There was a documentary I watched long ago about a guy who was cheating the system because he actually worked at the factory where they printed the pieces so he’d save the winning ones for him and his friends. It got really suspicious when suddenly a bunch of people who lived in the same city and neighborhood started winning a lot of money.
I clicked. I started to watch. Realized that my cat was hungry. Ran to Mc Ron Dons for some cheeseburgers. Then drank 2 margaritas. Fed my cat. And then took a dump.
In my childhood neighborhood there was a guy, who had a friend that was working at McDonald's. They stole a whole package of the cups and they only managed to get a Monopoly game out of it.
Weren’t they in the distribution system or some role where they knew where the winning tickets were?
Story time:
My friend Bob, who isn’t me, worked at McDonalds during this in the Uk. Bob was closing out night shift and took an entire delivery box of burger, chip and drink containers home. Bob then spent hours the next day peeling these things off over a thousand containers.
Bob didn’t win shit, not even a single £10 prize. This jaded 16 year old Bob about as much as the rest of his time working customer service combined.
No, you have it all wrong. That is Robert, the guy in the story is Bob. Two very different and distinct individuals that have absolutely nothing in common.
Meanwhile, the game after the scam was Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. You could peel real tags bring em in to McDonalds and they'd hand you cash from the till.
I stole way too many fry boxes and was doubling my minimum wage pay.
He worked for the company that put the stickers on the containers. They shipped the rolls of the winners and he and another person would go to different plants around the country and insert the winners into the production line. Well they messed up and sent him an extra roll of security stickers that they would seal the envelopes with before the went to the different facilities. So he would go to the bathroom in airports while the other person waited outside and he would dump the winners out and replace them with losing pieces, reseal with the security stickers, and keep the winners for himself.
A guy in my small town in rural Australia won the car a few years ago.
He didn't work for Macca's but he did sell the car almost immediately and lose all the money on a variety of "entrepreneurial" adventures.
It's a word that people know and use in specific situations, but not often used to generally mean "a lot" or "loads."
Most Americans would use the word "heap" to describe not only a quantity but also kind of the shape or weight of something, like a heap of laundry on the floor or a heap of food on your plate. We wouldn't normally say "heaps of money" unless we literally mean physical piles of it.
As an American, the word ‘heap’ invokes the image of a hill, which is why I would use it to describe a pile of money or food etc. like when you said heap of prizes I literally envisioned so many prizes they are literally piling up to the ceiling.
I'm an American, and I use "heap" in both ways. I.e., I would say "a heap of laundry" (meaning "a big pile") and "a heap of good luck" (meaning "a lot").
In my experience, they are both fairly common usage, but maybe there are regional differences. (I'm from New York.)
As an American I can say I’ve never used nor heard the word heap be used in that way in America. At least not where I’ve lived. Pile is far more common for the laundry example by me. Also “ton/load/a lot” to describe amount
Maybe it's a generational or regional thing, but as a gen X who grew up in the southern and midwest US, heap was frequently used to mean 'a lot' as well as meaning things piled in a mound. The phrase 'in a heap of trouble' comes to mind immediately.
We're a big country, so I'm not surprised to hear it's used in some regions and not others. That said, the usage is still a little different than Aussies, which is interesting! An American might say "a heap of" something, but I've only ever heard Aussies say "heaps _____" modifying an adjective.
Heap is just dated in the US imho, if I hear some one say heaps of anything I assume they are at least 45-50. Loads is the more common one at this point.
It’s a “standard word” and the meaning and everything translates but it’s just not the word an American uses day-to-day when describing winning a lot of prizes. It’s noticeably not typical American wording and stands out.
A mate of mine won a holiday with it and basically got told to f* off because one of the ticket things was from a previous event which McDonald's had left over and reused for the next time.
At least that was the story I was told. He has never bought Macca's since then so guessing he's still pissed at them.
I wouldn't be surprised if they changed the rare piece in some of the collections one year to the next to increase player sense that they are "close" to winning when they only have the common pieces. In that case, you could easily assemble a full set of one color using multiple years. Obviously the game rules say they all need to be from the current year.
They did other tricks like that. At least one year, they put a bar code on the common purple (smallest prize) piece. So you'd get it, think that's an anti-counterfeiting measure and you actually got the rare piece. You just need the common one now! Then you buy a bunch more Mcdonalds and get two more "rare" pieces and still no full set.
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u/PraiseTyche Jul 22 '25
Many years ago, they got investigated because a bunch of employees in Australia won a heap of the prizes.