Atari McDonalds promo!!

[+Random Terrain]

Cool I live in Roanoke, VA. Are you still in the area?

Nope, moved away from that area near the end of 1982.

[Blackjax]

Jeez, I don't get it. I've been reading Curt's page for years now and I still haven't seen everything. Its like when Atari exploded, he was standing there with a giant net and got all the info.

 

Not to knock AtariAge at all, but I was reading it before I even found the Atari 2600 Nexus

[Dutchman2000]

Yes, Curt has done a lot of great preservation work. He even "dumpster dived" at the old Atari HQ before the Tramiels sold Atari. He found some really good stuff that way. Makes me cringe to think what else the Tramiels thew out over the years that they owned Atari.....

[Jess Ragan]

Of course the greatest McDonald's promotion of all time was the 1984 Olympics contest.  You won free food based on how well the USA did in the event on the scratch off card.  A gold medal got you a free burger, silver got you fries and for bronze you got a drink.

 

Thanks to Jimmy Carter's boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics, the Soviets boycotted the LA Olympics in 1984.  So the USA ending up winning all sorts of events they had no business winning, such as Greco-Roman Wresting (I wrestled in high school and I still don't understand what the hell is going on in this event.)  McDonalds had printed up tons of cards with these types of events.

 

I got so damn much free food, I ended up throwing out a ton of winning tickets.   Those were great times when you were 14, got no allowance and the closed McDonalds was less than a mile away.

 

That same thing happened on the Simpsons. Quite funny

 

Krusty: "Damn you pigs! You're ruining me! I'm spitting in every hundredth burger!"

 

Homer: "Ooooh... I like THOSE odds!"

 

I was also reminded of that Simpsons episode when I cracked open the copy of Panzer Dragoon Saga I bought for twenty dollars at Toys 'R Us in 1999 and found a sticky smear on the first disc. It was almost as if the manufacturers had stuck a piece of bubble gum to the underside of the disc, then slowly tore it off. Maybe Krusty had a lot of stock in the company at the time, I don't know.

 

JR