Ransom Riggs
A Globe-Trotting Whiskey Mystery
by Ransom Riggs - May 14, 2010 - 12:06 PM

So this is fun: between 1967 and 1991, one of Canadian Club whiskey’s marketing campaigns was a treasure hunt. They hid 25 cases of whiskey in spots around the world, like a jungle in Africa, a hole in Death Valley, a slope of Mt. Kilimanjaro, and so on. Ultimately sixteen cases were found — one by scuba divers off the Great Barrier Reef! — but to this day there are still nine remaining, somewhere in the world. Here’s one of the original ads:

So on Monday Canadian Club is rebooting the hunt, and in case finding a decades-old case of whiskey isn’t enough to get you moving, they’re throwing in $100k prize to boot. Here’s how it works:

• For six weeks, Canadian Club will release clues and trivia questions to the public

• Top scorers will advance to Round 2 where they will be asked to submit a video of why they should be chosen for this adventure

• The public will vote for who they think should be selected to go on the trip

• An 8-person team will head out on the international adventure, where they will compete for a chance to hunt down the case and win $100,000

Trivia, mysteries, whiskey, world travel … uh, where do I sign up? (Oh yeah: here.) Seriously, though, I think it would be really fun if there were some mental_floss readers on that globe-trotting team of eight. I’m confident you guys can handle the trivia part … so who wants to play? (Note: people who live in California, like me, cannot participate. I guess we’ve got some law against winning alcohol?)

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Comments (5)
  1. This is SO COOL!

  2. WHAT!? NO CALIFORNIAN’S!?

    I was waaaay into it up until that last part. Such a tease. I guess I should drown my sorrows in whiskey that I found in a bar. Not as fun of a competition, but a lot easier.

  3. How do you forbid a Californian from finding it with the same clues as anyone else?

  4. I WILL BE IN!

  5. If there are nine cases left will they be only giving clues for one location?

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