Audio By Carbonatix
Smells like… less money to spend at Starbucks.
There’s been griping recently about the coffee from the cashiers at a local quick-stop gas station that I sometimes go to.
No, not about the convenience-store coffee they sell there. The complaints are about Coffee Crossword, the $3 scratch ‘n’ sniff game from the Colorado Lottery, which debuted in June. The problem? The tickets don’t smell.
As a journalist for fourteen years, I decided to verify the cashiers’ account, so I shelled out $3 for a ticket, and they were right. The tickets don’t smell.
Well, let me take that back. They don’t smell like coffee. Cardboard, yes. Coffee, no. (And no, I didn’t win any money.)
So what’s the odor disorder?
Lottery spokeswoman Erika Gonzalez says some batches smell more like coffee than others. “If they have been sitting there for a while, the special ink they use may have rubbed off and they may have lost some smell.”
Gonzalez says she got a whiff of the problem back in June when a couple of people complained, but hasn’t heard anything since. A new, floral-bouquet-scented scratch ‘n’ sniff game will be released in mid-October, she adds, followed by a chocolate one.
“Most people agree that the floral bouquet is the strongest scent of the three,” she adds. — Jonathan Shikes
