50% off a brand new canopy (parachute) from Glide Path. Then their brand-new, high performance semi-elliptical (the Nova, IIRC) developed a reputation for handling problems leading to injuries and the company went under.
From a movie theater grand opening drawing: Not a bad prize, but incredibly cheesy: Half of a double CD (Oingo Boingo’s “Boingo Alive”), The 2-CD set had been split into 2 separate jewel cases with a photocopied insert in the second case. I got Disc 2. Bonus uselessness: At that time, I still didn’t own a CD player.
I also won a voucher for a “free” stay at a Caribbean resort. The room was totally free!! The only catch was I had to book my airfare through the sponsor’s travel agency and pay a couple hundred dollars in “processing fees”, “daily resort fees”, and all applicable local taxes. But other than that, it would have been free!! I tossed the voucher in the trash.
At the first company picnic after the company was bought out by another firm, I won a box of pens and notepads with the former company name and logo. Actually, those come in handy as office supplies, but it was a pretty lame prize.
At a company Christmas party, a morbidly obese woman won a Victoria’s Secret gift certificate and refused to claim it. It got rather uncomfortable as the dingbat secretary kept insisting she “Come on up and get your prize. Everybody loves to win something.” “I don’t want that” “But you’re a winner. Come on!” It got worse when a male won the second VS certificate. “Well, you can use it for your wife or girl friend!!” He was gay and out. They didn’t let her have anything to do with the raffle in following years.
I won tickets to see Star Trek V.
When I was about 17, I went to a Grange meeting with a girl from school and her parents, I thought this was a good way to score a few points with them. Upon entering, everyone was given a ticket for a door prize. Of course, to keep everyone there, the prize drawing was the very last thing done. 3 boxes were brought out and placed on a table, one small box, one medium sized box and one large box. The first ticket was drawn and an older woman won. She chose the small box and got a watch. The next ticket was drawn and it was my number. I went up and being greedy, I chose the big box. The lady in charge opened the box, looked inside and told me maybe my mother could use what was inside. It was a sachet. A bag made out of lacy stuff filled with flowery stuff. About the size of a baseball. It smelled like girly stuff. The only thing a 17 year old guy likes smelling girly are 17 year old girls. I gave it to the girl I went to the meeting with. The third ticket was drawn and a nerdy guy in what I would guess his early 30’s won. He won a jar of homemade jam. And got all excited about it too.
Things didn’t work out between me and the girl and we went our separate ways. I saw her at our 10 year high school reunion and she told me she still had the sachet I had given her.
The most useless thing I ever won was a stainless steel mouse pad.
It came in an elegant fitted pine box, with polishing cloth and little rubber feet you could stick on it.
It was pretty heavy gauge steel and the surface was engine turned – pretty neat looking.
The problem is that its finish is too shiny for optical mice, and who wants to use a non-optical mouse anymore?
It was one prize of many at an event at work. When we saw the prizes laying out earlier in the day, I thought it looked really cool, and a girl I worked with said she wanted the box, so we made a deal that if either of us won it, I would get the mousepad and she would get the box.
I took home my useless mousepad and gave her the box, as agreed.
You win.
We entered the contest at the local grocery store, hoping to win the second prize, which was dinner out at a Chinese restaurant. What we won was the “grand prize”. A rickshaw. Actual life size. The manager was laughing when he called. I managed to get it home in our little Vega wagon, and it looked just great sitting in the living room of our apartment. I thought I might use it for plants or something like that in the yard when we bought our house, but never really got around to it. We ended up letting a neighbor use it as a cart to pull behind his motorcycle. I still kind of wish I’d done something more creative with it.
When I was about ten I won two tickets to the Great Moscow Circus in a newspaper competition. I went with my mother. The seats were as far back from the action as it was possible to be. We couldn’t see a thing.
I also once won a raffle at work that gave me several thousand dollars worth of petrol coupons. The only thing was that I had a company car and didn’t pay for my petrol. So the prize was of no value to me. But at least I didn’t have any trouble in giving away the vouchers to my colleagues.
Not to mention the disergonomics of resting your wrist on steel :eek:
From time to time some of the dining halls here at Tech will have a specialty dinner. The food on those nights is about 5 times as good as usual and the whole dining hall is decorated in some theme to which the food is tailored.
Anyways, last year, I entered a raffle at one of these specialty dinners not hoping for the top prize (an iPod something-or-other) but for one of the slightly lower prizes (a $50 gift card to Wal-Mart, I think.) A few days later, I get an e-mail saying that I won something. I go by the dining hall to pick it up and receive a plastic bag, tied tightly shut, with a piece of masking tape attached on which was written the number 7. I figured before I opened the bag that I was essentially scraping the bottom of the prize barrel.
Boy was I right. The bag contained a 6 inch plastic ruler (apparently made out of 3.6 recycled styrofoam cups), a tiny spiral notebook and a large flimsy looking plastic water bottle (all three of which had the logo of some food products company on them.)
That’s not the worst of it though. The bag also contained a matching t-shirt and pair of boxer shorts each emblazoned with the V8 juice logo (and each at least 3 sizes too small, as though the thought of wearing them passed through my mind.) The whole lot (minus the ruler which was marginally useful) was promptly dumped in a YMCA donations bin.
I used to listen to the oldies station and called in and won a trivia question one night. The prize was to pick out an album! woot! My father took me down there and they showed us the bin to choose from. It was a pathetic bunch of cutouts and I didn’t find anything that was any good. I didn’t know it at the time but apparently Pop felt really bad on my behalf. I called in another time and won and didn’t bother to go in. I figured at least I had saved someone else from the disappointment. :smack:
At the state fair in 1985 I won the soundtrack (on LP, no less) to the movie “Running Scared” (I couldn’t identify which IMDB link was the right one). I don’t even remember what I did to win it. IIRC the music was mostly rap and pop, which I didn’t listen to then and I don’t listen to now. I never played the record even once.