Martin Luther King Jr. Day is observed on the third Monday of January each year. It's not a holiday that traditionally is associated with freebies. However, to spread the word, the government is giving away free MLK Day promotional items every year. I still have my door hangers from 2011!
MLK Day Posters
MLK Day Fact Sheet
bookmarks
stickers
door hangers
While at the beach last summer, I could have their free MLK bookmark. After finishing a chapter, I wanted to go take a dip in the ocean but didn't have a bookmark. I started to dog ear the page, but then came up the ingenious plan to make a bookmark! I grabbed a handful of sand, mashed it together tightly, and stuck it in the book.
1,026 Freebies Received (including movie rental codes and online free points)
268 Magazines Received
1 $50 Gift Card being given away in this post
These stats don't count anything I got in January 2010 since I didn't start the Freebies Received series until February. It also doesn't count freebies that were posted in the past few weeks that I'll receive in the future, so I have to be ecstatic with those numbers.
One thing I noticed while going over the past year was the number of food items given away this year. Granola bars, oatmeal, cookies, tea, coffee, cereal, crackers, popcorn, candy, gum, deli meat, bacon, macaroni, Bisquick, chips, energy bars. I've always food is one of the three most common freebies, but geez, you don't realize how much we got until you add it all up.
But what about my absolute favorite freebies? I thought for a bit, looked around to see what freebies I still use to this day, and came up with the following.
Top 10 Favorite Freebies of 2010
US Postal Office Sample Showcase – This box came with 12 freebies and it was glorious. Coffee, shampoo, steak seasonings, lotions, soap, and more – it was all put to good use!
Uniball Super Ink pen – I haven't used a different pen since the day this baby arrived. I actually lost it a few weeks ago and bought a few packages of them at the store. Anybody who says freebies don't convert to paying customers should think again.
Multi-tool pocket knife – No more opening packages with my teeth!
Kraft Sample Pack – Ten food products (including three free full-sized ones) came in the box. I buy Wheat Thins now due to this freebie alone.
Kraft Coupon Book – Kraft again? You better believe it. One tiny brochure brought six coupons for free full-sized Kraft products from deli meat to macaroni to a free pizza. I ate well that week.
American Apparel thong – Only because I had a heck of a time explaining it to my friends who saw me open it.
Tena Adult Underwear – These freebies helped me execute a longterm prank where I convinced my youngest brother that I wasn't potty trained. It ended when his teachers started sending home notes about the topic he brought up during “Share Time” in class.
LED UFO light – Let me paint a picture for you: I'm alone in the mountains in the middle of a monsoon when my car breaks down. I had an idea what the problem was, but both the bulb in my hood and my cell phone were dead. Enter the UFO light, which I had inexplicably thrown into my glove box. Long story short I slept in my bed instead of my truck that night.
Extra Dessert Delights gum – I selected the mint ice cream gum and it tasted so genuine that I bought both of the other flavors. I am now addicted to the Key Lime Pie and am begging my friends and family for an intervention.
Playboy and Macworld magazine subscriptions – Both of these tie for the final spot as they're wonderful reads. Seriously. I read them for the articles!
Another realization I had while going through the archives was the number of full sized freebies that I received, be it through the mail, coupon, or rebate. For the list below, I didn't include anything that could (or should I say, should) be used or consumed in one sitting. Doing so would have more than tripled the list as there were plenty of drinks and travel sized toiletries handed out.
Full Size Freebies
Bar of Dove soap
Package of Double Stuf Oreos
7 bottles of Excedrin medicine – Did anyone else remember that in addition to the free coupons Excedrin has recently bombarded us with, they also gave away a few in January / February of 2010? I sure didn't.
Bottle of Louisiana hot sauce
Package of Heluva Good Dip
Package of Borden cheese
Bag of Reese's Pieces
Pantene Nature Fusion shampoo
2 bags of Planters Trail Mix
Pack of 5 React gum
Pack of Stride gum
Jar of Enfamil baby formula
Bottle of Renu Multi-Purpose contact solution
Package of Oscar Mayer turkey bacon
Box of Kraft macaroni
Package of Oscar Mayer deli meat
Package of Uncle Ben’s rice
Package of Kraft Cheesy macaroni
Jug of Tropicana Pure Premium orange juice
Box of Kool-Aid
Box of Mac & Cheese
One DiGiorno’s pizza
Box of 100 calorie cheese bites
Package of Oscar Mayer deli meat
Box of Ritz Crackerfuls
Package of Pilot pens
Bottle of Suave Professionals shampoo
DiGiorno deep dish pizza
Bottle of Pure Scent~sation hair remover
Bottle of V8 V-fusion green tea
Glade candle
EasyGlide Bic pen
Mrs. Fields cookie tin
2-liter of refreshe soda
Package of Cottonelle flushable moist wipes
Two Proforce cleaning kits
Bag of Natura Advantage dog food
Pack of Extra Dessert Delights gum
Can of Pringles Xtreme chips
Box of Barilla pasta
Bag of Food Should Taste Good chips
Bottle of free Dream Water
Forty-two full sized freebies! How can anybody hate on that?!
So what was your favorite freebie of 2010? Share it with us in the comments below and you'll be entered to win one of the $50 prepaid American Express gift cards given to me by P&G last month!
If you're reading this via Facebook, email, or an RSS feed, then please click here to comment and enter. I'll use Random.org to pick a comment on Wednesday, January 5, at 8:00pm est and email the winner!
Hey Hiffers. I had some major surgery yesterday and will be taking the next day or two off from posting, emails, and the sort. I might try getting a few posts up this afternoon if my laptop plays along (what a perfect time for my battery to die!), but I apologize in advance for any freebies we miss while I'm off in Never Never Land. Please do me a favor and play nice while I'm gone though. Taking the time to delete batches of inflammatory comments is even less fun than it sounds.
I have so many different mailing address labels from one freebie or another that I could fill out my Christmas cards this year and never have to worry about return addressing any envelope. That being said, I still requested these free cancer research mailing address labels. Sure, I've got a ton of ones with birds and flowers on them, but another pack with some more variety? Well, variety is just the spice of life…
Besides, I've never been a big fan of work. Any work, that is. That includes writing my return address on a letter. Yes, I am that lazy. But now that I've found these free mailing labels, all is well in the life of Goob. I can now save a precious 15 seconds each time I mail my annual letter.
Once a staple in the freebie world due to their extremely low cost to ship, free trash bags haven't shown up much beyond 2016. One small tidbit is Sam's Club used to be the trash bag freebie king! No idea why, especially since Walmart and Target were the main freebie sources back then. And yet it was almost alwaysSam's Club partnering with Glad and other trash bag manufacturers to offer free samples.
While we wait for more to return, here are some of the classic trash bag jokes!
Here are some free Glad ForceFlex OdorShield with Febreeze trash bags for people needing somewhere to put their garbage. Good luck holding it for the next 5-7 weeks.
Interested in a free Glad Odorshield with Febreze trash bag offer. I'm just thankful it's not one of their usual ForceFlex bag offers. The previous time one of those bad boys arrived, it teased me mercilessly until I finally flexed. My friends still laugh at how minuscule my biceps are.
These free Glad ForceFlex trash bags are fantastic at not breaking while you stuff them full of all the dirty dishes your roommate left in the sink. The bags even mask the smell long enough for you to carry them into his room and scatter said dishes all over the floor!
Or I guess you could just put trash in them. Whatever floats your boat.
The selling point of this free ECOgrade photodegradable trash bag, other than being free, is supposed to be that it's biodegradable. I foresee two major problems here. First, what happens to the garbage after the bag degrades? Does it start blowing out of landfills? Call me crazy, but we need our trash to morph into flowers over time as well.
Also what if I want to throw away a pile dirt right now? Will it speed up the degrading process and cause the dirt to get all over my kitchen? No, stop asking why I have mounds of dirt in my house. You're focusing on the wrong aspect of this scenario.
As you can see, these free Shout Color Catchers had a burst of popular sampling events. They mainly ran from 2010-2012, but I'll continue being on the lookout for the next freebie opportunity.
I once tried to emulate these free Shout Color Catchers by eating a box of crayons. They didn't quite color what I was hoping for.
The old free Shout color catcher offer is back. Or maybe it never went away to begin with. I'm not the most attentive person in the world as my current outfit attests. I have no idea how this skirt got into my wardrobe or how I came to wear it.
This free Shout color catcher looks like a new form. Plus it accepted my info without saying I'd already requested a sample, so that's good enough for me to publish this. I have a pretty low bar when it comes to quality control. I'm the Creed Bratton of freebies.
If it's anything like before, then the free business cards will arrive in your mailbox within days. Unfortunately I don't have anybody to give these out to. I don't think I've ever had a single person ask me for my card, but that might be because I never leave my home and only converse with imaginary friends.
I think the first human right is that we should all have the right to have pancakes for dinner and steak for breakfast. As you can tell from the multiple food posts in a row, its time for me to eat so I don't get much loopier than this. So while I'm waiting for this free human rights information kit to come, I might have to create my own list of human rights and see if I can get people to follow them… I think my first right should be something about cake…
Hiffers, mark your calendars because over 14,000 locations will be giving out free McDonalds smoothies from 7am-7pm on July 22-24. What does this mean for me? Well, for starters, I'll have to actually put on pants in the morning. I still don't understand society's hatred of guys wearing only boxers and fuzzy bunny slippers.
Also, if you still have USA Weekend or Parade magazine from Sunday, look inside it for a free McDonald's 12oz. Smoothie or Frappe coupon.
Also also, if you decide you want to buy a full-sized smoothie later on, here's a $1/1 coupon from McDonald's site.
Two years ago NASA offered to send your name to the moon. Now they're willing to blast your face into space! Sure, it's not a traditional freebie that comes in the mail, but I can't resist having my face float amongst aliens.
I fear it's the closest I'll ever come to traveling off our planet on account of my fear of heights. Plus, there's the fact that I'm vastly under qualified nor am I a rich Russian oligarch who can buy my way up there. But I'm sticking with the whole heights issue as my main obstacle.
Free tea samples have been around forever. They're inexpensive, lightweight to ship, and taste delicious!
Below you'll find some of the older jokes for all the various tea samples we've found over the years!
I really enjoyed the previous free Yogi tea sample that I received. However, I'm not sure if it was because the tea tasted great or because it gave me the perfect excuse to walk around talking like Yogi Bear and repeatedly saying “pic-a-nic basket.”
It's all fun and games until you start to think you're smarter than the average bear. Long story short, we may be smarter, but geez can they run fast. They can even snarl at you while running! And the claws! You don't have to be too smart to know how to use those things.
For all your tea drinkers out there, here is a freebie you might enjoy. Now this isn't Yogi tea as in Yogi The Bear, because that would just be sick and twisted if somebody had actually gone out, captured him, and then turned him into tea. But no, thankfully this is just a brand of tea that lets you pick from four different packages of flavored tea.
I never did get around to learning the Chinese language, so I can only hope that this free Zhong Guo Cha Chinese tea doesn't translate to “free horrendously bad tasting Chinese tea.” Sure, the odds are slim, but you never know. My buddy once got a tattoo of a symbol he thought meant “courage” only later to discover it meant *We're sorry, but we here at the FCC have censored this content and will soon be fining the author $250,000. Sorry for the inconvenience.*
I know, right? His own mom disowned him after hearing about that!
In order to get your free Celestial Tea, you have to become a fan on Facebook and take a short quiz beforehand. But it's totally worth it for some space tea.
I qualified for Mandarin Duck, which I sincerely hope is not a reflection of its contents.
I'm not quite sure what happened just now. I started with saying free Wild Minis tea repeatedly while trying to think of a joke. I somehow ended up daydreaming about an evil wild manatee wrecking havoc off the eastern seaboard.
I've taken an odd liking to tea recently, which is even stranger when you consider how loyal I once was to coffee. But there's something calming about watching the water boil before steeping a strong cup of tea in the morning. I guess that explains why I'm so excited over this free Teekanne tea.
I personally went with Triple Mint Tranquility, but only because its acronym is one letter off from TMNT. I should probably stop making decisions based on my memory of childhood cartoons. Otherwise, it's only a matter of time before I have a son and name him Egon.
There's nothing better than starting the day off with a steaming mug of free Suffuse tea. Well, I guess waking up to find a million dollars scattered across your floor would be better. But then you'd probably freak out wanting to know where it came from.
Unfortunately I've got three words for you: Sleepwalking crime spree. I know, I thought I knew you well too, but turns out your a crazed bank robber every night!
This free FIX energy tea seems right up my alley. My lesser known nickname is Mr. Vila as I can't help myself. I see something broken and there's no stopping me from making it right. Why just last weekend my kitchen table was giving me trouble so I borrowed a chainsaw and yada yada I now eat my meals on the floor. I guess tables are just a little too fancy for me right now.
I tend to work late into the night. If for some odd reason I'm not drinking bourbon, I tend to drink coffee. But I recently discovered this amazing new beverage. It's called “tea” (pronounced like the letter T) and it's great! It's hot, it's tasty, and it doesn't make you stay up until dawn. Go grab some of this free Lipton Black Tea and check it out! Just don't be fooled by the picture above. You can drink it from the comfort of your home, you don't have to lean out the window like a weirdo.
Today is National Iced Tea Day, which is something that shouldn't exist, but whatever. To celebrate, there was a free bottle of Lipton Iced Tea offer on Facebook, but the signup form keeps crashing. So what now? Well, luckily you're a Hiffer and can go straight to the coupon printing page!
I love occasionally subverting freebies – it's the only time I get to feel like a rebel. I even have a leather jacket and motorcycle for the occasion. Though getting the bike into my living room is a real pain.
The free Lipton tea & honey drink mix Facebook offer comes in one packet. That saves us the burdensome step of mixing honey into our tea, but it also robs us of the wonderful pleasure of squirting honey directly into our mouths. There's always a catch…
I have a solid morning routine that I'm apprehensive to tweak, even if that means forgoing my three free Tea Monger teabags. You don't just tamper willy nilly with such a tried and true formula as mine. Wake up, snooze, wake up again, snooze again, finally roll out of bed once 80 year old neighbors begin yelling at the early morning commercials, shower, laugh at the thought of shaving, stick head out window to check weather, remember I work from home, flip a coin to decide whether or not to get dressed, brew the first of 10 cups of coffee, start working, and finally have friend call at noon to make sure I didn't go back to bed.
See! Pretty darn close to perfection if you ask me.
I normally don't post these types of offers (more on that below), but this free Lipton Tropical iced tea wants us to “sample a trending beverage.”
Oh la la, Mr. Fancy Pants over here with his trending beverage. I bet he gets all the ladies with such a hot and fashionable drink. I remember dreaming as a wee little Goob that one day I might be cool enough to get my beverage trending on Twitter. And here we are. My, what an age we live in.
Last month's free Lipton tea & honet drink mix offer is back. Prepare to be refreshed in 6-8 weeks, assuming you enjoy tea, honey, mango, and pineapple flavors mashed together!
Actually, that drink above looks horrible. Who wants giant leaves in their drink? And call me crazy, but I think those chunks of pineapple shell might scratch going down.
Here's a free Lipton Tea & Honey To Go offer that's Mango Pineapple flavored. So why do they call the brand Tea & Honey? Who knows, you should ask them. While you're at it, inquire as to why nobody in their industry can properly pour a beverage. Look at that image above. That tea is going everywhere. They're making a freaking mess.
Hey, look, it's the free Lipton Tea & Honey To Go offer again. Honey seems like a weird thing to want on the go. Every time I eat honey, I get it all over my hands and have to spend 10 minutes washing it off.
My Internet has been down all day, so I'm tethering to my phone right now. Some would complain about sluggish speed, but I for one enjoy the occasional throwback, like today's two free Lipton tea k-cups from Walmart. It's fun pretending I'm on AOL again! Now where are all the chat rooms?
Today's free Lipton natural energy tea offer just hit the market. As luck would have, I'm drinking some energy tea right now! However we call it “coffee” where I'm from down south.
The classic free Twinings tea offer has returned, so you know what that means! At least I hope you do. I can't figure it out.
Eucerin has given samples away for years. In fact, they released six different freebies during our inaugural 2006 season! Sadly they're not longer a freebie stable, but we're all invited to “build a stronger first line of defense” with these free Eucerin lotion samples and coupons. Don't fall for it! A strong padlock, loud dog, and bazooka are all better defenses than body lotion. I don't see how squirting a burglar with body lotion would get him to flee. That is unless he broke in to steal your lotion!
Here are some samplings of freebies past.
Old HIF Jokes
This offer reminded me of how silly silent letters are. My last name starts with a silent E and it's pointless. Sure, they can be fun when convincing children that cat is spelled with four silent Qs, but beyond that, what's the point? Somebody should get to work on eliminating those.
Exactly how far can this free Eucerin lotion go in repairing dry skin? Sometimes you hear people refer to skin as leathery and long story short I scuffed up my leather jacket last winter and need to fix it.
Oh brother. In order to get a free Eucerin Daily Skin Balance lotion, you have to take the “Skin First Pledge” and put the health of your skin first! In other words, just like them and then fill out the form.
I hate empty, hollow pledges and promises that companies try to get people to make. It's like elementary school all over again. Tell ya what, let's all make a pledge never to make a vapid pledge to a company. Although that might go against my anti-pledge pledge and the more I say “pledge” the weirder it sounds. Pledge. Pledge. Am I even saying it correctly now?
Now this is how you do a freebie! Make it abundantly clear that the offer is for free Eucerin Daily Skin Balance lotion, put the signup form on the first page, and keep it short by only asking for my name and address. The only way this could be easier would be if the freebie was immediately delivered through your computer monitor. But that's just crazy talk. Everybody knows the government won't release insta-teleportation technology for another three decades.
Ahh…I think I've said too much.
The Eucerin Facebook page is asking people to take the Healthy Skin Pledge again in exchange for two free lotion samples. This is perfect for expressing my rebellious side. Since I'm too scared to break the law, I long ago resorted to breaking pointless promises.
You should have seen me in the 5th grade. My DARE officer ranted that medicine could be a drug, so I went to town that week and took an extra Flintstones vitamin every day. Just thinking it makes my heart race. I should get a leather jacket and motorcycle. Do they make training wheels for those?
I think I've broken more pledges in the name of freebies than in anything else in life. And that includes all the elementary school pledges that I was forced to sign. Facebook's free Eucerin Daily Protection moisturizing lotion wants me to “pledge to make skincare a priority for me, my family, and my friends.” Yeah, that's not gonna happen. I get enough crap from my friends. I'm not about to give them more ammo by calling out of the blue to inquire about their skin's moisture levels.
