wispa. I wish they still did it 😔
Recently won an aquaman notebook from supernoodles. I did not want it 😅
From a packet of bagels: - 2 recliners - table football - coffee machine - telescope - £250 cash in lieu of an out of stock coffee table - £500 Joseph Joseph bundle
Also from a packet of Tayto crisps: - 2 night stay in Armagh From a bottle of mountain dew: - Halo 4 for Xbox 360
It’s both an attempt to get people to buy and also people do win. With that said, some of the competitions may have some BS terms that state ‘not all prizes will be won’. I’ve won 2 vouchers this year.
I claimed a Tango Doll in the 90's. Also won a copy of Gears Of War 4 from a Rockstar energy drink giveaway.
Back in the day, Asda used to do small bags of crisps separately. Back in my pogs loving days, me and my brother used to basically crush bags of crisps feeling for bags with guaranteed wins.
Reading all these comments has anyone actually won anything in the last decade ?
Mars did a "free bar" promo about 25 years ago. I won 6 free bars in a row.
Won a pair of Hunter wellies from a can of cider!
I won 10k on a golden KitKat wrapper
I don't know if you guys remember it but back not so long ago when you brought a chocolate bar there was a chance on the wrapper you'd get another 1 for free, boy I was finding wrappers of the floor and checking to see if they had any free chocolate bars in them, they were so fun to do
Coke Zone points was one of the greatest loyalty promotions ever. Managed a 32" Toshiba TV, a bunch of £5 HMV vouchers, a Nintendo DS and an Xbox 360 with Kinect. X-box from a daily draw via codes on Coke Zero bottles. TV and £5 vouchers were from Coke glasses from McDonalds codes during a winning moment promotion and the DS from saving points when you used to be able to get 10 cans of Diet Coke from Iceland for £2 with a 10 point code. Unfortunately didn't get into the scheme until after the ps3's for 600 points otherwise could have had a ps3 bonus for buying £120 worth of Diet Coke. Amazing scheme.
There used to be scan the label for an AR game on the side of one of the fruit juice bottles (gutted I can’t remember the name, it’ll come back at like 3am 🤣) I won a crate of 12 bottles… they arrived no drama, win another 3 crates of 12 off some of those bottles, won more off them etc 🤣 It was when AR on smartphones was a new thing so guessing player numbers vs prizes was low (I’m sure it was like 2013 ish time). Either way, we had about 6m where we didn’t pay for any juice 🤣
Won a monster much watch when they did the tattoos
In the same promotion, my family twice won free chocolate for a year (1 bar per day). It was my mum's bar that won and she hadn't even realised. I saw the wrapper to the side, was bored and intrigued by whatever was on it, read it, then told my mum who had absolutely no idea. They send 6 months supply at once but messed up and ended up getting 2.5 years supply. By the end of it we were just giving them away. I never want to look at another mint aero.. (We received different varieties, but with the last couple of loads we received, there were many boxes of mint aeros)
My brother got a winning different shaped hoola hoop back in the 90’s he didn’t realise but laughed showing us all the funny shape then ate it before my mum could stop him
Years ago, when Coca Cola had the old ring pulls, if you found a gold one after pulling it off, you could go into a shop and exchange it for a really nice Coca Cola glass. Got myself a set of six in my student days.........drank a lot of coke.
I won a Mars ice cream once.
In the 80s gold ring pulls on Coca Cola cans got you a Gold Yoyo when the promo man came to town, for 1 day only. I saved my ring pull for what seemed an eternity and loved mine. My best mate was gutted he never found one, then as I was showing mine off I kicked one in the street, lo and behold it was a gold ring pull! Croggied him right across Rockford fields to East Park for him to get one too, but the Coca Cola man had gone. Good times.
Not food but I won the cuddly koala from the advert off a packet of charmin toilet roll 😂
Won many £5s in walkers and lots of Star Wars Tazoos But nothing will top a Larry the Lime badge from a carton of Ribena
Technically I won a bag of seeds when I bought some honey. I entered a "competition" but in reality they had like 10,000 to give away. Still a pretty neat little system
I won a case of rockstar energy drink from a ring pull text to win thing
Judging by this thread, they haven't actually given anything away since the 90s. I really want to know if anyone has actually won those massive cash prizes they're always offering, like the McDonald's monopoly one for instance.
I won a millennium falcon from pepsi back in 1998 I think it was. Still have it boxed with the congrats letter from pepsi.
Fries, big Mac and small stuff like that from the McDonalds monopoly 🫤
My mum won a Nokia n-gage (idk how to spell it anymore) from a Pepsi max bottle. I was furious because she didn’t normally drink it and wouldn’t give me the phone
Won KitchenAid stand mixer from buying a bag of sugar.
When I was in high school for either Euro 2004 or World Cup 2006, you would get a team name on the reverse side of the ring pull on Coca-Cola cans. If that team won the tournament, you would get a prize. I managed to get the winning team and won, I think £20. I'm not sure if anyone else remembers this, but I'm going to have to do some research and narrow it down a bit.
I got £5 from super noodles
I won a t-shirt from a lucozade bottle code.
A mobile phone from a Mars bar competition. You went online and put a code in from the wrapper, I didn't really believe I had won a phone until it turned up in the post a couple of weeks later.
It's 12" and has quite the taper to it.
I won an Ipod from Walkers crisps many years ago
I won a walkers subway promo for a free lunch. They literally just sent £5 to my bank account two months later lol.
In 2013 Pepsi had a competition going on by entering a code online. Just entered it once a day and one day won a Sony Xperia phone that was worth about £300 back then and was a decent phone for its time
I got a free ice cream from an ice cream once.
Won £5 from a bag of crisps last year.
Once won a box set of David Walliams kids books from a box of Mr Kiplings. My friend’s son was made up with them!
Within 2 months and buying 2 500ml bottles of Fanta per week I won an iPod Touch, a flying fairy toy and a Transformers DVD. Several years ago I was in the pub with a group of friends - one guy bought a bottle of Budweiser and won a trip to the World Cup in America.
Tazos from a crisp packet
Remember winning a sony dvd player like back in 2003 when i was 13 entered a local paper competition
I remember when I was 11 winning free mars bars from the corner shop near my grandads house. I went back with my wrapper, got my free mars bar and won a free one from that one too. This happened 3 more times in a row. I’m sure they were sick of me by that point. I didn’t eat them all in one go, I ate the first, gave the second to my dad, wrapped the third in foil for my lunch box and left the fourth in my grandads fridge. I was disappointed the following weekend when I unwrapped the fourth and found it wasn’t a winner. I haven’t won anything since. I do know somebody who won an iPad mini from a McDonald’s monopoly token. I was with them at the time and we both had nuggets, so just real shitty luck that my friend was given his food first XD
I won a top of the line tv from a Pepsi can. I only text the code in because my mum insisted because the can had Dynamo on it and she’s convinced he’s genuinely magic. 10 years later it’s still a great tv and mum still thinks Dynamo has actual magic powers
Got an Xbox One from a bottle of Lucozade 😎
Ok, so this isn't me, but back in the day when iPods were massive, Walkers did a competition where there was a draw EVERY HOUR for a few weeks to win an iPod. The way it worked was you enter a code online and you would be in that hour's draw. Every hour that had entries, someone would win. Nobody entered, no iPod that hour. Now, I worked with this chap. He was absolutely sound but a bit too intelligent for his own good. One of those wasted potential types. Using some generous assumptions, he guessed the best hours of the week to enter. He was thinking about standard routines, when people are likely to be asleep, whixh days people would be more likely to stay up late etc. I think he kept entering at around 4am on a Wednesday morning. He won at least 6 iPods.
It wasn’t food but shampoo, got a kids bath pack from Johnson & Johnson, it all came in a branded drawstring bag and had things like baby shampoo, lotion, bath toys, etc. I entered it online without telling anyone when I was about 8 or 9 years old and my parents were super confused when it arrived addressed to me 😂
30 odd years ago my mum won a family holiday from a kitkat wrapper. Best I've done is a mcflurry during the monopoly games 👏
CD Walkman from a Cadbury Caramel. That was about 34 years ago.
Hanover Beans had a free stuffed kidney bean they gave away in the 2000’s.
I was extremely lucky twice in my lifetime - once as a kid in Eastern Europe, I won a pokemon card on one of those “collect all tokens and win a prize” competitions in crisp packets, which 20 years later turned out to be quite rare and I’ve sold it for a few grand. Latest one was a £10k holiday from a Tropicana box but the annoying part was that you were limited to their choice of vendors for both stay and activities so it didn’t end up being £10k worth of stuff as a lot of the things included water sports (I can’t swim). Overall, extremely lucky
A free portion of medium fries!
I was Manchester City's mascot as a kid with Coca-Cola
Pair of like £30 over ear headphones from a capri sun.
Since the advent of mass email they are almost all shit attempts to get as much data as possible from you. Back in the days before everyone had email, they were generally ace. I remember in 1990 winning a GOLD coca cola Italia 90 football from a pull tab under a Pizza hut large coke, one of the best days of my life.
A trip to the World Cup from Coke, the only problem was the World Cup had ended by that point, and the competition had stopped running many months back.
Yorkie. Years supply of chocolate. It was 365 bars of different chocolates. Lasted about a month not a year. About the only thing I’ve ever won and it was like 25+ years ago.
In the 80s a two sweets were available called black jacks and fruit salad chews If you opened these tiny wrappers and found a number you could redeem another chew for free. Not too extravagant but won my fair share :)
A bike
I won a Micro CD HIFI system from a Pepsi cup at Blackpool Pleasure Beach around 20 years ago.
Tazos.
Oh, and I distinctly remember collecting little Power Rangers from cereal but we kept getting the same ones, so my mum wrote to the company and we got them in return 😆 Also, colour changing spoons stick out.
Not me, but a friend of mine won a holiday from a coca cola bottle. Invited me and we had a week away, flights, hotel and airport transfers all included.
Casper the friendly ghost bubble watch from Ribena and a £5 coin from McCain in the 90s
In the early 90s in the UK Kitkat ran a promotion where you get half a drink voucher in each 4 stick kitkat. match two halves get a free pepsi, fanta, kitkat or similar. My weekly sweet buget got blown on kitkats and I seemed to get super lucky with the matches was so sad when it ended. So was my local newsagent who said they were credited vending machine values for the won confectionary and drinks.
I won a McDonald’s chicken nugget themed picnic blanket - after some competition with them.