Players and sellers of state lottery tickets in Chicago and across the United States may be cringing or chuckling at a near faux pas in the state of Maine. On March 18, perhaps just in the nick of time, the Maine State Lottery pulled plans to dub instant tickets there as Kwikies.
The name, likely intended to be catchy, proved outright provocative.
Apparently, certain folks in the Pine Tree State grew a bit hot and bothered over the proposed Kwikie name. Ever since Maine’s lottery shipped pamphlets earlier this year to approximately 1,300 Maine retailers, the banter has persisted.
A Kwikie sounds very much like a slang term pertaining to a brief sexual encounter.
Don’t look for Kwikies in Maine.
The Kwikie name has been dropped, according to Gerry Reid, director of Bureau of Alcoholic Beverages and Lottery Operations, in a March 18 statement.
The Maine State Lottery is sensitive to the concerns of retailers and consumers alike. We recently tested a new brand name for our instant ticket games, and the initial response was encouraging. But after a larger sampling of retailers and consumers, the negative concerns were clear. As a result, the Lottery has decided to abandon further pursuit of the Kwikies name.
Kwikies [sic] was never officially implemented by the Maine State Lottery, and its assessment could have been handled better and faster. On behalf of the Lottery, I regret any inconvenience or confusion this may have created.
On the Maine Lottery’s official Facebook page, this no-nonsense statement appeared March 18: “The Lottery has decided to abandon further pursuit of the Kwikies brand name.”
Lottery players and ticket vendors in Illinois and other locales can only hope contest boards don’t pick up the errant ticket concept. Sure, players want to get lucky, when it comes to buying lottery tickets. But the inherent gag, found in the Kwikie name, is clearly not funny to many.
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