You’ve seen this before. This is the more obnoxious older sibling of the “free” toy inside—the mail-in prize. In this case, you send in proofs of purchase from $24 worth of cereal (or proofs of purchase from $8 worth of cereal, as well as $5), and they send you a $3 radio.
The children get excited about this sort of thing, which is, of course, the point. So I told them Santa Claus was in charge of prizes in cereal boxes, and that if they had been good enough boys, the radio would be in there.
No, of course I didn’t really do that. Cancel the mental composition of that tearful I-thought-I-knew-you email, please.
I am thinking I may use this as a lesson in TANSTAAFL, though. I’m already talking to Nathan a little bit about watching television commercials critically, and he’s building a good understanding of “cheap,” mostly based on discarded-not-repaired fast food and party favor toys.
Perhaps we’ll see this particular offer through to completion, doing everything we need to do to receive the radio, and then compare it to what we could have bought with the same money and substantially less effort.
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