Your Chance to WIN a Sinclair ZX81 Computer (in 1983)

Last week sometime, a fox dug a hole in our garden. In the process it unearthed an empty bag of popcorn. The "best before" date was from 1983, the year the house was built, so I can only assume it was dropped by one of the builders. I'm honestly astounded at how well the packet has survived being buried in the dirt for forty years. I know plastic takes a long time to break down, but the fact that the colours and the writing don't seem to have faded since the day it came out of the factory is shocking.

While it's interesting seeing this piece of history turn up, even better than that; at the time Butterkist were running a contest to give away a bunch of Sinclair ZX81s! For 60p worth of tokens and the price of a second class stamp you could put yourself in with the chance of being master over a whopping 3.25MHz processor and 1KB of memory 💪

As well as collecting 5 tokens from packets of popcorn, you had to answer two questions printed on the rear;

1. Give a ten-letter word using some of the top line of letters on a Sinclair keyboard or typewriter.
2. If it takes 5 boys 5 minutes to eat 5 bags of Butterkist how long does it take 1 boy to eat 1 bag of Butterkist?

Unfortunately, entries closed on 25th July 1983 (before I was even born) otherwise you can be sure I'd be digging more holes in the garden to see if I could find 4 more vouchers!

The packet has since been framed, and now hangs on our wall. Some buildings have a foundation stone to commemorate their construction. We have an empty packet of popcorn, idly discarded by one of the builders.