You’ve seen this before. This is the more obnoxious older sibling of the “free” toy inside—the mail-in prize. In this case, you send in proofs of purchase from $24 worth of cereal (or proofs of purchase from $8 worth of cereal, as well as $5), and they send you a $3 radio.
The children get excited about this sort of thing, which is, of course, the point. So I told them Santa Claus was in charge of prizes in cereal boxes, and that if they had been good enough boys, the radio would be in there.
No, of course I didn’t really do that. Cancel the mental composition of that tearful I-thought-I-knew-you email, please.
I am thinking I may use this as a lesson in TANSTAAFL, though. I’m already talking to Nathan a little bit about watching television commercials critically, and he’s building a good understanding of “cheap,” mostly based on discarded-not-repaired fast food and party favor toys.
Perhaps we’ll see this particular offer through to completion, doing everything we need to do to receive the radio, and then compare it to what we could have bought with the same money and substantially less effort.
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Did you ever see the run in Calvin and Hobbes where he sends away for a beanie? Hang on….
It’s in Revenge of the Babysat and it starts on page 43. He’s got to send in four proof of purchase seals from “Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs” and he waits FOREVER for the thing to arrive. When it does, it needs to be ASSEMBLED (which, in itself, is funny as hell) and he realizes it’s a piece of crap. The consolation? “At least it’s not a TOTAL loss,” Calvin tells Hobbes at the end of the run, “It came in this great cardboard box”