A woman from Rotterdam won the first prize in an 80-year old competition that she had forgotten to enter as a girl.

In 1940 a then 11-year old Tjits Drenth solved a rebus of the Jamin candy chain store, but then the war broke out and she either forgot or ignored the competition.

Earlier this year, when cleaning her place, she discovered the old rebus and decided to send it to Jamin as a historical memento. The company saw a marketing opportunity (or so I assume) and decided to award a prize.

Jamin wasn’t able to find out if the prizes for the competition had ever been awarded, its archive having a big 1938-1950-shaped hole in it, so they decided to give the now Mrs. Den Tuinder-Drenth the main prize. An original Erres tube radio KY 188 was found on Marktplaats, an Ebay owned classified advertising site, and fixed up—although it also gained bluetooth in the process somehow.

The competition asked entrants “What does baron Benjamin say?” The first prize was a radio, the second a sewing machine, the third a vacuum cleaner and the fourth a bicycle—all from Erres, a company from The Hague later bought by Philips.

Mrs. Den Tuinder – Drenth was glad she won first prize, which she received on 3 March from Jamin CEO Maarten Steinkamp. She told AD.nl: “I do not know how to sew, so the sewing machine would have been of no use to me. I am very happy with the radio, however, because I listen to the radio a lot.” Her favourite channels are NPO1 and NPO5.

(Illustrations: AD.nl)