Or worst prize you’ve seen given out in a serious contest?
Basically you were entered in a contest (an actual one, no Publishers Clearinghouse style contests or “Take a test drive in this car and you might be a winner!”) and what you got was completely underwhelming for it’s scope/scale.
My family won the Grand Prize in a statewide Taco Bell contest that involve peeling a winning ticket from a drink cup, one of those “Only one Grand Prize Winner ticket” things. The grand prize wound up being tickets for four to Six Flags Magic Mountain and only the tickets. No air-fare or hotel accommodations and we had to drive two hours to actually get there. MSRP was $250 as well, you would think the “Grand Prize Only a Single Winner” for a major corporations contest would be worth more than $250.
This will sound like no big deal but I won a music trivia question on the oldies station when I was a young teenager. I overcame my phone phobia to call in and I won! I was so excited because I won the chance to go in and pick up a free record album! At this point my only records wre hand-me-downs from my father’s collection.
So we go and they’re like, yeah, pick a record from that bin. It was a bin of old cut-outs of nothing anyone would ever want to listen to. I was deflated and I don’t think I even took an album at all.
I have been at more than one staff development where the “door prizes” were clearly things people were just getting rid of–curriculum stuff that was a generation out of date, that sort of thing. The other day I won a book of black-line masters for a mimiograph machine.
A book about the New Testament.
I won it at an Episcopalian Church, when I was 7 or 8.
I loved to read, but that book was the pits.
It went on the shelf, nobody looked at it, 8until it disappeared in a move.
When I was about 9 or 10, I won a newspaper art contest. The prize was two tickets to the circus. The day before the event I came down with the flu, and my brother went with his best friend. They brought me back a fucking balloon.
I won a brand new Chevy. It was the lucky raffle ticket drawn at a 4th of July celebration. I had begged my Dad to buy the ticket. No one in the family drove so Dad sold it the next day.
A gift card to an expensive restaurant. Only the card was worth less than anything on the menu, and I didn’t have the budget to supplement it, let alone buy a drink or dessert.
I won a cheesy “chocolate fountain” gizmo at a raffle at work. I loathed the thing, and unloaded it onto a coworker who thought it was a fancy gourmet item. I wonder how soon it clogged up?
At similar work raffles, I’ve also won scented candles or potpourri thingies. I really dislike perfume, so I secretly throw this stuff away in a distant trash can so I don’t have to smell them.
Senior year in high school I signed up for cross country in the fall just to stay in shape until track started up in the spring. I am/was NOT a long distance runner. I was high/long jumper. And the cross country couch was also the high jump coach, so he knew my intentions and took it easy on me. ANYWAY, at one xcountry meet I got a ribbon for 97th. They gave ribbons out to 100.
Back in college, I was active in the broadcast media department. Throughout the semester there was a promotion going on for our group that had a big mystery prize that was going to be announced at the end of the semester at our awards dinner. So, the anticipation was built up over the semester.
At the dinner, they picked a name out of a bucket and I had won! The big prize was mine! To announce what the prize was, they had a film to show.
In the film, the camera was panning along a row of cars in a parking lot, slowly moving down the row, showing car after car. Finally, the camera came to what appeared to be an empty parking space, with a small object in the middle of it. They zoomed in to show a small plastic toy car. That was it, that was the mystery prize.
I often wondered if they had decided on my name all along and did the whole thing to get a laugh humiliating me. They were that kind of people. Assholes.
It was a dance contest at a conference. I think someone on the committee got it as a gift and wanted to get rid of it. Of course, I don’t iron clothes, and having to bring it to the airport (I checked it) was a pain.
I won a couple of ‘guess how many pieces of candy are in the jar’ contests. Once I won a nice Paddington Bear I gave to a friends toddler. The next time I won, the candy was displayed in a lovely pumpkin shaped jar. I won and went into the office to pick up my ‘prize’. They gave me the candy in the baggie. Mind you entering the constest was a dollar and there wasn’t more than .75 in the baggie. According to the office manager the ‘prize’ was the candy. I pointed out even for a charity game that was crap, and that the prize was the jar. We went back and forth about this and in the end I made them give me the jar. To this day, I think the woman in the office wanted to keep the jar. I still have it, but now you can find them everywhere.
A few years ago I won a raffle in my company for unused Air Miles. Only the amount was barely enough to take me and my then-boyfriend anywhere that was not more easily accessible by car. So we spent a few hundred euros to upgrade them to tickets to Gran Canaria. Not something I would have picked myself, but my boyfriend really wanted to go there. Two months later he broke up with me. Not wanting to go there alone, and not able to have the tickets reimbursed, I just let them expire.
I won first place in a maths competition in primary school. The prizes were Parker pens but I thoought the one awarded for second prize was much nicer than the one I got
This one was an actual contest. If anyone remembers Coke’s “MagiCans” from the early 90s, I got one. The cans had a sealed chamber filled with icky tasting water so that they would feel the same as regular unmagic cans. These chambers tended to leak, and the mechanism that was supposed to pop out the prize tended to jam.
Mine was doubly defective. I got a big swig of yucky water, which I sprayed all over the store (which my sister worked at, so she and her coworkers and everyone else got to watch my spit take). My brother cut the can open so we could get at the prize, a one dollar bill.