It’s not often talked about, but here in New Zealand, all across the country, grown-ups have blue sticker fever. Since February, one of the supermarket chain giants, Countdown, has customers collecting blue stickers in the hopes to earn one of six knives and a knife block/chopping board.
We achieve an unreasonable level of joy out of peeling each tiny sticker off and adding it to the chart on our fridge. It invokes the feeling of gold star sticker charts we get as children to award good behaviour. The thrill of being one step closer to a “free gift” is as ridiculous as it is real.
The large Santoku (a large all purpose kitchen knife) I have my eye on is the result of at least $900 spent. It hasn’t changed my spending at all and I think most households can easily spend $900 over 12 weeks. That’s just a spend of $75 a week. Hell, larger families might even be able to save for all 6 knives. To get the full set, you would need to spend an average of $375 per week for 12 weeks.
As the closing date looms, those that are lacking in stickers are frantically begging for others for spare stickers, or jumping ship, cutting their loses and giving saved stickers to friends and family who are closer to the finish line.
My family have been collecting stickers for me and now I’m very well endowed with blue stickers. With only a few weeks to go, I’m going to opt to give my spare stickers away rather than try and scrape together more stickers for a second knife.
So hands up who needs more blue stickers. You’ll have to come and pick them up from my place yourself. First person to turn up for them gets knifed closer to a free knife.
Bunny Eats Design 
What a cool idea! My supermarket just gives me 20 cents for bringing my own bag 🙂
20 cents is great! I always bring my own bag. Mostly because I have a cool bag 🙂
This knife sticker scheme has warped my reasoning. I find myself topping up with chocolate bars from the checkout just to make the next $20. It’s definitely been blogged about though (http://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/blogs/moatas-blog-idle/6618592/Is-this-a-knife-sticker-I-see-before-me) and there are even people selling their stickers on TradeMe! I need about another 4 before the end of the month, but it should be doable, especially if those chocolate bars keep sprining into my basket.
Haha. I hadn’t seen that article before. Moar stickers!!!!1
This is such a retro marketing campaigne, Genie. My parents collected stickers for framed prints from a Gas station, dinner ware from a grocery chain, and the list goes on. Good luck with getting two knives, I hope you have many people giving you their extra stickers.
Yes, that does sound pretty retro when you put it that way. We already have points which we can redeem for vouchers. The knives are on top of those points. $2000 spent gives you a 20 voucher. Not much but it’s something right?
THIS IS AWESOME. I spend about $200.00 a week just at the fruit shop! Australia is expensive. Especially when you like good cheese. And we don’t get any knives for it! Come to think of it, maybe my fruit and veg costs are why Flatpac is so fat….
Wow! That’s a lot of fruit and vege. I don’t buy fruit and vege from the supermarket because it’s too expensive. Green grocers are about half the price. Good cheese is only for special occasions. I pretty much just buy stuff on special. Everything goes on special eventually…
Very true. Our fruit shops are usually the same. . .:(
I googled countdown and it turns out it is just our version of Woolworths. Where are my free knives Woolworths?!
Yep, we used to have Woolworths and Foodtown too. But now they are all combined into Countdowns here. It’s funny because the Countdown logo is actually a W. Which stands for Woolies.