October 8, 2025 • 50 mins
Think the McDonald’s Monopoly game of the 80s was just a fun way to win free fries? Think again. In this episode, we dive into the shocking story of how a few insiders turned the beloved fast-food game into a multi-million-dollar scam. From golden tokens to mob ties, we break down how Monopoly went from family fun to federal fraud.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Children of the Eighties is brought to you by Q
one O six point five Internet Radio. You can find
it online at Q one o six five dot com
or download the app.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Welcome back to Children of the Eighties. I am one
of your hosts, Jim, and I am joined as always
by the lady who has never met a fialo fish
that she liked. It's my co host, Lindsey.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
You know, that's all I would eat is a kid
is the falal fish, fileo fish? Really the fish show full.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Tell my memo was she would only eat the fialo fish.
So my dad tells a story that when they were young,
the McDonald's came to them, you know, near them. They
weren't a traveling circus. It wasn't like Barnum and Bailey.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Couldn't refuse no.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
But so McDonald's open close to where they lived, and
so of course they went and uh, they all got hamburgers,
and my mem all been into one and started chewing one,
and she made a face and my dad said what
and she just kind of, you know, scruffed up her
nose at it, like she didn't like it. And he
said he pointed to the science says over a million served,
(01:30):
and her response was, I wonder how many of them
have been eaten.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
She was quick on her feet, that memal she.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Was, and so she would always get a fileo fish. Right.
She would never deny her grandkids anything. So you know
when grand babies wanted to go to McDonald's because clearly
McDonald's put crack in their food for kids, Uh, she
would just order fileo fish. I always wondered why I'd
get a hamburger, she'd get a filet of fish.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
My house, we called that a fishow file a.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Now why did you do that?
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Because it seemed to flow better a fishow file at
if you say so. Okay, So before we get too
deep in the madness that is this episode, let's back up,
and I'm sure we've got something else we need to
touch on briefly before we get into the meat of
(02:26):
our story.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Yeah, so you seem to strike up a new phrase
last week that is going viral, much like nineteen eighty ten.
You have invented the phrase We're gonna nope it on back,
and so people are now using that.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
I love it the Lindsay lexicon.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Yes, and so I posted on Twitter because we got
a text from loyal listener and sometimes collaborator Deaf Dave
with Haull notes on a phone on a corded phone,
just like the nineteen eighties, singing nope It on back.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Yeah, because we talked about the kitchen phone from the
nineteen eighties being on the wall in the kitchen, so
haul of notes. In this AI generated picture, they're standing
in the kitchen.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Yes, I standing in a kitchen on the courted phone
singing nope it on our back.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
I love it. You asked me, like, how much thought
did I put in to that phrase before I said it?
Speaker 2 (03:28):
No, I just asked if you had heard it from
somebody else?
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Just came out of my mouth. I put no thought
into it.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Well, that's usually what how most things happen with you
over there. You just blurt stuff out.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Do I do? I just throw it all against the
wall and see what's which.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Sometimes is genius and sometimes it gets you in trouble.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Yes, sometimes I put my big fat foot in my
mouth too. So And you had to see daf Dave
again this week. Are you good? We're just h two
times back to back.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
Yeah. It was a lot of fun. Got to hang
out with him, have some lunch, he came down to
the atl to purchase something, and so I was able
to visit with him and and go to luncheon. We
got to watch Vanderbilt start to upset Alabama, but then
you know, that didn't happen, and I'm very thankful for
that because my Missouri Tiger's play Alabama this Saturday, and
(04:21):
I didn't need Alabama coming in very mad that they
had lost to the Vanderbilt nerded doors. So a good
time was had by all.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
I love it. What else we got going on?
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Well, uh, you mentioned last week that we were living
the dream and uh, yeah, I've had trouble dreaming since then.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
Yes, it's been a it's been a rough week in
the Butler house.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
I can't sleep. I'm waking up constantly. You know, It's
just what you were gonna say.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
I'm waking up constipated. And I was like, oh, well
you took it there.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
I can't sleep, Freddy Krueger's not even after me. I'm
not trying to stay awake. I just can't sleep. And
it's been Uh, it's been a rough go. In the morning,
I could go to sleep right now, but you know what,
I'd be up in an hour or two.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Yeah, you probably would.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
I'd be and I'd be up for the rest of
the night until about five am, four thirty maybe, and
then the alarm would go off.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
And this is just it's true old man issue.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
I know. I don't like being an old man.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Sure, old man rant.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
No, it's not my old man rant. My old man
rant might get me fired from my job. So I'm
just going to keep that to myself.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Keep yeah, just keep that, keep that to yourself. So
it has just been, uh, a busy, busy, busy week,
and so I am excited to take a few minutes
and kind of sit down here with.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
You, and we're going to decompress during this podcast, aren't
we this podcast?
Speaker 1 (05:50):
I like with the way you're yawning, you might be
going to sleep during this.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Pot Well, that would definitely be decompressing.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Oh, if you go to while I'm talking, we're going
to nope it on back.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
We are going to nope it on back.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
So we kind of had a loose idea of what
we wanted to do.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
Yeah we did. Are you ready to get to that
or you got any other cleanup items? But I changed
it up on you today. Oh you did? I didn't
know this. We're not doing the episode I thought we
were doing.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
Oh we're not. You've had so much stress going on
at work, I decided to take over. Let me give you,
Let me give you the working title for today's episode,
and you tell me if you know what we're going
to talk about. Okay, The mech scandal, the rise and
fall of.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Mcdowells. What is McDowell from coming to America? John Amos
had mcdowells. He was always being sued by McDonald's. He
had the Golden arcs. They had the Golden Archs.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
So mc scandal, the rise and fall of McDonald's monopoly.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Oh, I used to play that. I used to think
I was gonna win a million dollars. Guess what? Never did?
Speaker 1 (07:12):
He didn't?
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Did you no?
Speaker 1 (07:13):
Okay, Well, before we get too deep into all of this,
this is a podcast that looks back on the decade
of the nineteen eighties. We talk about things that were
important to us as children and what we look back
on with fond memories as adults. Ultimately, this is a
(07:37):
nostalgia podcast, so.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
It sounds to me like we're either getting nostalgic on
monopoly or we're getting nostalgic on McDonald's or.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Are we getting nostalgic on McDonald's Monopoly. Time will tell.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
McDonald's isn't a monopoly though, because there's Burger King, and
there's Windy's, and there's Taco Bell.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
No dork the game Monopoly that you played at McDonald's
once a year during the mid to late eighties and
most of the nineties.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
With the guy with the top hat and the monocle, Yes,
he didn't have a monocle. That's that's straight. What theory
is that that we talked about a couple of years
ago that I can't remember now. No, no, no, the
Mandela effect, that's straight Mandela effect. People think that the
monopoly guy has a has a monocle, but he doesn't.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
He started to say, it's the Mongolian.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Effect, the Mongolian effects.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
I don't think that's what it is. Nope, Okay, folks
can just imagine if we drank what this would be like.
For some reason, McDonald's in the eighties was just those memories.
It brings back so many warm feelings for me, so
many feelings of nostalgia when I think about going to McDonald's,
(09:06):
playing on the playground, at McDonald's, getting lunch at McDonald's,
going to the drive through at McDonald's. So many memories
are associated with McDonald You.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
Know what my memory associated with McDonald's is the few
times that we did get to go. My parents would
go through the drive through. They wo'd order as hamburgers
or whatever. My brother Mike always had to get a
plane cheeseburger, which meant that they had to cook it,
and we sat in the drive through for ten to
fifteen minutes just sitting there salivating waiting for our McDonald's.
(09:40):
Thanks a lot, Mike, But.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
Do you know by asking for that, he ensured he
got a fresh Well.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
I understand that. But now you can ask for a
hamburger with no cheese and it comes out right away
because they don't put the cheese on it, right. But
back then they put the cheese and the pickles and
the whatever on it, ketchup mustard onions and like it
was just the It just came pre made. So when
(10:08):
he ordered it that way, just playing cheese, yes, he
did get it fresh, but they had to cook it
from scratch. It was like they had to go slaughter
the cow, right because these cows made cheeseburgers with ketchup
and onions, and these cows didn't. So they had to
go slaughter the cow and then age it and then
(10:28):
cook the darn cheeseburger, the plane cheeseburger.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
But did he not like the onions, the pickle or
the ketchup?
Speaker 2 (10:35):
I don't know, but he wouldn't pick it off. And
so therefore I had to wait ten to fifteen minutes
each time for my McDonald's and I was never happy.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
There's always one in the family. So your family was Mike.
In my family, it was me.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
Oh, okay, did you order the plane or the whatever?
Speaker 1 (10:56):
I want to catch up? But I didn't want anything else.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
I didn't want no pickles are on it? See the
onions are what? Mad it good? There was a little
chomped up onions.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
No, no, no no.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
And then my mom said that she could make a
McDonald's burger like McDonald's, you know, And I felt like
the Eddie Murphy skit where she was asking for a
green pepper. I was like, name, no green peppers and
in McDonald's, you know.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
So yeah, okay, So today we're taking a bite out
of a story that's part nostalgia, part I.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
Like what you did. They're taking a bite out of
what are you? McGruff?
Speaker 1 (11:28):
Over there is the McDonald's monopoly game story.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Do you see Jenney over there? If she goes into
the McDonald's alone, you might not ever see her again.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
You remember going to McDonald's back in the nineteen eighties.
You'd order your fries and you'd peel that little sticker
off the fry carton or the drink cop you would pray.
You would pray for a board wall.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
Yes, so, so here's the deal. I don't remember this
in the eighties. I remember it in the nineties.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
Oh really.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
I was in college in the nineties, and of course,
you know, I ate a lot of McDonald's, right, and
especially when they had Monopoly going, because I certainly didn't
want to finish college and I didn't want to work
for a living. I wanted my millions.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Right, Yeah, the American dream.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
Yes, But yes, you did pray for the boardwalk.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
So you might pray for a boardwalk, but most likely
you're getting maybe a free coke at best.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Yeah, But behind them a chance Nobody wants a chance card.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
But behind those little game pieces was one of the
biggest marketing scandals of the late eighties in nineties.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Is that why I never won?
Speaker 1 (12:46):
Possibly? This is a story of how a fast food
game turned into a multi million dollar crime ring. But
first I'm going to talk a little bit about McDonald's
in general.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
A multimillion dollar crime ry so run by John Gottie.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
So back in the nineteen eighties, McDonald's wasn't just a restaurant.
It was the hangout spot. It was the reward after school.
It was the place for birthday parties. Did you know
you could have a birthday party at McDonald's.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
I did not.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
It was a stop on a road trip. It was
basically woven into our childhood. Except by the look you're
giving me, I'm thinking it wasn't woven into your childhood,
but it was mine.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
It wasn't woven into my childhood. And I didn't get
any birthday parties anywhere because my birthday was too close
to Christmas.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
Ah. So I have a memory of my uncle's first
wife because he had four Okay, his first wife worked
at McDonald's and I would I remember, we would go
to see her and she would give me the little
box of yummy shortbread cookies. Yeah, you remember those.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
Yes, they were the characters, right, weren't they there, like
the Hamburglar and Mayor mccheese and Ronald McDonald and Grimace.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
And there's nothing else out there that tasted anywhere close
to as good as those little McDonald's cookies tasted back
in the day. They don't do them anymore. So I'm
thinking there was probably something really bad in this. Oh,
I'm sure, But that's one of my earliest memories. I
want to say that may even have dated back to
nineteen eighty four. I don't think I ever had a
(14:39):
birthday party there, but I remember going to a birthday
party there. You could also order your cake directly from
McDonald Really, they would do the cake for you. They would.
And of course i've told the story about playing on
the mcdonaldld's playground.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
Yes, you have told that story. But you always got
stuck in the Hamburglars jail.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
Yes, I always got stuck up there because I was
too big to be climbing up, but I always wanted
to because I wanted to be like everybody else. So
before we peel those monopoly stickers, let's set the stage
with the look back at McDonald's in the nineteen eighties,
when Ronald ruled fries tasted better and the happy meal
(15:29):
was keen.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Fries definitely tasted better. You know what, they didn't have
a McDonald's that they had at my local dairy, Queen
Miss pac Man in Sundays. Sundays blizzards.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
Okay. The nineteen eighties were the company's biggest growth decade ever.
McDonald's went from roughly five thousand restaurants in nineteen eighty
to ten thousand by nineteen ninety or nineteen eighty ten.
The company introduced the famous slogan it's a good time
for the great taste of McDonalds.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Oh you remember that, I do?
Speaker 1 (16:19):
Okay? Chicken McNuggets debuted nationwide in nineteen eighty three.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
I remember that.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
Demand, listen to this demand was so massive that McDonald's
briefly ran out of chicken supply.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
It doesn't surprise me because I remember it being huge.
And I also remember thinking that chicken nuggets were called McNuggets,
so if I went somewhere else, I wanted some McNuggets.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
Okay, do you remember this? The and campaign featured a
McNugget choir singing, we love you nuggets.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
I do not remember I remember.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
That I do. Okay, So, until the mid nineteen eighties,
McDonald's fries were cooked in a blend of beef tallow
and vegetable oil, giving them that rich, unmistakable.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Flavor and a lot of people heart disease.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
Nineteen eighty five nineteen eighty six, after health concerns about cholesterol,
McDonald's switched to one hundred percent vegetable oil. People women
now put beef tallow on their faces.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
Well, then I'm gonna dip some McDonald's fries on their faces.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
McDonald's was the king of giveaways in the nineteen eighties. Okay,
you remember the glasses of course, gas food rest.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
Don't we still have some?
Speaker 1 (17:38):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (17:38):
We thought?
Speaker 1 (17:39):
Okay, So nineteen eighty three they did snoopy glasses.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Huh.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
And I'm not talking about like wear glasses.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
No, you're talking about glass. You're talking about glass drink
where they weren't cups, No, they were glass, they were glass.
Nineteen eighty seven they did the muppets yep. And then
they did McDonald land character mugs, which I feel like
(18:07):
I thought they did glasses as well for that, but
maybe I'm misremarded. No, no, no, I no, you're not. I
specifically remember Ronald McDonald Taul Glass, and I believe you
have one here.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
That's what I'm thinking.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
I promise you will have one here somewhere.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
I feel like Hamburglar maybe I know is on the glass. Anyways,
So the Happy Meal was introduced to Nashley in nineteen
seventy nine and it dominated the eighties, especially with the
movie tie ins that they did. So do you remember
they were really big on cross promotion. Yes, So the
(18:44):
movies that came out like et Batman, Ghostbusters, do you
remember all of those? They all had some kind of
connection to the Happy Meal like a little.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
Toy, a little toy, and then the Happy Meal box
would be decord and what it was.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
I collected all the McDonald's toys and I wish so
much that I still had that.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
Oh my good Can.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
You imagine if I still had them, they would just
line the walls in here.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
No, I'm saying, oh my goodness, because you have a
little mini me that collected all the McDonald's toys from
her Happy Meals over and over and over again, and
we eventually had to toss them.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
Yeah, I threw them away, just like my mom did
with my McDonald's toys history repeats yes, yes, yes, so
and I don't remember this, So I want to know
who remembers this. McDonald's wasn't just in commercials. It was
in movies. Nineteen eighty eight, Mac and Me, a full
blown McDonald's sponsored film featuring an alien who loves Big
(19:52):
Max with the legendary dance scene inside of McDonald.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
You don't remember macing me?
Speaker 1 (19:56):
No? Yeah, okay, they have no remembrance of that.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
Believe Mac and Me looked like a mix between Johnny
five and Wally.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
That's a really good description.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Are you looking at mac and Me right now?
Speaker 1 (20:11):
No? But I can picture it with that description. Are
you looking at out? No?
Speaker 2 (20:19):
I am not.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
McDonald's ran a promotion for the nineteen eighty four Los
Angeles Olympics called When the US Wins, You Win. Customers
got scratch cards with Olympic events printed on them. If
the team USA won gold in that event, you got
free food.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Mac and Me did not look like a mix between
Johnny five and Wally Mac. Mac and Me looked like
an inbred et.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
Okay, Oh what is that that is?
Speaker 2 (20:50):
Mac?
Speaker 1 (20:51):
Oh? You just should have come with a warning.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
I know. Look he looks like a milourished et. Who's
the kid, uh, Brian Bonsel? No, I don't know, know,
I look.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
Like Sean asked him from here. Okay, So listen to this, though,
I feel like you're not paying attention.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
No, I'm just fascinated with mccam. He's got huge eyes,
he's got yoda ears, he's got puffy cheeks, he's got
a bald head, and he looks like he may have
been skinned alive.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
Oh geez, that's things of nightmares right there.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Oh, it'll hunt me in my dreams forever.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
Okay, So listen to this though. When the US wins,
you win nineteen eighty four promotional that McDonald's DIDs customers
got scratch cards with Olympic events printed on them. If
team USA won gold in that event, you got free food.
Do you know what the problem was with that?
Speaker 2 (21:48):
That the US won everything that year?
Speaker 1 (21:50):
Soviet Union boycotted the Olympics that year. Therefore, the US
won a ton of gold medals. McDonald's ended up giving
away millions of free Big Max fries and cokes, way
more than they had expected.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
So that's why they gonna rip us off with a monopoly.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
Then it's rumored McDonald's lost over ten million dollars in
giveaways that summer. Wow, that's insane.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
I bet the person who came up with that idea
got fired.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
Right, Okay, let's talk about what the prices for the
different food items were in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
So hold on, hold on, hold, can I guess you're like,
just give me a give me a menu item and
I'll guess. Okay, a big Mac, A big Mac ninety
nine cents a dollar sixty Oh, okay, I was way off.
Happy meal, A happy meal would have been two twenty
five dollar ninety nine.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Okay, an average combo meal.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
Don't They didn't have combo meals back in the eighties.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
Well, this thing I'm reading says it was under three dollars.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Well, yeah, it may have been, but they but there
were no combo meals. You ordered to a la carte?
Were Hamburger's fifty nine cents?
Speaker 1 (23:04):
Yes? Yes, yes, good job. Okay. Nineteen eighty seven is
when the first monopoly promotion debuted, and that's what we're
going to talk about today.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
You know what, Hamburgers were fifty nine cents. Plain cheeseburgers
were sixty nine cents. And half of your life.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
Oh have I shared on the podcast about Papa Nanny buying.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
Yes, when they went down to it like a quarter
or something. If the cheeseburgers went on sale for like
a quarter.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
Yeah, if they went on sale, they would run a
sale where the cheeseburgers would be I don't remember, like
fifty nine cents and the hamburgers would be forty nine
cents or something like that, I don't remember. So Nanny
would send me and Papa to the McDonald's to buy
like a couple of dozen of each, and she put
him in the freezer and she would thaw them out
(23:58):
and we ate those for months and months and months.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
I bet that tasted about as good as when people
freeze their wedding cake and then open it back up
a year later.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
I mean, you know, I think about that and kind
of the ridiculousness that that that is. But you know,
they were from the the greatest generation. Like they they
lived at the depression, right like she's she knew a
good deal when she saw it.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
She knew how to be frugal.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
And she would make homemade French fries in the frying
pan and and you ate it and you didn't like it,
then you didn't eat.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
Yeah, yeah, no, no, no, I know. That's how my family
was too. If you didn't like it, you didn't eat.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
But you also I don't remember ever having the guts
to complain like Emmy would complain in a heartbeat.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
Oh in a second.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
I never. I didn't.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
I knew better. Yeah uh well, I mean I probably
learned that lesson. I may not have known better at first,
but I bet you I learned that lesson at some point.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
I also knew that if I ate it and didn't complain,
I would get dessertd okay. So so nineteen eighty seven,
they were already the biggest fast food chain in the world,
but sales had started to level off a little bit
and they needed a new gimmick, something fun, something fast,
and totally addictive. That's when their marketing agency, Simon Marketing,
(25:16):
came up with a genius idea combined two American icons,
McDonald's and Monopoly.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Mcnopoly.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
The concept was simple. You'd mi select menu items fries, burgers, drinks,
and you would get stickers that represented Monopoly properties, and
if you collected a full set, and boom, you'd win
that prize. So I remember you would get the board
which you play it off of, would be like in
the Sunday Paper. I think you could also get it
(25:47):
maybe from the store. I remember if you got it
from the Sunday Paper, you got like two free bonus pieces.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
You've probably got Mediterranean Baltic, Yeah right.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
Because who wants those? I even used the actual Monopoly
games and board and colors with permission from Hasbro. It
felt just like the board game, only greasier. You see
what they did?
Speaker 2 (26:11):
Oh? I see?
Speaker 1 (26:13):
So, and those prizes that you would win, the big
prizes would be cars, vacations, even a million bucks heart disease. Yes,
but it turned meal time into a game. Every fry
box was a chance.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
Yeah. It was like playing the lottery at Glory, playing
the lottery, only you got to eat.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
McDonald's even branded it the Thrill of the Peel. You
remember that the Thrill of the.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
Peel sounds like something that that Shaquita Bananas should come
up with.
Speaker 1 (26:52):
Families traded pieces, co workers compared collections, and kids became
little property moguls. So this is where I pause and
I make a confession. Confess, I don't even think this
is something that I've ever told you, but I can't
wait to hear if this is something I've shared with
(27:12):
you or not. I played this game obsessively. I plotted
every day trying to figure out how I could get
someone to take me to McDonald's so I could order
something to get the little play piece, or can I
just convince somebody to give me their playing pieces. I
(27:35):
was just constantly trying to figure out how to win,
and I went to school bargaining with people on how
I could get their playing pieces.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
Oh, you were being a little hustler.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
Oh, I hustled because it never crossed my mind that
this was rigged.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
Never cross my mind either. And I'm talking about like
in the nineties when I was in college. So I
worked at a gas station that was right next door
to a McDonald's. So if they had the monopoly thing
going on, basically one meal a day when I was working,
I was eating McDonald's.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
That well, that might explain a lot. Yeah, that I'm
an idiot, So I was.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
Still in shape then.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
I've I've been thinking today about what peace could it
have been that I'm referencing. I think it must have
been Pennsylvania Avenue, North Carolina Avenue, in the Pacifices.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
I played some monopoly back in my day though, so.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
If you got all three of those, you would win
two hundred grand that they said went towards a dream home. Well,
I had two and I needed the third one. And
I went to school and I was lobbying in the
place ground for who had that third piece, and somebody
told me that they thought their cousin had it and
(29:08):
we might could get together.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
And make a trade.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
Well, like, we could go in together and I had
the two, they had the one, and we could win
the prize together. So I was like, okay, call me.
So they called me that afternoon and she was like,
I've confirmed with my cousin. He has Pennsylvania Avenue. So
I had North Carolina Avenue and Pacific Avenue. He had
(29:36):
Pennsylvania Avenue and he's in Well. In the meantime between
the playground and getting home from school, she had pissed
me off. She had done something and I don't remember
what it was, probably not much, but she had pissed
me off. And like I answered the phone, She's like, hey, Lindsay,
(29:56):
this is Alyssa. And I went who He's like, Alyssa,
whoever from from school, and I'm like.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
Who you were messing with her?
Speaker 1 (30:07):
So then she tells me the whole about I talked
to my cousin he's got the piece, and I'm like,
I have no idea what you're talking about, okay, And
she's like, what do you mean you don't know? We
just talked about it on the playingground and I'm like,
i have no clue what you're talking about. I've never
talked to you about this. I don't have the two
(30:27):
green pieces that you're referencing. And I'm sorry, I need
to go.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
Muppet babies are on Okay, So I'm gonna stop you
right there because I'm gonna ask did this girl Alissa
does she Did she know what she did to make
you angry? Or was she like me, she was oblivious
and had no clue what sin she had committed against?
(30:57):
Now thou so angry.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
She's like, so you're telling me that you lied to
me on the playground today when you told me you
had these two pieces. And I'm like mm hmm, yeah,
that's that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
So you gave up a dream home out of sit
I did?
Speaker 1 (31:15):
I sure did?
Speaker 2 (31:16):
Well? You know what what that explains? A lot.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
She's like, I can't believe you lied to me, and
I'm like, yep, well I.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
Did, but you didn't. You were lying to her right
then and.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
There, that's right. That phone call was a lie. So,
Alissa from Dolvin Elementary School, if you're listening, I lied.
I had those two green pieces.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
Are you gonna apologize now?
Speaker 1 (31:41):
No? I canna apologize. She shouldn't have pissed me off.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
What did she do?
Speaker 1 (31:45):
I don't know. I don't remember. So had I ever
told you that story?
Speaker 2 (31:50):
No? You had not.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
Can you believe fifteen years and there's a story I
had never told you.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
I can't believe that there's a story you haven't told
me in fifteen years. I can believe that story, though.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
Can you imagine?
Speaker 2 (32:06):
Though?
Speaker 1 (32:06):
Two hundred grand back in nineteen eighty seven, that was
a lot of money.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
That would your engine?
Speaker 1 (32:15):
And so and I remember she was like, well, now
I'm going to have to call my cousin and he's
going to be mad. And I'm like, sounds like a
U problem.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
That sounds like you two.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
I mean, I just wasn't budging on though you weren't. No, No,
And that's yeah, that sums me up. I'm still that stubborn.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
You know. I would say that Emmy got a double
dose of stubborn.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
Did she did?
Speaker 2 (32:43):
So?
Speaker 1 (32:44):
I've pulled up the McDonald's monopoly board games.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
Okay, so.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
The three green.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
Pieces Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Pacific.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
Yeah, it was two hundred thousand dollars cash to go
towards a better homes and gardens, dream home. Okay. The
three yellow.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
Pieces Ntner, Atlantic City and Marvin Gardens. How do you
know this?
Speaker 1 (33:10):
This is amazing. If you collected all three, you would
win a corvette.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
Oh nice, wow, Okay, a little yellow corvette.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
If you collected the three red.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
Pieces Indiana, Kentucky and New York. No, no, no, New
York is orange, Indiana, Kentucky and Illinois.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
This is insane. But you don't remember the anniversary of
our first date.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
September twenty ninth, two thousand and eight.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
We didn't celebrate. We missed it.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
We did.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
Okay, you collected all three red pieces, you would win
a sea do.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (33:57):
Did you do you remember? Back in the day Seaedew's
were a big deal. They were.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
They were always giving them away on the price is right?
A sea do? It was always in the Showcase Showdown.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
Is that something that you ever thought you wanted? Because
I remember back then be like, oh wow, yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
Oh wow, a sea do? Yeah. No, I don't want
to see do.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
But I mean, how I live in Metro Atlanta. What
am I gonna do with the seed?
Speaker 2 (34:19):
I lived in the Middle America? What am I gonna
do with a seed? Write it down? The Mighty Mississippi,
the Old Maid Deep River.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
Okay, The three yellowish orangish pieces, New York Avenue.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, New York Saint James.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
Yes, third one is not coming to me. It's where
we went a couple of weeks ago, Tennessee. Yeah, you
could win a Gateway two thousand destination big screen PC
TV system.
Speaker 2 (35:02):
I don't even know what that is.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
Either, but I'm sure at the time Little Lynds was like,
oh yeah, what was I?
Speaker 2 (35:10):
Are you the mancho man?
Speaker 1 (35:14):
The three pink Pieces?
Speaker 2 (35:16):
St. Charles, Yep, think Charles, the only one I remember?
Speaker 1 (35:21):
Dates Avenue in Virginia. Yeah, you would win a vacation
for two to a Weston resort.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
Oh, I could go to the Weston.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
The three pale blue pieces. Do you remember what they are?
Speaker 2 (35:35):
Connecticut? Vermont?
Speaker 1 (35:39):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (35:41):
And I don't remember her Oriental Oriental.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
I collected all three of those. Win a Sony Mini
disc digital recording system. Oh nice, okay, the two Purple.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
One, the Baltic and Mediterranean.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
Yes, win a five dollars cash prize. I mean I
don't even know. Can you say five dollars is a
cash prize?
Speaker 2 (36:09):
No, that's say five dollars. They want to slap you
in the face with that five.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
Dollars right, the two blue pieces Boardwalk and park Place.
That's the million dollars prize.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
But couldn't you win something if you collected all four
railroads B and O, short Line Pennsylvania and reading.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
You could win a Chevy Blazer and seede combo.
Speaker 2 (36:44):
Oh a combo.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
Get a combo.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
You could write your blazer in the sea? What you said,
a Chevy Blazer and a sea do combo, so you
blaze in the sea.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
Not that kind of a comboa. The Chevy blazer is
going to tow your seedew to the water.
Speaker 2 (37:02):
Oh okay, yeah, because if I want a se do hum,
I get it to the wall.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
Well that's what little lens never thought about. But adult
lens wonders now, like, what, okay, how am I gonna
get it there. McDonald's Monopoly quickly became an annual tradition.
Each fall it returned with new commercials, new prizes, and
that same electric feeling. People lined up to peel.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
Most places I go people line up to pee.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
Yeah, that's good, you're old. The odds of winning, though,
were ridiculous. Statistically, you had a better chance of getting
struck by lightning while eating fries finding the rare boardwalk
piece one in two hundred and fifty million. That didn't
That didn't matter, It.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
Didn't no, no, no, no.
Speaker 1 (37:55):
People still collected the game pieces like they were trading cards,
and of course McDonald's loved it. Sales jumped by double
digits every time Monopoly came back. It was one of
the most successful marketing promotions in history. But here's something
that most people didn't know. McDonald's didn't actually run the game.
(38:17):
Their ad agency, Simon Marketing, handled the printing, shipping, and
prize distribution. And that's where things start to go very,
very wrong. Okay, so before we dive into the criminal
side of this story, let's talk about what people were
(38:39):
actually winning during those Monopoly years. Because you're playing, you're
pealing to play. You're playing to peal.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
You're pealing to play, and you're probably winning a free coke.
You might win a free large fry.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
You're hoping for that seedo. You're hoping for that.
Speaker 2 (38:55):
No, I was hoping for the mill two.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
Hundred grand that I passed on. You're really hoping for
that million dollars, but what are you actually getting. Ninety
five percent of all prizes were for free food, fries, drinks,
apple pies.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
Oh yeah, they did give away some apple pies here
and there.
Speaker 1 (39:13):
Ed mcmuffins. Oh, and that was the brilliant marketing, right.
You had to go back to McDonald's to redeem it,
which meant more sales and more chances to peel again.
So you were like stuck in the fishes cycle here.
Then you had that next tier, so the small cash prizes.
So it was like mostly five dollars, sometimes ten dollars.
(39:37):
As the game went on into the nineties, into the
late nineties, it may have gotten up to one hundred dollars.
I think I saw that somewhere, but that was if
you got really really lucky. So they also incorporated giveaways.
Sometimes it would be like a CD player, a walkman
Blockbuster gift cards, so basically everything.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
That screamed nineteen eighties.
Speaker 1 (40:04):
So I remember seeing the ads where people are winning
the cars and the vacations and the money. Well, of course, yeah,
I'm wanting so, but we never knew anybody that won it.
We never won anything big. We never knew anybody that
won anything big. And the people that we knew didn't
know anyone that won anything big.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
You know what those people that were doing on the
commercials that won big.
Speaker 1 (40:28):
Acting so which made us all think that we had
just like missed it right right, that we were just unlucky.
But little did we know those winning pieces were already
in the wrong hands.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (40:43):
In fact, every million dollar winner from nineteen eighty nine
all the way to two thousand and one turned out
to be connected to the same fraud ring.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
So this reminds me of the time in high school
when there were people that I knew. I wouldn't call
them friends, I would call them acquaintances, but I would
hang out with them sometimes, and they were telling me
the story about how they were at a party and
they had a big bottle of Jack Daniels and they
(41:16):
decided to not auctioned off. But like raffle it off.
Oh yeah, And so they collected a couple of buck
or a couple of bucks from everybody, so they're like
fifty people throwing in for the stake, and then they
rigged it to give it to their friend anywhere. I'm like,
you couldn't have just had the fifty bucks, but then
you had to rig it and give it to your buddy.
Speaker 1 (41:32):
Didn't get beat up.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
They weren't going to be messed with, okay.
Speaker 1 (41:37):
So while the rest of us were peeling for fries,
someone else was peeling for the ferraris. And that's where
this story takes a while to turn. So incomes Jerome
Jerry Jacobson.
Speaker 2 (41:54):
Well there's your problem right there, Triple.
Speaker 1 (41:55):
J, head of security at Simon Market, the guy responsible
for protecting the integrity of the Monopoly game, which makes
it kind of ironic because he's the one who actually
broke it. Around nineteen eighty nine, Jacobson realized he could
easily pocket a few of the rare winning pieces before
(42:16):
they were sealed and shipped. At first, he gave them
to friends and family, but soon he started building a
network selling winning tickets to the middlemen for cash. One
of these middlemen Gennaro Jerry Colombo, a member of the
Colombo crime family, and suddenly McDonald's monopoly has a mob connection.
Speaker 2 (42:41):
I did mention John Gotti earlier, and I was just kidding.
Speaker 1 (42:46):
Colombo helped distribute the stolen tickets through his network, taking
a hefty cut each time. But his run ended in
nineteen ninety eight when he died in a car accident.
And here's where the story takes a little bit of
a wild twist.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
It's not already a wild twist.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
Not only I apologize, not only does it take a
wild twist, but it also flings us out of the
nineteen eighties. So don't judge me here all right, after
Colombo's death, a network started to crumble. In two thousand,
someone close to the operation who saw too many winners
(43:25):
cash in, made an anonymous call to the FBI's office.
She told then the big winners were all connected, they
were family, friends, neighbors, and she suspected something shady. That
tip changes it all. The FBI launched what they called
Operation Final Answer, and soon discovered every major winner traced
(43:48):
back to one man, Philbin Jerry Jacobson. Why does Jerry
Jacobson remind me of what is it? Jake and Heimer Schmidt?
What was that?
Speaker 2 (43:59):
Sa Jingleheimerschmid.
Speaker 1 (44:01):
There you go. Agents went undercover, wire tapped phones, and
even filmed fank McDonald's commercials to catch suspects the way
m HM FBI agents posing as ad reps handing out
million dollar checks while secretly recording confessions. In two thousand
(44:21):
and one, right before nine to eleven, the FBI arrested
Jacobson in dozens of others. Over fifty people were charged
and nearly all pled guilty. And the reason why I
threw in that it was right before nine to eleven
because that's why very few people have actually heard of this.
Speaker 2 (44:42):
Because it got overlooked.
Speaker 1 (44:46):
Jacobson ultimately got thirty seven months in prison and was
ordered to repay twelve and a half million dollars. McDonald's
immediately cut ties with Simon Marketing, who tried to sue
them but lost For more than a decade. The big
prizes had been fake and McDonald's monopoly vanished from the
(45:11):
US for years.
Speaker 2 (45:13):
Simon Marketing should have spilled some coffee on their lap,
then they might have won the suit.
Speaker 1 (45:19):
So Jerry Jacobson, he was charged with mail fraud in
conspiracy to commit mail fraud?
Speaker 2 (45:26):
What about female fraud?
Speaker 1 (45:27):
Just mail? He was sentenced to thirty seven months in
federal prison, but he served just over, just a little
over three. He was ordered to repay twelve and a
half million dollars. He also served probation after release and
was permanently barred from working in any promotional or marketing
role ever again. So it's sad though that like the
(45:54):
people who were supposed to ensure that the game was legit, actually.
Speaker 2 (46:00):
Were the ones that ensured that it wasn't legit.
Speaker 1 (46:02):
Yeah, then they rigged the whole thing.
Speaker 2 (46:04):
But I want my money back McDonald's.
Speaker 1 (46:07):
For those of us who grew up in the eighties
and nineties, and the nostalgia's still real, the excitement, the commercials,
the stickers, it's burned into our memories even if we
never won more than a free apple pie?
Speaker 2 (46:21):
Do they still do Monopoly at McDonald's.
Speaker 1 (46:25):
So that leads me to the inspiration about why I
decided to do this episode. McDonald's is bringing Monopoly back
with digital tracking through their app and stricter controls, so
you never know, maybe this time you'll finally get boardwalk.
(46:47):
Starting October six.
Speaker 2 (46:50):
That's this week. That was two days ago. Yep, we're
not promoting McDonald's or anything, folks, But if you do
go and you get a boardwalk, I think you need
to share it least anywhere from three to five percent.
Speaker 1 (47:03):
So prizes this time around include American Airlines miles, a
fifty thousand dollars Monopoly themed vacation, a ten thousand dollars
Lows shopping spree, a twenty twenty six Jeep Grand Cherokee,
and that big one million dollar cash prize.
Speaker 2 (47:22):
That's the only thing I'm interested in. I don't need
ten thousand dollars in Low's gift cars.
Speaker 1 (47:27):
That's not getting you very far at Low's.
Speaker 2 (47:29):
No, no, no, well, I mean I guess it could
get you something, but I'm not a handy man, as
they say.
Speaker 1 (47:38):
I didn't even know they still made Jeep Grand Cherokees.
Speaker 2 (47:40):
So yeah, I don't want one of those either. I
just want the Mill all right, Can I get the
Mill car?
Speaker 1 (47:46):
I need a car.
Speaker 2 (47:47):
You don't need a car. I just spent a fortune
on your car. You're going to drive it for the
next ten years. It's old, yes, like us.
Speaker 1 (47:54):
Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 2 (47:56):
That was a good story. I rather enjoyed it. I
wasn't sure where you were going. I thought you were
going to say that maybe the hamburglar stole some of
the the stuff since least old cheeseburgers and hamburgers and
all kinds of stuff. But I didn't realize that a
triple J there rip people off, you know it. Never
trust triple J.
Speaker 1 (48:17):
No, So I would love to hear if if people
have the fun memories of McDonald's like I have.
Speaker 2 (48:26):
Oh, I'm sure, like, yeah, they do. You know what
I want. I want to know if people think what
I think, and that is McDonald should go back to
those ugly orange and brown uniforms with that well hat,
with that triangular paper hat. I think that they should
go back to those and then they should go back
to singing in the commercials You deserve a break today
(48:48):
and all that fun stuff. We need to nope it
on back.
Speaker 1 (48:51):
Let's nope it on back, y'all.
Speaker 2 (48:53):
To the McDonald's ugly nineteen eighties podres uniforms.
Speaker 1 (48:57):
So listen, I'm going to make a promise to you
and everyone listening. If anybody wants to get together and
we'll play this game as a group, I won't hold
out on you this time.
Speaker 2 (49:10):
Nope, nope, I'm matured a lot. She won't lie to
you about not having that conversation at all or about
not having Pennsylvania Avenue like I was like, who who what? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (49:22):
What are you talking about? I never said that.
Speaker 2 (49:27):
H That's good stuff.
Speaker 1 (49:29):
So we'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 2 (49:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (49:31):
You can find us on social media. We're on x, Facebook,
and Instagram at.
Speaker 2 (49:37):
Children of Underscore Eighties. You can also reach us by
email at Children of the nineteen Eighties at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1 (49:47):
We would love to hear from you. We would also
appreciate if you would subscribe to our podcast, and that
way you'll never miss an episode.
Speaker 2 (49:57):
Click that subscribe button, follow button, whatever it is on
your preferred app. Click it, click it, click.
Speaker 1 (50:03):
It, click it and ticket ticket and click it.
Speaker 2 (50:06):
No no tickets, just click it. Okay, all right, Well,
until next time, I'm Jim.
Speaker 1 (50:12):
And I'm Lindsay and we are Children of the Eighties.
See you next Wensday.
Children of the Eighties is brought to you by Q
one O six point five Internet Radio. You can find
it online at Q one o six five dot com
or download the app.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Welcome back to Children of the Eighties. I am one
of your hosts, Jim, and I am joined as always
by the lady who has never met a fialo fish
that she liked. It's my co host, Lindsey.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
You know, that's all I would eat is a kid
is the falal fish, fileo fish? Really the fish show full.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Tell my memo was she would only eat the fialo fish.
So my dad tells a story that when they were young,
the McDonald's came to them, you know, near them. They
weren't a traveling circus. It wasn't like Barnum and Bailey.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Couldn't refuse no.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
But so McDonald's open close to where they lived, and
so of course they went and uh, they all got hamburgers,
and my mem all been into one and started chewing one,
and she made a face and my dad said what
and she just kind of, you know, scruffed up her
nose at it, like she didn't like it. And he
said he pointed to the science says over a million served,
(01:30):
and her response was, I wonder how many of them
have been eaten.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
She was quick on her feet, that memal she.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Was, and so she would always get a fileo fish. Right.
She would never deny her grandkids anything. So you know
when grand babies wanted to go to McDonald's because clearly
McDonald's put crack in their food for kids, Uh, she
would just order fileo fish. I always wondered why I'd
get a hamburger, she'd get a filet of fish.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
My house, we called that a fishow file a.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Now why did you do that?
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Because it seemed to flow better a fishow file at
if you say so. Okay, So before we get too
deep in the madness that is this episode, let's back up,
and I'm sure we've got something else we need to
touch on briefly before we get into the meat of
(02:26):
our story.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Yeah, so you seem to strike up a new phrase
last week that is going viral, much like nineteen eighty ten.
You have invented the phrase We're gonna nope it on back,
and so people are now using that.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
I love it the Lindsay lexicon.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Yes, and so I posted on Twitter because we got
a text from loyal listener and sometimes collaborator Deaf Dave
with Haull notes on a phone on a corded phone,
just like the nineteen eighties, singing nope It on back.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Yeah, because we talked about the kitchen phone from the
nineteen eighties being on the wall in the kitchen, so
haul of notes. In this AI generated picture, they're standing
in the kitchen.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Yes, I standing in a kitchen on the courted phone
singing nope it on our back.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
I love it. You asked me, like, how much thought
did I put in to that phrase before I said it?
Speaker 2 (03:28):
No, I just asked if you had heard it from
somebody else?
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Just came out of my mouth. I put no thought
into it.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Well, that's usually what how most things happen with you
over there. You just blurt stuff out.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Do I do? I just throw it all against the
wall and see what's which.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Sometimes is genius and sometimes it gets you in trouble.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Yes, sometimes I put my big fat foot in my
mouth too. So And you had to see daf Dave
again this week. Are you good? We're just h two
times back to back.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
Yeah. It was a lot of fun. Got to hang
out with him, have some lunch, he came down to
the atl to purchase something, and so I was able
to visit with him and and go to luncheon. We
got to watch Vanderbilt start to upset Alabama, but then
you know, that didn't happen, and I'm very thankful for
that because my Missouri Tiger's play Alabama this Saturday, and
(04:21):
I didn't need Alabama coming in very mad that they
had lost to the Vanderbilt nerded doors. So a good
time was had by all.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
I love it. What else we got going on?
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Well, uh, you mentioned last week that we were living
the dream and uh, yeah, I've had trouble dreaming since then.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
Yes, it's been a it's been a rough week in
the Butler house.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
I can't sleep. I'm waking up constantly. You know, It's
just what you were gonna say.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
I'm waking up constipated. And I was like, oh, well
you took it there.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
I can't sleep, Freddy Krueger's not even after me. I'm
not trying to stay awake. I just can't sleep. And
it's been Uh, it's been a rough go. In the morning,
I could go to sleep right now, but you know what,
I'd be up in an hour or two.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Yeah, you probably would.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
I'd be and I'd be up for the rest of
the night until about five am, four thirty maybe, and
then the alarm would go off.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
And this is just it's true old man issue.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
I know. I don't like being an old man.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Sure, old man rant.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
No, it's not my old man rant. My old man
rant might get me fired from my job. So I'm
just going to keep that to myself.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Keep yeah, just keep that, keep that to yourself. So
it has just been, uh, a busy, busy, busy week,
and so I am excited to take a few minutes
and kind of sit down here with.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
You, and we're going to decompress during this podcast, aren't
we this podcast?
Speaker 1 (05:50):
I like with the way you're yawning, you might be
going to sleep during this.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Pot Well, that would definitely be decompressing.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Oh, if you go to while I'm talking, we're going
to nope it on back.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
We are going to nope it on back.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
So we kind of had a loose idea of what
we wanted to do.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
Yeah we did. Are you ready to get to that
or you got any other cleanup items? But I changed
it up on you today. Oh you did? I didn't
know this. We're not doing the episode I thought we
were doing.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
Oh we're not. You've had so much stress going on
at work, I decided to take over. Let me give you,
Let me give you the working title for today's episode,
and you tell me if you know what we're going
to talk about. Okay, The mech scandal, the rise and
fall of.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Mcdowells. What is McDowell from coming to America? John Amos
had mcdowells. He was always being sued by McDonald's. He
had the Golden arcs. They had the Golden Archs.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
So mc scandal, the rise and fall of McDonald's monopoly.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Oh, I used to play that. I used to think
I was gonna win a million dollars. Guess what? Never did?
Speaker 1 (07:12):
He didn't?
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Did you no?
Speaker 1 (07:13):
Okay, Well, before we get too deep into all of this,
this is a podcast that looks back on the decade
of the nineteen eighties. We talk about things that were
important to us as children and what we look back
on with fond memories as adults. Ultimately, this is a
(07:37):
nostalgia podcast, so.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
It sounds to me like we're either getting nostalgic on
monopoly or we're getting nostalgic on McDonald's or.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Are we getting nostalgic on McDonald's Monopoly. Time will tell.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
McDonald's isn't a monopoly though, because there's Burger King, and
there's Windy's, and there's Taco Bell.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
No dork the game Monopoly that you played at McDonald's
once a year during the mid to late eighties and
most of the nineties.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
With the guy with the top hat and the monocle, Yes,
he didn't have a monocle. That's that's straight. What theory
is that that we talked about a couple of years
ago that I can't remember now. No, no, no, the
Mandela effect, that's straight Mandela effect. People think that the
monopoly guy has a has a monocle, but he doesn't.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
He started to say, it's the Mongolian.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Effect, the Mongolian effects.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
I don't think that's what it is. Nope, Okay, folks
can just imagine if we drank what this would be like.
For some reason, McDonald's in the eighties was just those memories.
It brings back so many warm feelings for me, so
many feelings of nostalgia when I think about going to McDonald's,
(09:06):
playing on the playground, at McDonald's, getting lunch at McDonald's,
going to the drive through at McDonald's. So many memories
are associated with McDonald You.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
Know what my memory associated with McDonald's is the few
times that we did get to go. My parents would
go through the drive through. They wo'd order as hamburgers
or whatever. My brother Mike always had to get a
plane cheeseburger, which meant that they had to cook it,
and we sat in the drive through for ten to
fifteen minutes just sitting there salivating waiting for our McDonald's.
(09:40):
Thanks a lot, Mike, But.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
Do you know by asking for that, he ensured he
got a fresh Well.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
I understand that. But now you can ask for a
hamburger with no cheese and it comes out right away
because they don't put the cheese on it, right. But
back then they put the cheese and the pickles and
the whatever on it, ketchup mustard onions and like it
was just the It just came pre made. So when
(10:08):
he ordered it that way, just playing cheese, yes, he
did get it fresh, but they had to cook it
from scratch. It was like they had to go slaughter
the cow, right because these cows made cheeseburgers with ketchup
and onions, and these cows didn't. So they had to
go slaughter the cow and then age it and then
(10:28):
cook the darn cheeseburger, the plane cheeseburger.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
But did he not like the onions, the pickle or
the ketchup?
Speaker 2 (10:35):
I don't know, but he wouldn't pick it off. And
so therefore I had to wait ten to fifteen minutes
each time for my McDonald's and I was never happy.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
There's always one in the family. So your family was Mike.
In my family, it was me.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
Oh, okay, did you order the plane or the whatever?
Speaker 1 (10:56):
I want to catch up? But I didn't want anything else.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
I didn't want no pickles are on it? See the
onions are what? Mad it good? There was a little
chomped up onions.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
No, no, no no.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
And then my mom said that she could make a
McDonald's burger like McDonald's, you know, And I felt like
the Eddie Murphy skit where she was asking for a
green pepper. I was like, name, no green peppers and
in McDonald's, you know.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
So yeah, okay, So today we're taking a bite out
of a story that's part nostalgia, part I.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
Like what you did. They're taking a bite out of
what are you? McGruff?
Speaker 1 (11:28):
Over there is the McDonald's monopoly game story.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Do you see Jenney over there? If she goes into
the McDonald's alone, you might not ever see her again.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
You remember going to McDonald's back in the nineteen eighties.
You'd order your fries and you'd peel that little sticker
off the fry carton or the drink cop you would pray.
You would pray for a board wall.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
Yes, so, so here's the deal. I don't remember this
in the eighties. I remember it in the nineties.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
Oh really.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
I was in college in the nineties, and of course,
you know, I ate a lot of McDonald's, right, and
especially when they had Monopoly going, because I certainly didn't
want to finish college and I didn't want to work
for a living. I wanted my millions.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Right, Yeah, the American dream.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
Yes, But yes, you did pray for the boardwalk.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
So you might pray for a boardwalk, but most likely
you're getting maybe a free coke at best.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Yeah, But behind them a chance Nobody wants a chance card.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
But behind those little game pieces was one of the
biggest marketing scandals of the late eighties in nineties.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Is that why I never won?
Speaker 1 (12:46):
Possibly? This is a story of how a fast food
game turned into a multi million dollar crime ring. But
first I'm going to talk a little bit about McDonald's
in general.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
A multimillion dollar crime ry so run by John Gottie.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
So back in the nineteen eighties, McDonald's wasn't just a restaurant.
It was the hangout spot. It was the reward after school.
It was the place for birthday parties. Did you know
you could have a birthday party at McDonald's.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
I did not.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
It was a stop on a road trip. It was
basically woven into our childhood. Except by the look you're
giving me, I'm thinking it wasn't woven into your childhood,
but it was mine.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
It wasn't woven into my childhood. And I didn't get
any birthday parties anywhere because my birthday was too close
to Christmas.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
Ah. So I have a memory of my uncle's first
wife because he had four Okay, his first wife worked
at McDonald's and I would I remember, we would go
to see her and she would give me the little
box of yummy shortbread cookies. Yeah, you remember those.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
Yes, they were the characters, right, weren't they there, like
the Hamburglar and Mayor mccheese and Ronald McDonald and Grimace.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
And there's nothing else out there that tasted anywhere close
to as good as those little McDonald's cookies tasted back
in the day. They don't do them anymore. So I'm
thinking there was probably something really bad in this. Oh,
I'm sure, But that's one of my earliest memories. I
want to say that may even have dated back to
nineteen eighty four. I don't think I ever had a
(14:39):
birthday party there, but I remember going to a birthday
party there. You could also order your cake directly from
McDonald Really, they would do the cake for you. They would.
And of course i've told the story about playing on
the mcdonaldld's playground.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
Yes, you have told that story. But you always got
stuck in the Hamburglars jail.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
Yes, I always got stuck up there because I was
too big to be climbing up, but I always wanted
to because I wanted to be like everybody else. So
before we peel those monopoly stickers, let's set the stage
with the look back at McDonald's in the nineteen eighties,
when Ronald ruled fries tasted better and the happy meal
(15:29):
was keen.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Fries definitely tasted better. You know what, they didn't have
a McDonald's that they had at my local dairy, Queen
Miss pac Man in Sundays. Sundays blizzards.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
Okay. The nineteen eighties were the company's biggest growth decade ever.
McDonald's went from roughly five thousand restaurants in nineteen eighty
to ten thousand by nineteen ninety or nineteen eighty ten.
The company introduced the famous slogan it's a good time
for the great taste of McDonalds.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Oh you remember that, I do?
Speaker 1 (16:19):
Okay? Chicken McNuggets debuted nationwide in nineteen eighty three.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
I remember that.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
Demand, listen to this demand was so massive that McDonald's
briefly ran out of chicken supply.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
It doesn't surprise me because I remember it being huge.
And I also remember thinking that chicken nuggets were called McNuggets,
so if I went somewhere else, I wanted some McNuggets.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
Okay, do you remember this? The and campaign featured a
McNugget choir singing, we love you nuggets.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
I do not remember I remember.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
That I do. Okay, So, until the mid nineteen eighties,
McDonald's fries were cooked in a blend of beef tallow
and vegetable oil, giving them that rich, unmistakable.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Flavor and a lot of people heart disease.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
Nineteen eighty five nineteen eighty six, after health concerns about cholesterol,
McDonald's switched to one hundred percent vegetable oil. People women
now put beef tallow on their faces.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
Well, then I'm gonna dip some McDonald's fries on their faces.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
McDonald's was the king of giveaways in the nineteen eighties. Okay,
you remember the glasses of course, gas food rest.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
Don't we still have some?
Speaker 1 (17:38):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (17:38):
We thought?
Speaker 1 (17:39):
Okay, So nineteen eighty three they did snoopy glasses.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Huh.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
And I'm not talking about like wear glasses.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
No, you're talking about glass. You're talking about glass drink
where they weren't cups, No, they were glass, they were glass.
Nineteen eighty seven they did the muppets yep. And then
they did McDonald land character mugs, which I feel like
(18:07):
I thought they did glasses as well for that, but
maybe I'm misremarded. No, no, no, I no, you're not. I
specifically remember Ronald McDonald Taul Glass, and I believe you
have one here.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
That's what I'm thinking.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
I promise you will have one here somewhere.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
I feel like Hamburglar maybe I know is on the glass. Anyways,
So the Happy Meal was introduced to Nashley in nineteen
seventy nine and it dominated the eighties, especially with the
movie tie ins that they did. So do you remember
they were really big on cross promotion. Yes, So the
(18:44):
movies that came out like et Batman, Ghostbusters, do you
remember all of those? They all had some kind of
connection to the Happy Meal like a little.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
Toy, a little toy, and then the Happy Meal box
would be decord and what it was.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
I collected all the McDonald's toys and I wish so
much that I still had that.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
Oh my good Can.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
You imagine if I still had them, they would just
line the walls in here.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
No, I'm saying, oh my goodness, because you have a
little mini me that collected all the McDonald's toys from
her Happy Meals over and over and over again, and
we eventually had to toss them.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
Yeah, I threw them away, just like my mom did
with my McDonald's toys history repeats yes, yes, yes, so
and I don't remember this, So I want to know
who remembers this. McDonald's wasn't just in commercials. It was
in movies. Nineteen eighty eight, Mac and Me, a full
blown McDonald's sponsored film featuring an alien who loves Big
(19:52):
Max with the legendary dance scene inside of McDonald.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
You don't remember macing me?
Speaker 1 (19:56):
No? Yeah, okay, they have no remembrance of that.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
Believe Mac and Me looked like a mix between Johnny
five and Wally.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
That's a really good description.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
Are you looking at mac and Me right now?
Speaker 1 (20:11):
No? But I can picture it with that description. Are
you looking at out? No?
Speaker 2 (20:19):
I am not.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
McDonald's ran a promotion for the nineteen eighty four Los
Angeles Olympics called When the US Wins, You Win. Customers
got scratch cards with Olympic events printed on them. If
the team USA won gold in that event, you got
free food.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Mac and Me did not look like a mix between
Johnny five and Wally Mac. Mac and Me looked like
an inbred et.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
Okay, Oh what is that that is?
Speaker 2 (20:50):
Mac?
Speaker 1 (20:51):
Oh? You just should have come with a warning.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
I know. Look he looks like a milourished et. Who's
the kid, uh, Brian Bonsel? No, I don't know, know,
I look.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
Like Sean asked him from here. Okay, So listen to this, though,
I feel like you're not paying attention.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
No, I'm just fascinated with mccam. He's got huge eyes,
he's got yoda ears, he's got puffy cheeks, he's got
a bald head, and he looks like he may have
been skinned alive.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
Oh geez, that's things of nightmares right there.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Oh, it'll hunt me in my dreams forever.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
Okay, So listen to this though. When the US wins,
you win nineteen eighty four promotional that McDonald's DIDs customers
got scratch cards with Olympic events printed on them. If
team USA won gold in that event, you got free food.
Do you know what the problem was with that?
Speaker 2 (21:48):
That the US won everything that year?
Speaker 1 (21:50):
Soviet Union boycotted the Olympics that year. Therefore, the US
won a ton of gold medals. McDonald's ended up giving
away millions of free Big Max fries and cokes, way
more than they had expected.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
So that's why they gonna rip us off with a monopoly.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
Then it's rumored McDonald's lost over ten million dollars in
giveaways that summer. Wow, that's insane.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
I bet the person who came up with that idea
got fired.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
Right, Okay, let's talk about what the prices for the
different food items were in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
So hold on, hold on, hold, can I guess you're like,
just give me a give me a menu item and
I'll guess. Okay, a big Mac, A big Mac ninety
nine cents a dollar sixty Oh, okay, I was way off.
Happy meal, A happy meal would have been two twenty
five dollar ninety nine.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Okay, an average combo meal.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
Don't They didn't have combo meals back in the eighties.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
Well, this thing I'm reading says it was under three dollars.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Well, yeah, it may have been, but they but there
were no combo meals. You ordered to a la carte?
Were Hamburger's fifty nine cents?
Speaker 1 (23:04):
Yes? Yes, yes, good job. Okay. Nineteen eighty seven is
when the first monopoly promotion debuted, and that's what we're
going to talk about today.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
You know what, Hamburgers were fifty nine cents. Plain cheeseburgers
were sixty nine cents. And half of your life.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
Oh have I shared on the podcast about Papa Nanny buying.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
Yes, when they went down to it like a quarter
or something. If the cheeseburgers went on sale for like
a quarter.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
Yeah, if they went on sale, they would run a
sale where the cheeseburgers would be I don't remember, like
fifty nine cents and the hamburgers would be forty nine
cents or something like that, I don't remember. So Nanny
would send me and Papa to the McDonald's to buy
like a couple of dozen of each, and she put
him in the freezer and she would thaw them out
(23:58):
and we ate those for months and months and months.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
I bet that tasted about as good as when people
freeze their wedding cake and then open it back up
a year later.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
I mean, you know, I think about that and kind
of the ridiculousness that that that is. But you know,
they were from the the greatest generation. Like they they
lived at the depression, right like she's she knew a
good deal when she saw it.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
She knew how to be frugal.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
And she would make homemade French fries in the frying
pan and and you ate it and you didn't like it,
then you didn't eat.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
Yeah, yeah, no, no, no, I know. That's how my family
was too. If you didn't like it, you didn't eat.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
But you also I don't remember ever having the guts
to complain like Emmy would complain in a heartbeat.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
Oh in a second.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
I never. I didn't.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
I knew better. Yeah uh well, I mean I probably
learned that lesson. I may not have known better at first,
but I bet you I learned that lesson at some point.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
I also knew that if I ate it and didn't complain,
I would get dessertd okay. So so nineteen eighty seven,
they were already the biggest fast food chain in the world,
but sales had started to level off a little bit
and they needed a new gimmick, something fun, something fast,
and totally addictive. That's when their marketing agency, Simon Marketing,
(25:16):
came up with a genius idea combined two American icons,
McDonald's and Monopoly.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Mcnopoly.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
The concept was simple. You'd mi select menu items fries, burgers, drinks,
and you would get stickers that represented Monopoly properties, and
if you collected a full set, and boom, you'd win
that prize. So I remember you would get the board
which you play it off of, would be like in
the Sunday Paper. I think you could also get it
(25:47):
maybe from the store. I remember if you got it
from the Sunday Paper, you got like two free bonus pieces.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
You've probably got Mediterranean Baltic, Yeah right.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
Because who wants those? I even used the actual Monopoly
games and board and colors with permission from Hasbro. It
felt just like the board game, only greasier. You see
what they did?
Speaker 2 (26:11):
Oh? I see?
Speaker 1 (26:13):
So, and those prizes that you would win, the big
prizes would be cars, vacations, even a million bucks heart disease. Yes,
but it turned meal time into a game. Every fry
box was a chance.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
Yeah. It was like playing the lottery at Glory, playing
the lottery, only you got to eat.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
McDonald's even branded it the Thrill of the Peel. You
remember that the Thrill of the.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
Peel sounds like something that that Shaquita Bananas should come
up with.
Speaker 1 (26:52):
Families traded pieces, co workers compared collections, and kids became
little property moguls. So this is where I pause and
I make a confession. Confess, I don't even think this
is something that I've ever told you, but I can't
wait to hear if this is something I've shared with
(27:12):
you or not. I played this game obsessively. I plotted
every day trying to figure out how I could get
someone to take me to McDonald's so I could order
something to get the little play piece, or can I
just convince somebody to give me their playing pieces. I
(27:35):
was just constantly trying to figure out how to win,
and I went to school bargaining with people on how
I could get their playing pieces.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
Oh, you were being a little hustler.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
Oh, I hustled because it never crossed my mind that
this was rigged.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
Never cross my mind either. And I'm talking about like
in the nineties when I was in college. So I
worked at a gas station that was right next door
to a McDonald's. So if they had the monopoly thing
going on, basically one meal a day when I was working,
I was eating McDonald's.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
That well, that might explain a lot. Yeah, that I'm
an idiot, So I was.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
Still in shape then.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
I've I've been thinking today about what peace could it
have been that I'm referencing. I think it must have
been Pennsylvania Avenue, North Carolina Avenue, in the Pacifices.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
I played some monopoly back in my day though, so.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
If you got all three of those, you would win
two hundred grand that they said went towards a dream home. Well,
I had two and I needed the third one. And
I went to school and I was lobbying in the
place ground for who had that third piece, and somebody
told me that they thought their cousin had it and
(29:08):
we might could get together.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
And make a trade.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
Well, like, we could go in together and I had
the two, they had the one, and we could win
the prize together. So I was like, okay, call me.
So they called me that afternoon and she was like,
I've confirmed with my cousin. He has Pennsylvania Avenue. So
I had North Carolina Avenue and Pacific Avenue. He had
(29:36):
Pennsylvania Avenue and he's in Well. In the meantime between
the playground and getting home from school, she had pissed
me off. She had done something and I don't remember
what it was, probably not much, but she had pissed
me off. And like I answered the phone, She's like, hey, Lindsay,
(29:56):
this is Alyssa. And I went who He's like, Alyssa,
whoever from from school, and I'm like.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
Who you were messing with her?
Speaker 1 (30:07):
So then she tells me the whole about I talked
to my cousin he's got the piece, and I'm like,
I have no idea what you're talking about, okay, And
she's like, what do you mean you don't know? We
just talked about it on the playingground and I'm like,
i have no clue what you're talking about. I've never
talked to you about this. I don't have the two
(30:27):
green pieces that you're referencing. And I'm sorry, I need
to go.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
Muppet babies are on Okay, So I'm gonna stop you
right there because I'm gonna ask did this girl Alissa
does she Did she know what she did to make
you angry? Or was she like me, she was oblivious
and had no clue what sin she had committed against?
(30:57):
Now thou so angry.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
She's like, so you're telling me that you lied to
me on the playground today when you told me you
had these two pieces. And I'm like mm hmm, yeah,
that's that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
So you gave up a dream home out of sit
I did?
Speaker 1 (31:15):
I sure did?
Speaker 2 (31:16):
Well? You know what what that explains? A lot.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
She's like, I can't believe you lied to me, and
I'm like, yep, well I.
Speaker 2 (31:26):
Did, but you didn't. You were lying to her right
then and.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
There, that's right. That phone call was a lie. So,
Alissa from Dolvin Elementary School, if you're listening, I lied.
I had those two green pieces.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
Are you gonna apologize now?
Speaker 1 (31:41):
No? I canna apologize. She shouldn't have pissed me off.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
What did she do?
Speaker 1 (31:45):
I don't know. I don't remember. So had I ever
told you that story?
Speaker 2 (31:50):
No? You had not.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
Can you believe fifteen years and there's a story I
had never told you.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
I can't believe that there's a story you haven't told
me in fifteen years. I can believe that story, though.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
Can you imagine?
Speaker 2 (32:06):
Though?
Speaker 1 (32:06):
Two hundred grand back in nineteen eighty seven, that was
a lot of money.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
That would your engine?
Speaker 1 (32:15):
And so and I remember she was like, well, now
I'm going to have to call my cousin and he's
going to be mad. And I'm like, sounds like a
U problem.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
That sounds like you two.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
I mean, I just wasn't budging on though you weren't. No, No,
And that's yeah, that sums me up. I'm still that stubborn.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
You know. I would say that Emmy got a double
dose of stubborn.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
Did she did?
Speaker 2 (32:43):
So?
Speaker 1 (32:44):
I've pulled up the McDonald's monopoly board games.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
Okay, so.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
The three green.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
Pieces Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Pacific.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
Yeah, it was two hundred thousand dollars cash to go
towards a better homes and gardens, dream home. Okay. The
three yellow.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
Pieces Ntner, Atlantic City and Marvin Gardens. How do you
know this?
Speaker 1 (33:10):
This is amazing. If you collected all three, you would
win a corvette.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
Oh nice, wow, Okay, a little yellow corvette.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
If you collected the three red.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
Pieces Indiana, Kentucky and New York. No, no, no, New
York is orange, Indiana, Kentucky and Illinois.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
This is insane. But you don't remember the anniversary of
our first date.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
September twenty ninth, two thousand and eight.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
We didn't celebrate. We missed it.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
We did.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
Okay, you collected all three red pieces, you would win
a sea do.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (33:57):
Did you do you remember? Back in the day Seaedew's
were a big deal. They were.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
They were always giving them away on the price is right?
A sea do? It was always in the Showcase Showdown.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
Is that something that you ever thought you wanted? Because
I remember back then be like, oh wow, yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
Oh wow, a sea do? Yeah. No, I don't want
to see do.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
But I mean, how I live in Metro Atlanta. What
am I gonna do with the seed?
Speaker 2 (34:19):
I lived in the Middle America? What am I gonna
do with a seed? Write it down? The Mighty Mississippi,
the Old Maid Deep River.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
Okay, The three yellowish orangish pieces, New York Avenue.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, New York Saint James.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
Yes, third one is not coming to me. It's where
we went a couple of weeks ago, Tennessee. Yeah, you
could win a Gateway two thousand destination big screen PC
TV system.
Speaker 2 (35:02):
I don't even know what that is.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
Either, but I'm sure at the time Little Lynds was like,
oh yeah, what was I?
Speaker 2 (35:10):
Are you the mancho man?
Speaker 1 (35:14):
The three pink Pieces?
Speaker 2 (35:16):
St. Charles, Yep, think Charles, the only one I remember?
Speaker 1 (35:21):
Dates Avenue in Virginia. Yeah, you would win a vacation
for two to a Weston resort.
Speaker 2 (35:30):
Oh, I could go to the Weston.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
The three pale blue pieces. Do you remember what they are?
Speaker 2 (35:35):
Connecticut? Vermont?
Speaker 1 (35:39):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (35:41):
And I don't remember her Oriental Oriental.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
I collected all three of those. Win a Sony Mini
disc digital recording system. Oh nice, okay, the two Purple.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
One, the Baltic and Mediterranean.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
Yes, win a five dollars cash prize. I mean I
don't even know. Can you say five dollars is a
cash prize?
Speaker 2 (36:09):
No, that's say five dollars. They want to slap you
in the face with that five.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
Dollars right, the two blue pieces Boardwalk and park Place.
That's the million dollars prize.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
But couldn't you win something if you collected all four
railroads B and O, short Line Pennsylvania and reading.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
You could win a Chevy Blazer and seede combo.
Speaker 2 (36:44):
Oh a combo.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
Get a combo.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
You could write your blazer in the sea? What you said,
a Chevy Blazer and a sea do combo, so you
blaze in the sea.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
Not that kind of a comboa. The Chevy blazer is
going to tow your seedew to the water.
Speaker 2 (37:02):
Oh okay, yeah, because if I want a se do hum,
I get it to the wall.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
Well that's what little lens never thought about. But adult
lens wonders now, like, what, okay, how am I gonna
get it there. McDonald's Monopoly quickly became an annual tradition.
Each fall it returned with new commercials, new prizes, and
that same electric feeling. People lined up to peel.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
Most places I go people line up to pee.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
Yeah, that's good, you're old. The odds of winning, though,
were ridiculous. Statistically, you had a better chance of getting
struck by lightning while eating fries finding the rare boardwalk
piece one in two hundred and fifty million. That didn't
That didn't matter, It.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
Didn't no, no, no, no.
Speaker 1 (37:55):
People still collected the game pieces like they were trading cards,
and of course McDonald's loved it. Sales jumped by double
digits every time Monopoly came back. It was one of
the most successful marketing promotions in history. But here's something
that most people didn't know. McDonald's didn't actually run the game.
(38:17):
Their ad agency, Simon Marketing, handled the printing, shipping, and
prize distribution. And that's where things start to go very,
very wrong. Okay, so before we dive into the criminal
side of this story, let's talk about what people were
(38:39):
actually winning during those Monopoly years. Because you're playing, you're
pealing to play. You're playing to peal.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
You're pealing to play, and you're probably winning a free coke.
You might win a free large fry.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
You're hoping for that seedo. You're hoping for that.
Speaker 2 (38:55):
No, I was hoping for the mill two.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
Hundred grand that I passed on. You're really hoping for
that million dollars, but what are you actually getting. Ninety
five percent of all prizes were for free food, fries, drinks,
apple pies.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
Oh yeah, they did give away some apple pies here
and there.
Speaker 1 (39:13):
Ed mcmuffins. Oh, and that was the brilliant marketing, right.
You had to go back to McDonald's to redeem it,
which meant more sales and more chances to peel again.
So you were like stuck in the fishes cycle here.
Then you had that next tier, so the small cash prizes.
So it was like mostly five dollars, sometimes ten dollars.
(39:37):
As the game went on into the nineties, into the
late nineties, it may have gotten up to one hundred dollars.
I think I saw that somewhere, but that was if
you got really really lucky. So they also incorporated giveaways.
Sometimes it would be like a CD player, a walkman
Blockbuster gift cards, so basically everything.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
That screamed nineteen eighties.
Speaker 1 (40:04):
So I remember seeing the ads where people are winning
the cars and the vacations and the money. Well, of course, yeah,
I'm wanting so, but we never knew anybody that won it.
We never won anything big. We never knew anybody that
won anything big. And the people that we knew didn't
know anyone that won anything big.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
You know what those people that were doing on the
commercials that won big.
Speaker 1 (40:28):
Acting so which made us all think that we had
just like missed it right right, that we were just unlucky.
But little did we know those winning pieces were already
in the wrong hands.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (40:43):
In fact, every million dollar winner from nineteen eighty nine
all the way to two thousand and one turned out
to be connected to the same fraud ring.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
So this reminds me of the time in high school
when there were people that I knew. I wouldn't call
them friends, I would call them acquaintances, but I would
hang out with them sometimes, and they were telling me
the story about how they were at a party and
they had a big bottle of Jack Daniels and they
(41:16):
decided to not auctioned off. But like raffle it off.
Oh yeah, And so they collected a couple of buck
or a couple of bucks from everybody, so they're like
fifty people throwing in for the stake, and then they
rigged it to give it to their friend anywhere. I'm like,
you couldn't have just had the fifty bucks, but then
you had to rig it and give it to your buddy.
Speaker 1 (41:32):
Didn't get beat up.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
They weren't going to be messed with, okay.
Speaker 1 (41:37):
So while the rest of us were peeling for fries,
someone else was peeling for the ferraris. And that's where
this story takes a while to turn. So incomes Jerome
Jerry Jacobson.
Speaker 2 (41:54):
Well there's your problem right there, Triple.
Speaker 1 (41:55):
J, head of security at Simon Market, the guy responsible
for protecting the integrity of the Monopoly game, which makes
it kind of ironic because he's the one who actually
broke it. Around nineteen eighty nine, Jacobson realized he could
easily pocket a few of the rare winning pieces before
(42:16):
they were sealed and shipped. At first, he gave them
to friends and family, but soon he started building a
network selling winning tickets to the middlemen for cash. One
of these middlemen Gennaro Jerry Colombo, a member of the
Colombo crime family, and suddenly McDonald's monopoly has a mob connection.
Speaker 2 (42:41):
I did mention John Gotti earlier, and I was just kidding.
Speaker 1 (42:46):
Colombo helped distribute the stolen tickets through his network, taking
a hefty cut each time. But his run ended in
nineteen ninety eight when he died in a car accident.
And here's where the story takes a little bit of
a wild twist.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
It's not already a wild twist.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
Not only I apologize, not only does it take a
wild twist, but it also flings us out of the
nineteen eighties. So don't judge me here all right, after
Colombo's death, a network started to crumble. In two thousand,
someone close to the operation who saw too many winners
(43:25):
cash in, made an anonymous call to the FBI's office.
She told then the big winners were all connected, they
were family, friends, neighbors, and she suspected something shady. That
tip changes it all. The FBI launched what they called
Operation Final Answer, and soon discovered every major winner traced
(43:48):
back to one man, Philbin Jerry Jacobson. Why does Jerry
Jacobson remind me of what is it? Jake and Heimer Schmidt?
What was that?
Speaker 2 (43:59):
Sa Jingleheimerschmid.
Speaker 1 (44:01):
There you go. Agents went undercover, wire tapped phones, and
even filmed fank McDonald's commercials to catch suspects the way
m HM FBI agents posing as ad reps handing out
million dollar checks while secretly recording confessions. In two thousand
(44:21):
and one, right before nine to eleven, the FBI arrested
Jacobson in dozens of others. Over fifty people were charged
and nearly all pled guilty. And the reason why I
threw in that it was right before nine to eleven
because that's why very few people have actually heard of this.
Speaker 2 (44:42):
Because it got overlooked.
Speaker 1 (44:46):
Jacobson ultimately got thirty seven months in prison and was
ordered to repay twelve and a half million dollars. McDonald's
immediately cut ties with Simon Marketing, who tried to sue
them but lost For more than a decade. The big
prizes had been fake and McDonald's monopoly vanished from the
(45:11):
US for years.
Speaker 2 (45:13):
Simon Marketing should have spilled some coffee on their lap,
then they might have won the suit.
Speaker 1 (45:19):
So Jerry Jacobson, he was charged with mail fraud in
conspiracy to commit mail fraud?
Speaker 2 (45:26):
What about female fraud?
Speaker 1 (45:27):
Just mail? He was sentenced to thirty seven months in
federal prison, but he served just over, just a little
over three. He was ordered to repay twelve and a
half million dollars. He also served probation after release and
was permanently barred from working in any promotional or marketing
role ever again. So it's sad though that like the
(45:54):
people who were supposed to ensure that the game was legit, actually.
Speaker 2 (46:00):
Were the ones that ensured that it wasn't legit.
Speaker 1 (46:02):
Yeah, then they rigged the whole thing.
Speaker 2 (46:04):
But I want my money back McDonald's.
Speaker 1 (46:07):
For those of us who grew up in the eighties
and nineties, and the nostalgia's still real, the excitement, the commercials,
the stickers, it's burned into our memories even if we
never won more than a free apple pie?
Speaker 2 (46:21):
Do they still do Monopoly at McDonald's.
Speaker 1 (46:25):
So that leads me to the inspiration about why I
decided to do this episode. McDonald's is bringing Monopoly back
with digital tracking through their app and stricter controls, so
you never know, maybe this time you'll finally get boardwalk.
(46:47):
Starting October six.
Speaker 2 (46:50):
That's this week. That was two days ago. Yep, we're
not promoting McDonald's or anything, folks, But if you do
go and you get a boardwalk, I think you need
to share it least anywhere from three to five percent.
Speaker 1 (47:03):
So prizes this time around include American Airlines miles, a
fifty thousand dollars Monopoly themed vacation, a ten thousand dollars
Lows shopping spree, a twenty twenty six Jeep Grand Cherokee,
and that big one million dollar cash prize.
Speaker 2 (47:22):
That's the only thing I'm interested in. I don't need
ten thousand dollars in Low's gift cars.
Speaker 1 (47:27):
That's not getting you very far at Low's.
Speaker 2 (47:29):
No, no, no, well, I mean I guess it could
get you something, but I'm not a handy man, as
they say.
Speaker 1 (47:38):
I didn't even know they still made Jeep Grand Cherokees.
Speaker 2 (47:40):
So yeah, I don't want one of those either. I
just want the Mill all right, Can I get the
Mill car?
Speaker 1 (47:46):
I need a car.
Speaker 2 (47:47):
You don't need a car. I just spent a fortune
on your car. You're going to drive it for the
next ten years. It's old, yes, like us.
Speaker 1 (47:54):
Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 2 (47:56):
That was a good story. I rather enjoyed it. I
wasn't sure where you were going. I thought you were
going to say that maybe the hamburglar stole some of
the the stuff since least old cheeseburgers and hamburgers and
all kinds of stuff. But I didn't realize that a
triple J there rip people off, you know it. Never
trust triple J.
Speaker 1 (48:17):
No, So I would love to hear if if people
have the fun memories of McDonald's like I have.
Speaker 2 (48:26):
Oh, I'm sure, like, yeah, they do. You know what
I want. I want to know if people think what
I think, and that is McDonald should go back to
those ugly orange and brown uniforms with that well hat,
with that triangular paper hat. I think that they should
go back to those and then they should go back
to singing in the commercials You deserve a break today
(48:48):
and all that fun stuff. We need to nope it
on back.
Speaker 1 (48:51):
Let's nope it on back, y'all.
Speaker 2 (48:53):
To the McDonald's ugly nineteen eighties podres uniforms.
Speaker 1 (48:57):
So listen, I'm going to make a promise to you
and everyone listening. If anybody wants to get together and
we'll play this game as a group, I won't hold
out on you this time.
Speaker 2 (49:10):
Nope, nope, I'm matured a lot. She won't lie to
you about not having that conversation at all or about
not having Pennsylvania Avenue like I was like, who who what? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (49:22):
What are you talking about? I never said that.
Speaker 2 (49:27):
H That's good stuff.
Speaker 1 (49:29):
So we'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 2 (49:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (49:31):
You can find us on social media. We're on x, Facebook,
and Instagram at.
Speaker 2 (49:37):
Children of Underscore Eighties. You can also reach us by
email at Children of the nineteen Eighties at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1 (49:47):
We would love to hear from you. We would also
appreciate if you would subscribe to our podcast, and that
way you'll never miss an episode.
Speaker 2 (49:57):
Click that subscribe button, follow button, whatever it is on
your preferred app. Click it, click it, click.
Speaker 1 (50:03):
It, click it and ticket ticket and click it.
Speaker 2 (50:06):
No no tickets, just click it. Okay, all right, Well,
until next time, I'm Jim.
Speaker 1 (50:12):
And I'm Lindsay and we are Children of the Eighties.
See you next Wensday.
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