This is so sad. Not sad I guess. Nevermind, Yes, it's sad.

Sad from a personal point of view, because yes, yes it's true. I have in years past allowed myself to eat at McDonalds more than normal just because Monopoly was on. And yes. Yes, I know that its basically a lottery what with the astronomical (as in, US Federal Reserve accounting parlance and numbers, happens every 2.1 seconds) odds, it is truly a tax on people bad at math. But i've never claimed to be good at math. In fact every time it comes up, I heartily and readily admit that I suck at math, both in general and specifically.

So, I guess its not that sad, just really interesting that someone build this calculator. Using the STATED odds of the McDonald's Monopoly game ( 1 in 301,245,250 ) of winning a major prize, you can go to http://www.eatwithaspork.com/fun/bigmac/ and choose the prize you want from a drop down box. I chose the 2011 Shelby GT500, because it was the first I saw, it was the bottom of the list, and because it would be really awesome breaking the speed limit speeding around corners coming home from my part time job. This is what the calculation returned for me:

How many Big Mac® Sandwiches does it take to win in McDonald's® 2010 Monopoly® game?
(This may take a minute if you have terrible luck.)

Calculating based on your odds of 1 in 301,245,250...

Giving up after 10,000,000 sandwiches. You didn't win.

In your quest to win 2011 Shelby GT500 you:
Ingested 5,400,000,000 calories.
Consumed 290,000,000 grams of fat.
Inhaled 10,400,000,000 milligrams of sodium.
Took in 450,000,000 grams of carbohydrates.
Packed on 1,542,857.14 pounds.
You spent $37,300,000.00 trying to win a $48,645 prize.

If you would rather set your sights a little lower, be more reasonable perhaps and settle on finding what it would cost to win the $50 prize. Check this out, this is the result:

How many Big Mac® Sandwiches does it take to win in McDonald's® 2010 Monopoly® game?
(This may take a minute if you have terrible luck.)

Calculating based on your odds of 1 in 150,623...

You ate 63,474 Big Mac sandwiches to win: $50 Cash.

$50! Maybe you could buy a few more Big Macs and try and win the Redbox® rental!


Congratulations! On your road to glory you:
Ingested 34,275,960 calories.
Consumed 1,840,746 grams of fat.
Inhaled 66,012,960 milligrams of sodium.
Took in 2,856,330 grams of carbohydrates.
Packed on 9,793.13 pounds.
You spent $236,758.02 trying to win a $50 prize.

Please head on over to http://www.eatwithaspork.com/fun/bigmac/ and try it yourself. Choose your own prize, and glaze over at the big numbers that tell you to give up and don't eat at fricking McDonald's just because it's on with Monopoly. Give me a call and we can play Monopoly via xbox live instead.