McDonald's game made fools of us

By Mike Leidemann
Advertiser Columnist

So McDonald's is going to give away $10 million next weekend.

Yeah, right.

Excuse me if I'm just a little skeptical right now. I'm feeling cheated, manipulated, consumerized. I'm feeling like a super-sized fool.

Mostly, though, I'm feeling fat. That would be from all those burgers and fries I ate during all those McDonald's Monopoly promotions, which now turned out to have been rigged.

It turns out that your chances of winning the $1 million grand prize were even less than the 1 in 10 million they mentioned in the fine print. Your chances were 0 in a million, because a trusted member of the company running the promotion for McDonald's was funneling all the winning tickets to his friends.

Normally, I don't even like McDonald's food. Normally, I limit myself to about one quarter-pounder-with-cheese a month. Super-sized. Normally, I prefer Jack-in-the-Box, which so far as I remember never had a $1 million prize giveaway. Or Taco Bell, which always seems to be offering cute little action toys with its burritos.

But I'm weak, just like everybody else.

I always buy magazines when the Publisher's Clearing House contest arrives in the mail. I always want to call Mainland friends and ask them to get me a lottery ticket when I hear some PowerBall jackpot has topped $100 million. I always give a lucky dollar to someone headed to Vegas and ask them to bet it for me.

And I always buy more Big Macs than is healthy when the McDonald's Monopoly game rolls around with the hope of winning that big prize, quitting my job, moving to Mykonos and eating healthy Greek salads at quayside tavernas for the rest of my life.

So far, all I've gotten is a high cholesterol count. (I know I could have received game prizes buying McDonald's salads, too. All I have to say to that is: Get real!)

Now McDonald's says it's going to give away $10 million over the Labor Day weekend. There will be five grand prizes of $1 million and 50 first prizes of $100,000 each. The company says it's doing this to make things right, to re-earn our trust.

Still, I'm having a hard time getting excited about gorging myself on McNuggets or those cute little apple pies.

Deep down, I think all Hawai'i residents suspect that all winning tickets in all national giveaways always are sent to Kansas or Iowa. Has the Prize Patrol ever knocked on anybody's door out here? Did your neighbor ever get rich in Vegas?

Someone in Louisiana or Minnesota always gets the big prize. All we ever get are the coupons for more fattening french fries.

It's going to take more than another contest to win me back. I want my pound of flesh. Or rather, I want McDonald's to take back all those pounds of flesh they've given me over the years in place of my $1 million prize.

Mike Leidemann's columns appear Thursdays and Saturdays in The Advertiser. He can be reached at 525-5460 or mleidemann@honoluluadvertiser.com