Sunday, March 13, 2011

More gifts from Marlboro!!!

I must say that Marlboro is simply the best when it comes to giving out awesome prizes for their contest/sweeps. Over the years, we have won countless stuff from Marlboro - from small things like keychains, cookbooks, t shirts to bigger stuff like a HD video cam as well as invites to various event. I guess the biggest prize so far was the fully paid 4 days 3 nights trip for 2 to the Marlboro Ranch in Montana! A few months ago, Marlboro ran their Outwit The West contest over a period of 10 weeks. This would be the third Outwit The West contest organized by Marlboro but the first time ever to be fully online (the previous two was solely via snail mail). How it worked was that Marlboro would release 5 questions regarding the West each week and there would be 10 sets of questions in total. After each week, we would get points for each correct answer. Mind you, the questions were not simple questions whereby you could just google the answers. They were rather tricky and came in various forms, ie: poems, videos, pictures, sound clips. After the end of 10 weeks, we could exchange the points that we collected for various gifts.
The 'biggest' prize that we could win was a Samsung Netbook but unfortunately, both Kevin and I fell short by a few points :( Oh well, the prizes that we got ain't shabby either. A few weeks after the contest ended, we found this two really nice ashtrays in the mail. That's the bonus gift that we got, for some of the leftover points from the game. They were kinda small but really nice and heavy. We have won many ashtrays over the years from Marlboro but I think that this is one of the nicer ones. We actually have a whole bunch of Marlboro ashtrays, kept in mint condition. From what I hear, Marlboro memorabilia is rather hot and those ashtrays might be worth quite a lot one day (since each design is only produced in limited quantities).
This is the main prize that I won. Isn't it sweet? A Canon PowerShot SX130 IS digital camera! I believe the estimated retail price of this camera is around $230. Not too bad at all. 12.1MP, 12x wide angle optical zoom, image stabilizer as well as some new scene modes like Miniature Effect for movies and Fisheye Effect. From reviews that I read, it's one of the best cameras in it's class. I have yet to really play around with it but I believe that it's a fun second camera to have. Nice!
Kevin chose a Fuji Nevada 4.0 Mountain Bike (estimate retail value $430) as his main prize. From the reviews that we read online, it's supposed to be a pretty decent bike. I guess many people like this bike as well, cos up til now, we still haven't gotten it yet. Marlboro was really apologetic about it though. They said that they didn't expect that many people to choose this bike and now, the orders are backlogged til June. They promised that they will get it to him by June, at the latest. We are not really bothered about it though, cos he is not really planning to go out cycling in the snow anyways :P So, June is fine. I guess Marlboro must have felt really bad for not sending out the bikes earlier, cos Kevin received this Leatherman MICRA Multi Tool (estimated retail prize - $30) in the mail with a letter saying that they are sorry about this in the mail not too long ago. Wow, Marlboro is really tops when it comes to customer service!
As soon as one contest is over, Marlboro started another a month later. This time, it's the Marlboro Snus Challenge. This is way way wayyyyy easier then Outwit The West. It goes on for a period of 6 weeks and they give out different prizes each week. We are now into "Week 4" and the prize this week is a $100 gift card. Both Kevin and I won the "Week 1" prize, which are a pair of premium earbuds from Sentry. Maybe we might win more prizes from this contest, who knows :P Oh, I nearly forgot. We were playing the "Rope Slinger" game on the Marlboro website and we made it all the way to the final level. For 'mastering' the game, Marlboro will be sending us a black cowboy bandanna and a western belt buckle! This is just crazy, one gift after another. Feels like Marlboro is just giving away gifts like its your birthday, everyday! Thanks to all the smokers out there, Kevin and I can now strut around in our new bandannas and matching his and hers belt buckle! LOL! :P

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