Back when I was a kid, I really liked playing McDonald’s Monopoly. It’s a very simple game. Basically, you buy stuff at McDonald’s, and certain items come with game pieces that correspond to properties on a Monopoly board. Collect all the pieces of one color (or all the railroads) and you win a prize.
Of course, my mom, being the responsible parent she is, didn’t take us to McDonald’s very often. But when she did, I looked forward to the Monopoly pieces we’d get, pasting them onto the little paper board they gave us.
Even as a young kid, I had this weird desire to win a million dollars, without really knowing how much that was. I just knew it was a lot more than the twenty dollars I had stashed in my desk. Of course, I had no idea that, at the time, the whole thing was a big fraud.
Anyway, fast forward to the present, in 2011, when I’m an adult. At least legally. That means I can go to McDonald’s as often as I want! And so I went. A lot. I tried to stick to the healthier things. Smoothies, oatmeal, etc. But the “healthy” things aren’t all that healthy, I know.
In the almost nine months between the beginning of 2011 and when the sweepstakes began, I only spent $15.73 at McDonald’s. During the Monopoly game, which lasted only about a month, I managed to spend $61.49. I’m a sucker for chances to win gigantic prizes, I guess.
So what did I manage to get with all those McDonald’s purchases?
- 2x Baltic Avenue
- 2x Reading Railroad
- 1x Pennsylvania Railroad
- 2x B&O Railroad
- 1x Oriental Avenue
- 2x Connecticut Avenue
- 1x St. Charles Place
- 2x States Avenue
- 4x St. James Place
- 2x New York Avenue
- 2x Illinois Avenue
- 6x Marvin Gardens
- 5x Pacific Avenue
- 2x North Carolina Avenue
- 2x Park Place
- 2x Instant Win Medium Fries
- 3x Instant Win Regular McFlurry or Fruit ‘n Yogurt Parfait
- 3x Instant Win Any Breakfast Sandwich (Excludes McMuffin)
The rare pieces in each group are the ones that are alphabetically last, except Boardwalk is the rare one in the last group (so that’s Mediterranean, Short Line, Vermont, Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ventnor, Pennsylvania, and Boardwalk). Obviously, I didn’t win anything big. Just those little food items. Frustratingly, they excluded the McMuffin from the breakfast sandwich one, because the McMuffins came with game pieces.
What’s up with this distribution, though? How did I get six Marvin Gardens pieces without getting a single Atlantic? Well, not that I was ever going to get Ventnor anyway. But still. Mysterious.
So, in the end, even though I got a little thrill out of peeling off all the little stickers from those unhealthy food items (and saving the game pieces appeals to my hoarder instinct), I managed to spend more money than I should have on fast food, and I didn’t even get anything out of it.
Oh, except for that free McGriddle I got. I managed to let the other seven free food go to waste, since they expired two weeks after the game ended. And since I don’t go to McDonald’s that often, I didn’t really get the chance to use them. I should go to McDonald’s more often…