2016/2017
Vol. 12

They’re Gone!

Do you ever wonder what you would do if you won $1,000? Well, this very thing happened to my mom in 1998 when she was pregnant with my brother and lived in South Carolina. Every afternoon she craved a glass of milk and some Chips Ahoy! chocolate chip cookies.

One afternoon she was getting ready to satisfy this craving with a brand-new bag of cookies. She poured her glass of milk, sat down, reached into the bag, and, of course, pulled out a cookie. Suspiciously, she looked at this cookie, noticing that something wasn’t right. Finally she realized what was wrong. There were no chocolate chips on that cookie! As we would probably all do, she put “the bad one” back in the bag. She reached back into the heavenly supply of cookies, and pulled out another cookie. This cookie didn’t have any chips either! Looking into the bag, my mom discovered that there were not any chocolate chips on any of the cookies!

My mother was very mad, because you do not mess with a pregnant woman and her cravings. She thought, “Gosh, now I have to go back to the grocery store and get another bag!” My mom shoved the cookies back into the bag, wondering how this could even get past the quality control. While closing the bag, she noticed a message: Find the Bag of Chipless Cookies and Win $1,000! This was unbelievable!

She reread it, just to make sure she hadn’t lost her mind. What she saw was real, so she turned over the bag for details on this unbelievable scene. You had to have a verification card, but my mom didn’t recall such a card. She made sure by opening her lucky bag, and there it was, right under the chipless tray!

Mom quickly called her husband and told him about this success story. After that, she found out that this contest was part of the Chips Ahoy! ad campaign that in every ordinary bag there were 1,000 chocolate chips. Apparently some students had decided to test this claim. The students found that there were not 1,000 chocolate chips in their bag, so Chips Ahoy! had launched this contest.

Because of my mom’s cookie craving, she and her husband won $1,000, and they bought a video camera to video their new baby. If they hadn’t won this contest, I wouldn’t have been able to see my older brother when he was a baby.

Olivia Thomas; North Carolina, USA

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