Happy Birthday!
Astérix turns 50 this year, as does Fererro, at least in France. The two culture industries for youths have teamed up to provide Kinder Surprises with little figurines from the Astérix series in them (among other prizes, of course).
The above was a death sentence for any sort of plans about avoiding chocolate I may have had upon arrival in Paris (I didn’t make such plans, luckily). Kinder Surprises I’ve loved for years, ever since I bought my first one in Canada and flipped out over how many languages the warning was translated into. The eggs–milk chocolate on the outside, white chocolate on the inside–are simple enough and just enough chocolate to satisfy. But the food, as in Topps cards, is secondary to the loot. The loot comes in a perfect little yellow container, small enough to hold a precounted sum of change (what the six or so on my desk are doing) or something else you want sealed decently and discreetly. Inside the container will be an assembly-required (usually) toy with instructions and the warnings. The egg I bought this evening has its warning in 39 different languages, including Armenian and Georgian.
And Astérix is Astérix: the hero of witty, longer comic stories I have adored since grade school.
Now, however, I ran into a problem. The other toys available are rather pedestrian–including a series of plastic animal detectives holding huge magnifying glasses (that work) that you can use to investigate little detailed cartoons folded into the egg. Cute enough, but I want all eight Astérix figurines!1 And at 1.30 € – 1.50 € an egg at the bakery, maximizing the number of figurines is a serious concern.
So, how common is an Astérix figurine? Buying at the bakery, my purchases have been:
0 0 1 1 0 1 1 1
Not too shabby! I imagine settling on a p here of about .5, meaning that every figurine would cost about 3 €. This works out nicely, since I can buy an egg on the walk to work and one on the way home (these eggs are eating up what would by budget for taking the métro), and I can count on getting a figurine every day!
But then I saw boxes of eggs for sale at Carrefour for only 2.35 €! Three eggs! Using the same probability, I could get three figurines for only 4.75 €! I noticed, however, that the box said that only one in three eggs would yield a winner. Massive disappointment set in. My odds are stronger from keeping up my buying ways at the bakery, I reasoned. Jerks.
There’s one thing I overlooked, though, in my dilettantish ways: the probability (1 in 3) listed on the box does not mean that p is actually down to .33. After all, the figurines are not randomly distributed among the boxes! I should not consider the probability on a per-egg basis, but, rather, on a per-box basis. Now p is 1. There are no better odds! For every 2.35 € I spend, I am guaranteed to get one figurine, in comparison to the speculative 3 € per figurine, which is still only the independent expected value–not a guarantee.
So the smart move is to keep buying boxes from Carrefour. However, I also want to see the sample size grow from the bakery, so I’ll keep doing that, too. Once I have all eight collected, then I’ll stop and review!
- They are: Astérix with a giftbox, Obélix with a wrapped menhir, Rahàzade with a magic carpet, Cléopâtre with an Egyptian urn, Jules César with a golden statue, Barbe-Rouge with a treasure chest, Soupalognon y Crouton with an amphora of wine, and Gueuselambix with a keg of beer. [↩]
Tags: Asterix, kinder surprise, statistics
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