You have to send off a handwritten letter with a SASE, actually: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/16/mcdonalds-monopoly-...

So for the cost of two stamps, you could buy a Hashbrown and give the food to a hobo.

Nope you have to send a self addressed stamped envelope to get one. You can't just stroll by a McDonalds for them.

Source: My siblings and I sent in about 60 self addressed stamped envelopes between us one year a long time ago. We won a lot of Egg McMuffins and not much else.

That sounds like little more than a theoretical loophole. Almost no one will pay the time and fuel cost to go to a McDonald's if they aren't going to eat anything, and McDonald's knows this.

Assuming they have to walk anywhere. People have tried rigging games like this by sending thousands of letters to the address to request entry.

Trivially, there are tremendous numbers of people who, by dint of their normal day-to-day, need expend no effort to get to McDonalds. Have you other objections that can be addressed?

People are buying the food. The "lottery ticket" you get is just a marketing gimmick, not an actual game of chance in exchange for money.

I'm sure that's technically true, but I don't think all members of staff know all the rules like this. More likely is that they've been taught "customers get a piece when they buy something".

If this is the game I remember the pieces were attached to drink cups and fry containers, so staff wouldn't have to consciously think about handing out pieces at all.

IIRC correctly, McDonalds did have "loose" game pieces that were given out on request. This was the early 90's in SoCal.