What's the best thing you've ever won in a competition?
By @edent
· personal · 8 comments · 250 words
When I was... Oooh... 8 or 9 I entered a "count the number of spots on the giraffe" competition one summer holiday. Apparently I was the only child who noticed that there was a spot on the tail, so I won a YEAR'S SUPPLY of Cadbury's Curly Wurlys.
Nothing I've ever won since has lived up to that childish feeling of absolute glee I got from seeing a HUGE box of chocolate which was MINE! ALL MINE! It was only mildly tempered by the fact that year's supply was a measly 52 bars.
My intention was to live like a king and eat nothing but chocolate for the foreseeable future.
Of course, that didn't last long. My mum made me share them with my little brother (did he count the spots? No. But that argument fell on deaf ears.).
I also had to give some to my school friends (something about socialism meaning we had to share our good fortune with others).
My dad ate some (allegedly for quality control purposes).
In the end, I think I was left with around ten. Less than a dozen chocolate bars. I'd started with millions and now only had a handful.
After eating the third one in a row I felt sick, and my stash remained uneaten throughout the summer.
There's a lesson in there somewhere…
@Edent I won a PS3 after the launch in a competition I didn't even enter.
Rachel C says:
I've won 2 outstanding trips. One to Abu Dhabi for a day at the circuit, with karting, a drag car experience and a hot lap around the track. The another to the Belgian F1.
@Edent A year's supply of Creme Eggs for me when I was 10! Which in my case meant:- 96 eggs- none of which I ate, because I didn't actually like them (too sickly-sweet)- my entire class at school benefited hugely from my giveaway, much to the chagrin of my brother
By contrast, the next year I managed to win two 4-day tickets to the Silverstone Grand Prix with seats in the new stand (my brother did get his hands on that one!) but it's still the Creme Eggs that come to mind 😊
@Edent I won a Walkman in a local police schools liaison shop window completion thing (I think you had to spot shop windows displaying something around town). Also more recently an ice bucket and 4 bags of ice which got delivered to the wrong house and melted! (That also had an Amazon echo as part of the prize that was delivered separately).
@Edent I once won a count how many lolly pineapples were in a jar https://www.woolworths.com.au/shop/productdetails/409334/allen-s-pineapples-jelly-lollies-bagIt was a massive jar with hundreds of them in there. I’m still a huge fan of these sweets to this day.
I was 12 or so, living in Tokyo at the time. One fine weekend we were walking around the NEC Plaza, and I noticed an Othello (the game, aka Reversi) competition. I decided to enter, my parents left me to it, and I scored high enough to earn a crate of tomato juice. Some may call that a booby prize, but I dragged it all the way on the Tokyo subway back home.
Won second prize in the school Christmas raffle aged about 12. A sweet double-tape-deck ghetto blaster, about £80 value and to me SO much better than first prize (£100 cash)!
Ben says:
I entered a raffle for a huge Apple Bundle in lockdown. I was eating pizza with my parents one night and we were watching a film on telly.
When the film had finished I went upstairs and saw I had a missed call on my phone. Me being intrigued, I called it back and it was the company telling me I’d won.
Two weeks later the biggest brown box arrives at my door and it had (more or less) one of every Apple product in it. Not bad for £9!
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