Dear1 Dear2

Our McMonopoly. Everyone else’s probably looks the same.

Sentosa Cove is the currently hottest property in town. Why? Becos you can take home $50000 in cash from the McDonald Monopoly game if you own the Sentosa Cove property sticker.

We’ve eaten about 6 upsized extra value meals (EVM) since the start of this marketing campaign to join in on the latest craze in town. After all, getting a chance to win great prizes while eating $5.50 upsized lunch time discounted McSpicy meal sounds like a good deal!

Sure, the set collecting game does look fun at first, and the chances of winning looks great too. Each upsized meals comes with 8 stickers and we *just* need to collect 2 or 3 of the same colour to win. For many people out there, the hidden assumption is that all property stickers are printed in equal quantities. And right here, we have a big contradiction.

If there is going to be only 1 cash prize of $50k, how can there be 72148 pieces of Sentosa Cove in circulation? If everyone comes to claim the prize, do we split it like Toto? >_>

It didn’t take us many EVMs to confirm this. After collecting 3 Ardmore Parks, 4 Geylands (no misspelling) and 5 Amber Roads, it is quite easy to observe that the prize winning stickers are printed in controlled quantities. In a sense, everyone in Singapore who are playing this game will probably have Newton Road and River Valley, waiting for the prize winning Scotts Road. And so on for the other colours as well.

Or if we look at it another way, referring to the picture of the monopoly map above, there’s only going to be 50+100+20+15+10+15+1+1=212 prize winning stickers (and probably a few more spares in case of unclaimed prizes). Yes, only ONE Sentosa Cove.

And if I’m the organizer, I’ll probably release these prize winning stickers slowly over the course of the game duration (until 31 Dec 2009), starting with the lowest prize in the first few weeks of the campaign to convince the public that prize winning stickers are indeed in circulation. And I’ll release the winning Sentosa Cove sticker (singular, not plural) on the final week to crown the so-called grand winner. After all, who will still want to play the game if the big prize was given away during the first week.

Just the other day, we overheard a few aunties in our neighbourhood discussing about how they *only* short of Orchard Road. And if auntie A have *extra* Orchard Road, must give it to auntie B ok. Erm… There’s only 1 Orchard Road in Singapore (pun intended). Everyone else in Singapore is also *only* short of Orchard Road. I wonder if these aunties realized that they’re falling into the marketing trap by eating EVM every day.

For us, we just eat our EVMs whenever we have cravings for french fries, and at the same time try our luck at the game. Our best hope are the instant win prizes. So far, we’ve won $3 Esso discount, a milk shake and a snack wrap. Slurps!

-Dear1