As a kid, do you remember contests for specific brands which promised a lifetime or year's supply of a specific product? And how it was advertised as, quite literally, a truckload of said product arriving on your doorstep, leading you to not want for that product?
In works of fiction, that's usually how those types of prizes are portrayed. The character wins the prize, and depending on the circumstances, is usually presented with an obscene amount of the product all at once.
In reality, year or lifetime supply prizes are nowadays distributed in the form of coupons or the prize is evenly parceled out at predetermined times so as to prevent spoilage or expiration.
This can also overlap with Undesirable Prize, if the character gets a lifetime supply of something they have no use or need for. The prize can be part of being the Umpteenth Customer at whatever business.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- Captain Harlock: A year's supply of energy capsules is the usual bounty offered for the capture of Harlock, Tochiro, or Emeraldas, as printed on Wanted Posters across various incarnations of the franchise.
- Pokémon: The Series: In "Ring Masters", Ash enters a Pokémon sumo competition that offers a prize of a King's Rock and a year's supply of Pokémon food. Naturally, Ash's Snorlax devours the year's supply within minutes. (The King's Rock, meanwhile, is later used to let his friend Misty's Poliwhirl evolve into a Politoed.)
Comic Books
- Gaston Lagaffe: In the final "Piedboeuf" sponsored strip, Gaston uses the sponsorship money to buy a lifetime supply of "Piedboeuf" orange juice.
Films — Animated
- Aloha, Scooby-Doo!: At the end of the film, Shaggy and Scooby win a surfing contest purely by accident while trying to escape the Wiki-Tiki, with the grand prize being a year's supply of macadamia nuts, which promptly shows up in a truck. Of course, Shaggy and Scooby being Shaggy and Scooby the prize lasts all of 15 seconds.
Films — Live-Action
- Dude, Where's My Car?: The main characters wake up to find their house filled with chocolate pudding, and they have no idea what happened the previous day to figure out where it came from. It turns out to be a Chekhov's Gun when they need to figure out which of two groups of aliens they were with the previous night and they ask both groups what they won the previous night. Only the group they were with can confirm they won a lifetime's supply of pudding when they hit a hole-in-one while playing mini-golf.
- Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory: The five lucky winners of the Golden Ticket contest all receive a tour of Wonka's factory and a lifetime supply of chocolate. A man who programmed a computer to predict the locations of the tickets offers to split the prize with it when the machine refuses to divulge the locations since that would be cheating. It responds, "What would a computer do with a lifetime supply of chocolate?"
Literature
- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: The prize for each child who finds a golden ticket in Wonka's chocolate bars is a tour of Wonka's factory and a lifetime supply of chocolate (and the golden tickets themselves state that every time they run out, they just have to come back to the factory and show the ticket to get more). At the end of the book, Charlie gets to see the other kids leaving the factory and meeting up with a number of large trucks, one for each of them and loaded with Wonka products.
- The Hunger Games: Winners get a Cool House in a specific neighbourhood along with a lifelong stipend. In addition to this, their district earns a year-long supply of additional food.
Live-Action TV
- iCarly: In "iCook," Carly, Sam, and Freddie win a year's supply of free steaks for beating master chef Ricky Flame.
- The Golden Girls: In the season 3 episode "Grab That Dough", the girls are on a game show in which they end up trading the guaranteed prize for what's behind a door. Their prize is a lifetime supply of condensed soup.
Tabletop Games
- Maximum X Crawl: Events are often sponsored by corporations. For example, in 2013 Studio City Crawl, the first prize is 1 Year Supply of Empire Classic Frozen Dinners.
Video Games
- Looney Tunes Space Race: If the player wins the tournament, they are rewarded with a cutscene of their character receiving a lifetime supply of Acme products, shown as the character being buried under a mountain of said products.
- Parappa The Rapper 2: The game starts off with Parappa winning a lifetime supply of noodles which he gets so sick of that he wants nothing to do with them. The game has him overcome this developed distaste and save the town from being overrun with noodles. At the end, he wins a lifetime supply of cheese.
- Sesame Street: Brush Those Teeth: Once the contestants get their teeth cleaned by the player, they win a lifetime supply of either toothbrushes, toothpaste, apples, or carrots, which pile up and fill the screen.
- Smash TV: One of the prizes that you can win in the final arena is a year's supply of meat products.
- Spider-Man (PS4): After finding one of the backpacks containing his Wilson Fisk Science Prize trophy, Peter mentioned that while he refused to accept Fisk's money, he did accept a lifetime supply of backpacks as his prize instead.
- Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People: As a Consolation Prize for (intentionally) losing the Free Country USA Tri-Annual Race to the End of the Race, Strong Bad wins a lifetime supply of Fluffy Puff Jela-Ton gelatin. He later uses the Jela-Ton to fix the race's logrolling segment so he can win for real.
Web Video
- Dragon Ball Z Abridged: Because of a sponsorship that Cell acquired for the Cell Games, he establishes the prize for beating him is not just the Earth surviving, but also a lifetime supply of Hetap for the person who beats him. Goku doesn’t consider the prize too impressive.
Goku: You know, they say lifetime, but they never consider the dragon balls.
- SuperMarioLogan: In "Fat Junior!", Junior becomes the 1 trillionth customer at McDonald's, and wins a year's worth of free food from the restaurant. He eats it constantly for a month, becoming very fat as a result, to the point where Jackie Chu enters him in a sumo wrestling match. At the end of the video, Junior finds out from Brooklyn T. Guy that he has contracted Type 2 Diabetes as a result of his overeating, and gets the rest of his McDonald's food taken away.
Western Animation
- Arthur:
- After Arthur submits D.W.'s jingle for a cereal contest, the Reads are informed that D.W. won and will receive a year's supply of the cereal, which is dumped unceremoniously on their front lawn, forcing them to store it and wonder how they'll eat it all.
- In "Arthur and the Big Riddle", when Arthur loses in the finals of a game show, he wins a year's supply of Choco-Stix: "the chocolate stick that's fun to lick!" He shares them with his friends as they celebrate him losing.
- Back at the Barnyard: In "Cupig", Pig writes a love letter about how much he loves Flaky Tarts for a contest. When Otis sees the love letter, he thinks it's from Abby, getting the episode's main plot under way. At the end of the episode, Pig wins the contest and a lifetime supply of Flaky Tarts. However, he manages to eat them all in a single afternoon, and starts going after the guy in the Flaky Tart costume, thinking he's a giant Flaky Tart as well.
- The Batman: In "Q & A", those who lose on the TV game show "Think, Thank, Thunk" receive a lifetime supply of "Cremelos" (a candy bar). A young Arthur Brown, A.K.A Cluemaster, received this prize after a long winning streak was finally broken. In the present, he still has enough of these treats that his mother actually hands them out to visitors.
- CatDog: In the theatrical short Fetch, Cat desperately tries to find a phone to claim a radio contest prize while Dog chases a tennis ball through town. When the prize is finally brought over to their house, it turns out to be a lifetime supply of tennis balls. Dog is overjoyed, but Cat is still reeling from the last game of fetch. Then the balls get loose all over the road, resulting in Dog starting his chase all over again.
- Futurama: In "Fry and the Slurm Factory", Fry enters a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory-like contest where the winner gets a tour of the Slurm factory, a party with Slurms Mckenzie, and a lifetime supply of Slurm.
- Gravity Falls: In "Blendin's Game", Soos gets a wish and uses it for a slice of "Infinite Pizza", which regenerates after every bite. It basically is a life supply of pizza.
- The Real Ghostbusters: After winning a game show set up by a Louis Cypher character for their souls, Peter manhandles the demon, saying that they played and won his game, and they were getting their promised prize, or Peter was rearranging the demon's face. The prize? An all expense trip to Tahiti, and a year's supply of deviled ham.
- The Simpsons: In "A Star is Burns", Barney Gumble wins the Springfield Film Festival for his artistic introspective film about alcoholism, titled Pukahontas. During his speech, Barney vows that from now on, he will be a new person, specifically a clean, sober, hard-working one. That is, until Mayor Quimby reveals the grand prize to be a tanker truck filled with Duff beer.
Barney: Just hook it to my veins!
- T.U.F.F. Puppy: In "Lucky Duck", Dudley wins a lifetime supply of Quacker Jacks, a ridiculously unhealthy snack food sponsored by Quacky the Duck, whose ingredients involve a ton of trans-fats and artificial bacon cheese. Quacker Jacks are so unhealthy that Dudley's lifetime supply is only two boxes because according to Quacky, "You can't eat more than two boxes and live!"
- Youre A Good Sport Charlie Brown: The grand prize for winning the motocross race is supposed to be tickets to the NFL Pro Bowl, but Charlie Brown finds out after he wins that the organizers couldn't get the Pro Bowl tickets. Instead they award him five free haircuts as a Consolation Prize, which is about a year's worth for a child who keeps their hair short... and utterly pointless for a child whose father is a barber.
- What's New, Scooby-Doo?: The episode "Recipe for Disaster" has Shaggy winning a tour of the Scooby Snax factory, which is naturally being haunted by a monster. When the monster is caught, the factory's owner thanks the gang with a lifetime supply of Scooby Snax. Predictably, Scooby and Shaggy have it eaten in no time flat.
Real Life
- Some lotteries took to giving winners lifelong payouts.
- In Ancient Greece, Olympic Games winners often received lifelong payouts and benefits from their cities. Athenian winners, for example, were entitled to free meals from the city Prytaneum (civic hearth) for life.
- Until recently, rulers often gave their favourites pensions; sometimes they could even been transmitted to the progeny.
