No Purchase Necessary

In 1984 the Summer Olympics were held in Los Angeles; the Soviet Union stayed away and persuaded a slew of other nations to join it in protest.  Exactly what they were all protesting has never been clear to me, although some people claimed it was about possible defections. Officially, the Russians denounced a so-called climate of anti-Soviet hysteria and claimed they had “security concerns.” Whatever.  They weren’t coming, and they announced it on the day the Olympic Torch Relay began in New York.  Their allies in dissent gave notice soon after.

At that time the summer and winter games were held all in the same year and the Winter Olympics of 1980 had been hosted in Lake Placid.  Unexpectedly, the American hockey team had beaten the heavily-favored Soviets.  Our kids were too young to notice in 1980 but by 1984 they planned to keep tabs on all the events.  And they had an opinion as to why this Soviet boycott was being staged:  the Russians just couldn’t get over losing that hockey game.  It made sense.

In the spirit of the season we decided that, while all the action was going on in LA, a vacation in Lake Placid would be fun.  The kids wanted to visit the still-fairly-new Olympic Village and ice skate indoors right where the hockey team had.  Lake Placid also offered some nice restaurants my husband and I were inclined to try.  And then McDonald’s intervened.

We should have already known what was going on, and we did, vaguely:  McDonald’s had launched an advertising campaign called “If the U.S. Wins, You Win.”  It was a scratch-off game played on tickets available from any McDonald’s franchise, no purchase necessary; if the American team uncovered by the scratch-off won the gold medal, the bearer was entitled to a free Big Mac; for the silver medal, French fries; for bronze, a Coke.  McDonald’s had rolled out this gimmick during prior Olympics but since we mostly ignored fast food it had not impressed us; there was no reason for us to think it would have any effect now.

Our fatal mistake was to stop at a McDonald’s on the drive up to use the restroom. My husband ordered hamburgers for the boys and coffee for us.  While we waited, the teen-age servers chatted amiably with the kids and asked what sports they liked.  And then, in a fit of good will, one of them took a handful of scratch-off tickets and tossed them on our tray.  “Have fun with them,” he smiled. “No purchase necessary.”

It was early August and the games had been underway for several days.  As the boys scraped the tickets and enjoyed their impromptu meal, my husband and I smiled at their childish enthusiasm.  Then Matthew turned up two tickets for an event that had won gold and Angelo scratched off tickets for three silvers. Another ticket appeared for a bronze medal; then one more for gold. Suddenly we saw that a sinister vacation glitch was unfolding:  unless the kids forgot about it, we would have to return to a McDonald’s to redeem these food prizes.  And there was no chance they would forget; they were obsessed with America’s winning.  Besides, every single McDonald’s had a scoreboard posted to check the outcomes. “Don’t worry,” my husband assured me, “it’s probably rigged so that most of the tickets are for things we never win.”   Which, as it turned out, was true.  Except that THIS year, with 15 countries boycotting…America won everything.  Or so it seemed.

Mary Lou Retton became the first American gymnast to take gold for her all-around program and then went on to collect four more medals; Joan Benoit won the Olympic marathon; Carl Lewis struck 4 gold medals in track; and in a singularly stunning feat, the American women tied for the gold in freestyle swimming.  American wrestlers floored the competition in the Greco-Roman division, which I had never even heard of, and we even won silver and bronze for weight-lifting, formerly a Russian-dominated sport.  In all, America finished with a phenomenal total of 174 medals, 83 of them gold, an accomplishment for the ages.

And as for us…in lovely Lake Placid, between visiting the ski jump and having our pictures taken at the hockey rink, we went to McDonald’s.  Before we trekked down the bobsled run but after we kayaked on Mirror Lake:  we stopped in McDonald’s.  Since everyone in town was in on the promotion and everyone was following the Olympic Games, the lone franchise temporarily ran out of hamburgers and began offering free breakfast.  So for several mornings we had our coffee with synthetic scrambled eggs at McDonald’s.  Every time we redeemed a scratch-off, we got at least five more, because the kids asked for them…and according to the rules of the promotion, they could have as many as they wanted.

“If the U.S. Wins, You Win,” as it played out in 1984 is now cited as one of the worst marketing debacles in recent history.  But for my family it was a great success:  the kids got to gorge on forbidden foods and when the vacation was over they never wanted to set foot in a McDonald’s again.  And my husband and I, besides acquiring happy memories of a different sort of family experience, learned the true meaning of No Purchase Necessary.