These people lucked out and won in bulk -- or is their bounty a curse?
Luck Or Disappointment?
“I once went to a grand opening QFC (Quality Food Center, big grocery store) when I was 12. They were having a free raffle, and I’m like, ‘Why not?’ So I enter. Did I win the plasma TV? No. Did I win the iPod classic? No. 12-year-old-me wins a years supply of Tillamook cheese. It was a sheet of 12 coupons, each for two blocks of cheese. What the heck was I going to do with cheese? I honestly didn’t even like cheese at the time. After going home and moping for a while, I had an idea. After I discussed it with my parents, we went back to the QFC and I met with the manager. After being given a few more sheets, I sat in the entryway of the QFC with a cheese hat and sold them for face value. What did I do with the profit, you ask? I donated it to Hurricane Relief in New Orleans. I sat there for the whole day saying, ‘Cheesy for the Big Easy?’ to every customer who came in. This was shortly after Katrina and we ended up raising $500 that day.”
The Tale Of The Lifetime Supply Of Butter
“My roommate and I won a ‘lifetime’ supply of butter in college. Apparently, ‘lifetime’ was two pounds of butter a week for a year. We stocked it up, got wasted, and tried to make a slip and slide with all the butter. It went okay.
Basically, we won it because our college was having some random event where you got locked inside a clear bubble thing and had to run around a track. It was in the winter, so it was icy. My roommate Jesse, bless his soul, took it upon himself to analyze and comment on each person’s run. After about an hour of listening to my trashed roommate call out every person on what they did wrong, he said, ‘I can’t do this anymore, these guys need a lesson.’
Being the supportive person I am, I hold his drink while he got in line. Cue the most perfect, beautiful ice-bubble-course running there ever has been. He got the best time, and they told us we won a lifetime supply of butter. If there have ever been two guys more happy about anything in the history of this earth, I would like to see them. When I have kids and my kids have kids of their own, that will be the first story I will tell them. The ballad of uncle Jesse and the lifetime supply of butter.”
She Didn’t Exactly “Win,” But It Shows No Sign Of Stopping
“I currently receive what seems to be a lifetime supply of toilet paper.
About 20 years ago, I lived in Southern California and became fond of a variety of Charmin that was infused with baby oil. It was so soft and smooth! Shortly thereafter, I moved to Virginia for work. The local stores didn’t have my baby oil Charmin, and I was told that it didn’t exist.
I called Proctor and Gamble to find out what was up and was told that the baby oil version was offered in Southern California as a test market, and it didn’t turn out so well, so it is no longer offered to stores. I was crushed. The company did, however, take my name and address, and I was told that I would receive coupons in the mail for my inquiry, and interest in their product.
About three weeks later, a box arrived from Proctor and Gamble that contained two separate four-packs of toilet paper, one marked A, and the other B. The letter that was enclosed stated that since I had such a penchant for toilet paper, I had been selected to test out their new varieties. I was instructed to use the package marked A for a week, and then switch to the package marked B the following week. I was told a phone call would follow.
After two weeks, I received a call from the company asking about the results of my test. They asked these crazy questions, like, could I name three adjectives describing my experience with both types of paper! It was definitely a phone call to remember.
At the end of the call, I was told that I would receive coupons and other considerations in the mail for my participation in this test. Ever since then, I have received a free four-packs of Charmin toilet paper, once a month, every month. This has gone on for over 20 years, and does not look like it will stop.”
Pudding Can Be A Great Blessing…And A Great Curse
Africa Studio/Shutterstock
“Through a series of hilarious events (a grocery truck flipped over and my parents run a tow truck company), I became the owner of about 5,000 Snack Pack puddings.
It was all cool and fun until I got home and started filling my cupboards. I didn’t have enough room in my kitchen for all this pudding, so I kept some in my bedroom closet, and when that filled up, my dresser drawers, linen closet, and eventually even my laundry room cupboards were now makeshift pudding shelters. I finally filled up the kitchen cupboards and pantry top to bottom with pudding cups.
Again, great for a bunch of guys smoking pot and doing nothing all day, but really strange when you bring a girl back. She goes to your kitchen, and you can hear her open one cupboard, then another, and another, followed by a whispered, ‘What the heck?!’ That’s followed by the pantry being opened and her finally yelling, ‘Hey, what’s with ALL THIS PUDDING?’ If I was able to talk her into spending the night, she would be greeted by a still unfathomable amount of pudding taking residence in my room. If she took a shower in the morning, she’d have to ask where towels were, because, of course, another wall of pudding was staring at her when she tried to find them in the closet.
I finally finished enough of the pudding to make room for dishes (I’d been keeping them in the dishwasher, dirty ones in the sink), and eventually started putting actual nutritious food in the kitchen about three months after. I ended up giving a ton of pudding away because I couldn’t bear to eat any more of the stuff.”
His 15 Minutes Of Fame Came With Quite The Reward
“Back in 2010, my buddy got wasted and decided to wait in line for Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. He was asked if he wanted to do a skit involving punching balloons on air. So he got on the air and they dressed him and two other people up in karate uniforms.
The two other people went and kind of tried and got some balloons but you could tell they were shy. My buddy got up there, wasted out of his mind, and Jimmy asked him his name. He told them his name is ‘Sho-Nuff the Shogun.’
Quest Love got up from behind the drum kit and gave Sho-Nuff a hug. My friend proceeded to ninja kick all the balloons and Jimmy told him he just won a lifetime supply of Soft Taco Kits. The Roots played a song, ‘Who’s the master? SHO-NUFF!’
I lived with him at the time and we seriously had two pallets of Taco Kits dropped off at our house. We had them in the cabinets, in the living room entertainment center, gave them away. But you know, it’s hard to give away 1,000 boxes of taco kits. We donated about 200 when we realized we wouldn’t use them all.”
The Best Thing He Could Do With His Winnings
“In the ’90s, my granddad won a lifetime supply of ‘Readers Digest.’ He was the only doctor in a small village in India (population < 1,000). He started stacking them up in his clinic and the village kids would randomly browse through them. As long as there wasn’t a rush or they weren’t being loud, my granddad would let them sit there for as long as they wanted.
I spent my summer vacations in the village with my grandparents. My parents had moved to a nearby city long before I was born.
And so it happened that every summer I’d come to the village to find my rural friends speak better English than anyone else in the village – and in some cases better than my English-school educated city friends – and sharing jokes from the ‘Life’s like that’ and ‘Laughter is the best medicine’ sections.
Every time I think back on it, I feel happy and proud of my granddad.”
He Was Dealing, Alright, Just Not What She Expected
Csaba Peterdi/Shutterstock
“This guy in my high school won a year’s supply of Dr. Pepper. Like clockwork, every month, they’d turn up and drop off a crate full of cans.
Apparently, by the second month, he was sick of it, so he started bringing them to school and selling them for slightly less than the shop by the school. He made a profit and was able to buy himself an Xbox 360 with some of his earnings.
I remember one particularly funny moment. A teacher saw him receiving money from another kid, then producing a second backpack from under his desk. She went crazy, thinking he was dealing in her class, only to open his bag and find about 20 cans of Dr. Pepper.”
“At First It Was Awesome…”
“I won a lifetime supply of Mars Bars when I was 15. I get a box of 30 delivered every month. For the first six months, it was awesome, never had to buy chocolate, had plenty to share with my friends. After a year, it was hard to even give them away as everyone was sick of Mars Bars. Now every three months or so I deliver 75 or so to my local food bank. I’m currently living in Thailand, I dread to think how many Mars Bars I’m going to go home too.”
Gotta Make Due With This Much Product, Right?
sanneberg/Shutterstock
“A friend of mine used to run science fiction conventions. Once word gets out, movie studios send you free promo swag. Normally, it’s like 50 posters, 100 keychains, 200 buttons, or something like that. One day, a truck pulled up and gave him eight pallets of foam ‘novelty flying discs’ for the movie ‘Blade.’
Eight pallets. Each pallet had dozens of boxes, and each box had about 50 of these red, foam, ninja star-like foam disks about the size of a salad plate and about an inch thick. They didn’t fly; they were too thick and too light. It was like throwing a huge potato chip. They were stamped with the movie logo with a crusty ink that flaked off easily.
At first, people thought: ‘Oh, cool! Ninja frisbees!’ But then when they didn’t fly and left ink on their hands, they didn’t want them. So my friend was stuck with thousands of these things.
Later, he ended up using it to supplement his attic insulation. I wonder when someone buys his house if they will wonder what weird insulation company the previous owner used.”
There’s Only So Much You Can Make With Apples
DarrenWagner/Shutterstock
“When I was little, I won a lifetime supply of apples by correctly guessing how many were in a barrel. There were 110 and I guessed 109. The prize was 110 apples at a time each month. It was insane. After the first delivery, my parents begged them to stop. It’s impossible for a family of three to go through 110 apples before they rot and our neighbors stopped answering the door when they saw my parents standing there with bags of apples.
It quickly became, ‘Dagnabbit it. Here comes Sandra and this time she has apple pie, apple crisp, frozen apples, apple cores, dried apples, apple chips, those creepy old people dolls with rotten apple faces, apples specifically to put into a pig’s mouth, apple cider, apple juice, apple seeds, apple stems, an apple tree, apple butter, candy apples, bacon wrapped apples, apple sandwiches, apple polenta, apple pancakes, and several empty apple barrels.”
They Got All The Junk Food They Could Eat
“When we were kids, we were rarely allowed junk food. One time my little brother was really sick, and wouldn’t eat, and my mom was so desperate to get him to eat something that she told him he could have any food in the world he wanted. He picked Oreos. The one box of Oreos we bought turned out to be the winning box of a ‘year’s supply of Oreos.’ How many, you ask, is a year’s supply of Oreos? I’m glad you asked. It was 365 boxes. As a family of four individuals who did not normally eat junk food, needless to say, this was quite more than 1 year’s worth of Oreos for us. We kept a couple of boxes and then my parents took the rest to a food bank as they were delivered.”
Even With All The Restrictions, It Was A Pretty Sweet Deal
“Back in October, I won a movie-themed pumpkin carving contest at a local theater with the prize of a ‘year’s worth of free movie tickets.’
This translated to 52 free movie passes that could only be used Monday through Thursday, couldn’t be used on holidays, and couldn’t be used for a brief period time after a movie’s initial release.
But even with all the restrictions, it was still sweet.”
Taste The Rainbow
“I won a year’s worth of Skittles last year at a raffle for a school event. I ended up getting 60 coupons for a free bag of any size. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but after going through a few 16oz bags, you get tired of them. So I passed a lot out to random people and made some pretty good friends out of it.
Of course, we always kept a bag or four on hand in our dorm anyways.”
The Perks Of Being A Musician
“I currently have a lifetime supply of Red Bull. It’s kind of an endorsement for being a musician, but I don’t have to wear red bull helmets or anything on stage. I email a rep whenever I want some, and he sends about six cases and a friendly letter. I’ve sort of cut back lately and started drinking tea, but will grab a few cases every few months. Pretty fantastic setup though.”
First Comes Chick-Fil-A, Then Comes Marriage
“I earned a year’s worth of Chick-fil-a for being one of the first 100 customers at a grand opening. The actual prize was 52 free sandwich meals or 8-pack nugget meals. I would sometimes redeem two meals for myself for one sitting though. It was awesome. I took my girlfriend 10-15 times that summer. She later became my wife.”