When I was in high school, I had the amazing (and at the same time, crappy) job working in the fileroom of my dad's law firm. We would go through old files and shred the things that had passed a certain date. I think my dad or one of the secretaries tried to tell me that another kid who had this job had found a $100 bill in a file once...I guess as incentive......

anyway, Brent Hepner and I spent the summer in the hot, dusty file room. We made regular trips to the mini fridge with all the free sodas we could drink, and occasionally down to the first floor for a junk food break at the drug store.

Somehow, in that wonderful summer, we figured out the code to the Nestle Crunch Bar instant win promotion.

There was a long grouping of numbers on the Crunch Bar packaging, and if we purchased the one with the correct numbers, there would be a notice inside the wrapper that we had won a free crunch bar. So we'd take the wrapper back to the drug store, pick out another candy bar with the same code on the back, and get another free crunch bar instant win...and take that wrapper back to the store, pick out another candy bar with the same code.....you get the picture.

Looking back, I'm not sure if that was unethical or just really smart, but I feel like I'm partly to blame for the travesty that is the extinction of the instant win.

Any more, you have to enter a code, go to a web site, text message so and so....long forgotten are the days when the message under your soda cap would tell you what your had won....now they just say 3lfkjte24sk9.

No longer will I fall for the "Instant Win" marketing on consumer goods, purchasing the soda with some contest promotion instead of the plain can.....it's not really instant if I have to do 3 more steps to find out if I've won anything at all.

I guess I only have myself (and Brent Hepner) to blame.