Ever wonder what really happens when someone wins a lifetime supply of something? Well, these people did and they’re here to share their stories of how they won a lifetime supply of something and if they’ve gotten sick of their prize yet! Content has been edited for clarity.
Earned It The Hard Way
“I didn’t really ‘win’ a lifetime supply of something, but I still got a lifetime supply of Eskimo Pies. For Europeans or other people that don’t know Eskimo Pies are, they’re vanilla ice cream bars coated with dark chocolate. Pretty standard freezer section at the grocery store fare.
Anyway, about 15 years ago I bought a box of Eskimo Pies and went to eat one. And promptly cut the heck out of my lip because there was a big piece of broken glass inside it. I’m aware that this could have been a big payday for me, but I’m not real sue happy, but I still wanted something done. So I took photos, called the makers, and wrote them a letter with the pictures included basically asking ‘so what are you going to do about this?’
They sent me a letter with a check for $600 and a phone number to call whenever I wanted free Eskimo Pies with the letter stating that if I cashed the check they are absolved of any responsibility. So whenever I want, I call and get a coupon for free of Eskimo pies. It makes for a good thing to give to coworkers and things like that.”
They Weren’t Wrong
“My brother-in-law went to a contractor’s trade show, and one of the guys on his crew won a lifetime supply of some kind of locking wrench.
They gave him one – because it comes with a lifetime guarantee.”
So Much Snapple
“When I was 13 or so, my dad won a year supply of Snapple among other prizes (a Jeep, a trip to Florida, a bunch of skateboard gear, a meet and greet with Tony Hawk).
I remember like a booklet of vouchers, like 365 of them, and it was 6 Snapples worth a voucher or something. My mom used some coupon voodoo and bought it on sale with the vouchers and we got like 3-4 years of this stuff. Anyways, long story short, my dad hated Snapple, so he let me and my brother pick it all out. We had a garage full of the stuff. We drank a ridiculous amount of Snapple, we gave it away to friends, we brought it with our lunches. We ended up throwing some away as it started to fade and taste funny.
We pretty much got sick of it halfway through and started drinking it to get rid of it.”
They Finally Learned How To Use Their Advantage
“I once won a lifetime supply of Reese’s Peanut Butter cups.
I know what you’re thinking, amazing right? Well, it was at the time. Then, my family ate about a billion of them, and then we hated that stuff. Problem is, they just kept coming. I should say that these were the individually packed ones (one per pack, not three per pack), so we just started handing them our at Halloween and whatnot.
They would arrive in these boxes of 1,000 and they would show up every other month for like a good decade.
I only recently started eating them again, and even then, I still only maybe eat one or two.
I also once won McDonald’s for a year and it was the best year of my life.
I also received what could be considered a lifetime supply of Sour Skittles and Sour Skittles Jellybeans when they came on the market. Same store, same type of promotion, however the deal with Skittles was that they would pay $2 per box of skittles. Each box came with 500 packs split between Skittles and jellybeans at 250 packs each (we’re talking full packs here). My manager somehow put 200 instead of 20 boxes, and we ended up with about a billion of these things, so anyone could take them home. Heck, we were giving customers like 5 packs with every order. I ended up taking home 25-28 boxes which meant I had over 10,000 packs of these things. Problem is, much like any sour candy they rightfully mess your teeth and gums up, and pretty soon we just couldn’t eat them anymore.
We took them to our local baseball field on a tournament Sunday and they agreed to let us sell them IF we donated half the earnings to the team. Soon enough, people were buying them in droves. We sold out in the weekend and make like $3k. Not bad for a bunch of free stuff.”
Someone Ended Up Happy
“My dad won a year’s supply of cat food, but a) it was delivered in one go and b) the cat didn’t like it (of course). The people at the shelter were super happy though, so it ended well!”
The Shampoo Giver
“I won a lifetime supply of shampoo. They come in mini bottles each month and are great gifts for people who you don’t like that much, but you don’t want to offend.”
They Had To Test Things
“When I was four, my mom got a Diet Pepsi out of the fridge and opened the can and went to take a drink and stopped and said she smelled something funny, almost like rotten eggs. She promptly got a glass and poured the contents out to find a bloated, festering cig butt floating in the glass. She immediately started throwing up and she was FURIOUS. She would occasionally give me or my sister a drink as a treat and even though I was pestering her as she opened it, she said no this time (Thank God).
She called Pepsi Co. the same day and they sent her to escalations where they said they argued that it must have came from her since they don’t allow smoking on the production floor. This was in 2000 by the way so smoking indoors was frowned upon, but not illegal like it is today. They told my mom to send the can and the contents of said can to them for testing. They did some tests and concluded that it was in the can SEALED for approximately 1 year before she opened it!
They sent her 312 coupons for free cases of any Pepsi product with no expiration date. My mom never drank Diet Pepsi again and always pours her drink in a glass now no matter what it is. We got 4 cases that first October after it happened and we handed out full sized cans of Pepsi, Mountain Dew, and 7up for Halloween that year. We ended up getting the last 10 cases all at once and donating them to the rescue mission here in Idaho because we were all sick of soda after a few years.
I always think about it any time I open a can of soda.”
More Coffee For You
“In a contest, I won a lifetime supply of high-quality coffee beans. Contestants had to guess how many beans were in a large glass barrel on display.
Each month, 3 pounds of my choice arrive at regular intervals. I give away the excess to friends and family and no one is ‘sick of them’ yet!”
A Lifetime Supply Of Hot Dogs, All Sent At Once
“I know a family that won a lifetime supply of hot dogs. The problem was the company decided that the average person eats 3 hot dogs a day (no clue how that’s the number they got). This sounds fine at first but they didn’t want to ship 90 hot dogs a month they sent the full value of 1 average lifetime on pallets. 90/month X 12months × 82 years average lifespan.
88.5 THOUSAND hot dogs…in 1 shipment.
They bought a whole extra freezer to store a bunch. But that couldn’t hold it all, so they ended up donating a massive amount to local churches and homeless shelters.”
I Was A King
“My Dad was given a years supply of Decadent chocolate chunk cookies from President’s Choice.
He was doing some contracting side-work for the now-closed factory that made them in Toronto Ontario, and the check bounced for whatever reason. He went to talk to them a few weeks later and they apologized and gave him cash, and two big garbage bags of cookies.
They said they were perfectly edible and that the garbage bag was only what was used to hold them and was not actual garbage or contaminated in any way. They said to come back any time in the next year when you want another bag, no limits.
The cookies were the QC/QA rejects that were perfectly edible, but couldn’t be put in the container because they were cracked in half or missing a chunk, etc.
I brought an entire bag to my Grade 8 graduation ceremony after party.
My neighbor worked for the Mars corporation who make, Mars chocolate bar, among others. He worked in the QA/QC line and anytime something stupid like the barcode was slightly off, the label was folded wrong, or it ‘looked off’, they’d toss the chocolate bar in a box and employees at the end of the shift could take a box any time they wanted free.
The company didn’t have waste to then process, so it was win-win.
Halloween at my neighbor’s house was great when you could go there and get 10-15 full sized chocolate bars. Birthdays also were great when you’d get a 3×5 foot box which had 8-10 smaller boxes of chocolate bars, with each of those smaller boxes having 30-40 bars of chocolate in it.”
The Cereal Helped Someone Else
“Growing up, my next door neighbor won a lifetime supply of Honeycomb.
The company would ship them a case a month. They planned for like a family of two adults and three kids. He was the only kid in the house. They had boxes and boxes of the stuff. Hanging out, meant you came home with a box of cereal. They moved and were slow to update the move with the company, so the new neighbors gave me the shipments.
I thought it was great. I’m lactose intolerant, and in the 80s, Honeycomb was one of the best cereals to eat dry and non-milk alternatives were super expensive in those days.
It Was Necessary
“My brother had a friend who won a years supply of sandwiches a local sub shop when he was in college. That guy was sick of subs by the time his year was up, but he still went there almost every day because he was broke college student who wasn’t on a cafeteria plan.”
Good Riddance
“I worked at a company that was doing a promotion with Swanson that was giving away a year’s supply of Swanson frozen dinners, with 365 coupons for a free meal. There was some legal reason the contest couldn’t go through, so my co-worker gave me a stack of like 50 of them.
I lived next door to a grocery store, so for about two weeks, I got one every night. I started to just feel awful during the day. I was just sluggish and couldn’t breathe as well. I left the remaining stack of coupons sits in my junk drawer for years before I just tossed them.”
She Got It The Hard Way
“My mom got a year supply of Dr. Pepper, but it came at a price. Back in the 90s, she got a Dr. Pepper from a row of vending machines right as the delivery guy was loading up the last one. There was a hunk of something when she took the first drink, but she thought it was just ice from it being freshly loaded. She bit down on it. It was a freaking cockroach.
Since the distributor saw it all go down, she got free Dr. Pepper for a year. It’s been almost two decades and she still will not drink a beverage out of the original container. She has to pour it into a glass first.”
We Became Prisoners To The Bugles
“It wasn’t a lifetime supply, but my mom used to work for a charity that visited prisoners and gave them cookies and tried to start Bible studies. Anyways, a Frito-Lays distributor donated several pallets of Bugles to the cause. We didn’t have anywhere to put them so the loose boxes just kind of spread through the house. She’d wrap them at Christmas (3 years, maybe 4), so they’d look like decor. She did the math and realized that the prisoners weren’t going to eat them all before they expired. They were ours as well now.
She refused to buy any other chips and after a while, any other snacks. We’d get pumped when she bought crackers for a recipe because we knew she couldn’t keep us from getting to the leftover crackers. She sent several cases to my sister’s when she was at college. When my brother moved, not only did he get several cases whether he wanted them or not, he packed a lot of his things in Bugle boxes. She cooked with them. We had walking tacos instead of regular tacos.
The freaking PRISONERS were complaining about Bugles by the time they were gone and they only got them twice a month.”
Still Pretty Good
“Not me, but a friend of mine won ‘Free Whataburger For a Year!’ in one of those games they play during timeouts at a Spurs basketball game.
What he actually ended up getting was 52 coupons for one free ‘Just-A-Burger,’ which is basically the junior burger, limit one per visit.
Basically, he got one free burger a week, but still had to pay for fries, drinks, and anything else he wanted.
Not the worst thing in the world I suppose, but still not what he was expecting.”
The Variety Was Nice
“My wife won a years supply of food from a particular company. Every month a gargantuan box would arrive stacked to the brim with all sorts of different foods. It was like Christmas once a month, because we had no idea what we were going to get each time. It was fantastic, and the most varied my diet has ever been. At the end of the year, they forgot to send out our last one, so instead they just gave a code to my wife to spend on a final box. We forgot to even use it for another year later, but it was less exciting because we knew exactly what we were getting.
She also won a year’s free subscription to Sky. The biggest package with all the channels as well. It worked on their part because we’ve been willing customers for the last 8 years, so I can’t complain with that one either.”
Well, I Thought I Had Won
“I won a years supply of Panda Express at a local mall. I met with a lady who handed over a gift card with the equivalent of one year of panda (apparently $500 she said) and congratulated me.
Not a huge fan of Panda and the closest one to me at the time was over an hour away, so I didn’t get a chance to use the card until months later. I go to the register to pay with the gift card and the teller said the card had a zero balance. I didn’t want to hold up the line, so I paid cash. I still had the number from the lady that gave me the card. I called and it was disconnected. Easy come, easy go.”
I Leveraged My Supply Into A Pastor
“I won a free year supply of burritos at Freebird’s, which really equated to one burrito a week. However, they have a points system so they just gave me a card with enough points to get 52 burritos. The cool thing was they were messing up and the first four months they were taking the points, but then they we’re adding points as if I was purchasing them (wasn’t supposed to happen). I got an extra 4 or 5 burritos out of it.
Anyways, I graduated college and moved to the other side of town and still had about 20 burritos worth of points (they didn’t expire), so I gave it to my pastor as payment for officiating my wedding. Worked out great!”
I Went Through A Bit Of A Hassle To Win
“Three weeks ago, I won a year’s worth of Big Mac meals by being one of the first 50 through the drive thru starting at 5:00 AM for a grand opening. It is one per week for a year on a punch card coupon only good at that one McDonald’s. Retail value is something close to $400. I can’t supersize the drink or fries, I already tried and they said I couldn’t just pay the difference.
To win this, I went to the place at 4:15 AM and found that I was about 10th or 12th in line. An employee was maintaining a line that was forming in the large parking lot of the Home Depot next to the store. Tickets were handed out to reserve your coupon. Once you got the ticket, you were guaranteed to get the prize as long as you went through the drive thru staring at 5:00 AM and you bought a breakfast meal.
At about 4:40, lots of cars started showing up. Naturally, they messed up the line and it forked, so the employee with the tickets had to manage two ends until the tickets were gone. Then at 5:00 AM, they gave the official start and the line started moving. A large pickup truck up front would not start because the guy left his lights on and drained the battery, so someone was jump-starting him when I passed it.
Right before the first car went in, a middle-aged Karen comes in off the road, possibly from a nearby parking lot, and zooms into the drive thru in front of the line and orders food and demands the coupon because she was first. She did not get one because she did not have the ticket reserving one. So she parks at the exit and gets out demanding to see the manager saying that she did not know about the line of 50 cars and the tickets. I don’t know what came of that because the line was moving past her but I think she was wanting a refund on the breakfast.
I got my coupon and I am going there in a few hours to get this week’s installment. I do not even like Big Macs that much because I think they are a messy, lukewarm sandwich. I would rather the coupon be for almost anything else there. The fries are good though and they have the self serve ketchup dispenser. I cut way back on soda, but the odd free one is okay.”
No One Likes Red Bull
“I had a math teacher freshman year of high school and he was a pro motocross/motorcycle driver for Red Bull since the day he turned 18. His sponsorship got him a lifetime supply of Red Bull, and as such, he got two flats a month I think. He would drink two a day for three years straight, but then he left the school. I don’t know why.
Since he got like 150 or something, he would just leave the extras in the teachers lounge, and since most teacher drank coffee or something, by the time he left, there were a good 300 cans. Two years later, they’re still drinking them.
He didn’t get tired of Red Bull, but the other teachers did.”
Please Take My Fruit
“A buddy of mine won a Fruit Ninja competition and earned himself a year’s supply of fruit. He also won an Xbox 360, Kinect, and Windows phone, all Fruit Ninja themed.
They’d send him a crate of fruit once a month and it’d all be the same fruit for that month. So one month he’d get a crate of 50 oranges, and then the next month he’d get 30 pineapples, and so on. He never knew what fruit was coming and it was impossible to eat all of it before it’d get bad, so he was always trying to get people to take fruit home with them if they visited.”
I Can’t Eat Another Chicken Sandwich
“I won a year’s worth of Chick-fil-A (one meal per week) and I was sent 52 free meal coupons. I was over the chicken sandwiches pretty quickly and convinced the workers at the only Chick-fil-A in my area to let me get wraps, too, so I had a little variety.
Because was across town from where I lived, coupled with I didn’t want any more fried chicken sandwiches, I gave away some with Christmas gifts. To this day, I’m still don’t eat the regular chicken sandwich there.”
A Great Prize For A Truck Driver
“My dad won a free one year supply of Subway sandwiches. 10-20 years ago, Subway had this thing where you would buy a sandwich and they would give you these little tickets. Bring in ten tickets and you got a free sandwich. One Subway restaurant was having a giveaway. Just write down your name address and phone number and one random person would win a year supply of free sandwiches. HE WON!
They give him like 40 rolls and each roll had like 300 tickets. It equaled out to about three sandwiches a day for a whole year. He was a truck driver, so he was gone for 2-3 weeks at a time. He would take these tickets with him and just eat Subway every day. He saved a ton of money not having to buy meals and ended up buying a car with the money he saved on food!”
It Turned Into An Investment
“My uncle won a contest of some sort from Marvel comics when he was a kid (around 1970), and got a 1-year subscription to 5 comic series. However, apparently my grandpa knew someone who worked at Marvel at the time, and he added a couple zeroes onto the end of the duration, making it effectively lifetime.
I haven’t confirmed the details of this myself, so I don’t know how true this story is, but I do know that my uncle is still getting Marvel comics and has kept all of them preserved. The full collection apparently worth over $10,000.
So yeah, I don’t think he’s sick of it yet.”
