Why Nobody Will Find the McDonald’s Monopoly Boardwalk Rare Game Piece

People love the McDonald’s Monopoly game with most hoping they may get lucky and win $1 million. The truth is you have better odds of winning the Powerball Lottery than you do of finding the Boardwalk game piece. In fact, chances are nobody will win the $1 million prize. While many assume someone will walk away with $1 million by the end of the game each year, McDonald’s only gives out the prize every few years, because in order for somebody to claim the prize, a lot of things have to take place which often don’t. That’s exactly why McDonald’s didn’t give away $1 million last year as part of their McDonald’s Monopoly game, and chances are they won’t give out $1 million this year as well. Here are the reasons why it’s so unlikely to happen.

The Piece Needs to Come into Play

McDonald’s creates millions of game pieces and places them on the packaging of different food items. What many people don’t realize is they have to estimate how many food items they will sell, and they don’t want to create too few so they run out of pieces before the end of the game period, so they make too many. While most game pieces are given out to customers, many aren’t, and if the Boardwalk piece happens to be among those which are never given out, then nobody can win the $1 million.

It Needs to be Given to a Customer

Once a piece makes it to a McDonald’s store, that doesn’t mean it will actually make it to a customer. The policy at most McDonald’s is that if packaging falls and hits the ground, it gets thrown away. Again, if this happens to the packaging which holds the Boardwalk piece, nobody can win the grand prize.

The Customer has to Open the Game Piece

The next thing that has to happen is the customer who receives the Boardwalk game piece has to actually open it up and find it. There are many people who don’t even bother to look at the game pieces on their food packaging. In fact, it’s such a problem that McDonald’s puts signs on their trash cans (see photo at the top of this article) during the game each year to remind customers not to throw away their game pieces. There’s a good chance the person who does receive the winning game piece may throw it away without ever looking at it.

The Customer has to Recognize Boardwalk is a Rare Piece

Even if the person opens the piece, they have to recognize Boardwalk is a rare game piece. The vast majority of people who play the game simply open up the game pieces hoping to win a free instant prize and don’t bother with any of the property pieces. If they don’t know that Boardwalk is the rare game piece they need to win, many will simply throw it away.

The Customer also Needs To get Park Place

In order to win the $1 million, the person who gets Boardwalk also needs to get Park Place. While this isn’t difficult to do if the person knows they have the rare piece, it may be more difficult if they don’t know it’s rare. Maybe they only visit McDonald’s once a month or rarely, and may never get the other piece needed because they don’t go to but the food there often enough. The Boardwalk piece itself doesn’t win the prize.

In the end, all these factors combined means that most years, McDonald’s doesn’t actually have to give the $1 million prize away. Not only is the piece rare, but a lot of other things need to align correctly for the prize to actually be claimed. The fact is that in all likelihood, nobody is going to walk away with $1 million from the McDonald’s Monopoly game.

More From Around The Web

Twistedfood has a great write up of McDonalds Monopoly – and in fact, people do win the contest.  However, this wasn’t always the case.  In 2001, an officer at the company managing the game, was indicted for working with a network of accomplices in an extensive fraud scheme.  Here is a summary of the article from the Chicago Tribune that covered the story. 

The rest of the Chicago Tribune story is here.

More From SavingAdvice

For more on Mcdonald’s Monopoly game as well as other Monopoly Games check out these articles.

Last Minute Ways To Find McDonald’s Monopoly Game Pieces
The Financial Benefits of McDonald’s Monopoly Promotion 2016
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