Have you ever won anything?

You know, not like a 'Certificate Of Participation' at the school sports day, or $3 on a scratchie your drunken uncle gave you as a 21st birthday present, but an actual, honest to goodness prize pack.

The sorts of things that are cycled throughout Video Hits but that never seem to be actually won by anyone in Christendom, stuffed to the gills with CDs, vouchers, miscellaneous hair products and blockmounted posters.

The kinds of smorgasbords of free stuff that you see whispered about in hushed tones (read: yelled about with alarming hysteria) on afternoon shows of yesteryear.

The sorts of drool-inducing prize packs that were offered up weekly by weekend institution Saturday Disney in the Letter of the Week segment.

The prize packs I never, ever won.

Ladies and gentlemen, I will never get over this.

First, a little reminder for those of you who rarely rise on Saturdays before lunch. Saturday Disney has been on tele for nearly as long as I've been watching it; it's a Channel 7 institution and was as much of an essential in my week as it was the bane of my parents' lives.

Dad loathed its bright colours and inane banter (not to mention substandard Disney offerings - remember, this man grew up on Donald Duck) to the point that "Saturday Disney" became a codeword for "crap television" in much the same way that "Burger Rings for breakfast" was our family way of conjuring up utter depravity.

In retrospect, he was probably right:




The show was, in a word, naff. It still is! I stumbled upon it while "lying" (because I can't do sleep-ins) off a big night, and the memories came flooding back.

No memories of that hilarious thing James Sherry did that one time, but searing anger at the fact that I never won the Letter of The Week.

Briefly, let's pause to appreciate this scientific graph from the Saturday Disney Wiki entry:



Right, so, each week they'd do the Letter of The Week segment, and being the '90s - when toys were still amazing, capitalism was awesome, and companies had money to burn - the prize pack would blow my mind.

It would take minutes to explain precisely what the winner would be taking home: entire collections of My Little Ponies. Disney-related Barbie dolls. Enough colouring books to last a lifetime. Snacks. Junkfood. Tickets to places. Lisa Frank Trapper Keepers (okay I made that one up).

Naturally, I was psyched.

Being a talented young artist, I'd send in amazing letters full of drawings of Ariel and her sisters, covered in glitter and stickers, thinking "This is sure to win Letter of The Week!"


(It basically looked like this even though I was only nine years old. I had mad talent.)

Every week, I was disappointed. Every week, they'd give it to something like this:


(This is a picture of Mickey Mouse.)

In short, I learned about Australia's appreciation of mediocrity at a very early age.

So when I happened to watch Saturday Disney last week and also happened to catch the Letter of The Week segment, boiling hot rage began coursing through my veins. I nearly picked up the television and threw it through the wall (note: not the window; I was so angry I could've gotten it through five feet of reinforced steel).

I was amazed to find that this deeply held resentment was still 100% in effect; all I needed was the stimulus of the show's flashy editing in order to bring on the response (i.e. a psychotic episode).

GODDAMNIT I JUST WANTED A FUCKING PRIZE PACK. JUST ONE BARBIE-AS-PRINCESS-JASMINE DOLL. JUST ONE BLOCKMOUNTED THE AIR UP THERE POSTER.

The thing is, I have won things. I won a massive Britpop prize pack on Recovery one week when Dylan decided that Song 2 was a crap title and asked people to come up with a new one.

Mine was Dead Fish (My Problem), which I argued because of a) Graham's having described Damon as "about as sexy as a dead fish" and b) the song lyrics. I found out when my name raced across the bottom of the screen on a ribbon and I nearly had a heart attack.

I won a buttload of Blur CDs, the Blur doco Starshaped, Supergrass' In It For The Money, and a signed Pet Shop Boys Album (the latter a slightly puzzling inclusion, but who cares)!

But even that wasn't enough to placate my seething rage at never having won Letter of The Week.

In fact, this blog entry serves as very little other than a few-hundred words of primal scream therapy (via text medium). If anyone would like to help me out by organising a Disney/toy-related prize-pack and sending it to me c/o The Vine, I would probably save myself from further years of intensive therapy.

If you like, I can draw you some pictures of Ariel and her sisters. I'm pretty damned good at it.