Go With The Leader

Above: Front and back of a scratched 'GO WITH THE LEADER' game piece.
This is an INSTANT WINNER card with three matching words. The prize
won with this card is "Drawing Entry," which is not a prize at all,
just an invitation to enter the sweepstakes.

GO WITH THE LEADER was a promotional game issued by the Amoco Corporation in 1985. This was an instant winner game with a sweepstakes element. With each visit to a participating Amoco gas station, customers were given a scratch-off game card.

The scratch cards are 2.25” wide by 3.5” tall, die cut in the shape of a gas pump. There are six scratch-off squares and if your card revealed three matching words, you were a prize winner.

Cruel and Unusual

When players scratched off their cards, many people saw that their card had three matching words, which made them an instant prize winner! The player then scratched off the prize box to see what they won. Unfortunately, most of the ‘prizes’ in the prize box say "Drawing Entry." This isn't really a prize. It is simply an invitation to enter the sweepstakes drawing.

As far as gas station games go, this is cruel and unusual. "Drawing Entry" is not one of the advertised prizes. Amoco leads the player to believe they have won a prize, when in reality they have won nothing. It is just a ploy to try to get the player to enter the sweepstakes. Granted, there were prizes to be won in the sweepstakes, but it required that the player mail in the game card (with their name and address) to enter, and the odds of winning were small. You were, however, guaranteed to get bombarded with junk mail from Amoco.

Most of the instant winner prizes (that could actually be considered a prize) were likewise disappointing. Of the 146,020 prizes available, 137,900 were just discount coupons off your next tank of gas; most were just $1.00 off a tank. Five thousand of the prizes were a gallon of solvent. Solvent? Really? That’s a prize? “Honey, I just won a gallon of solvent at the gas station!”

The remaining prizes ranged from $10 cash to $2,000 cash but the odds of winning one of those prizes was 2,517 to 1. If you entered the sweepstakes, you had a chance to win a trip-for-two to Mexico.

The game was produced by Wallace Games, Inc. and was issued at 420 Amoco stations in North Dakota, South Dakota and Minnesota. A total of 7,855,000 game cards were issued from 1/15/85 to 4/9/85.

Above: A typical non-winning 'GO WITH THE LEADER' game card.

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