Toys R Us Canada has FREE Family Events in June. The Toys R Us June Family Events include fun make & Takes, product demos, giveaways and more.

Today, Friday, June 30, 2017 All Day Event (while supplies last): Schools Out! Report Card Event: 

• Bring your little ones and their report cards on Saturday June 30th for the Toys”R”Us graduation stamp
• and receive a FREE Back to Summer $5 Shopping Card!

Visit your local Toys“R”Us store to take part in the exciting promotions and activities your kids will love. All events are offered In-store only. While quantities last. Giveaways and make and takes are limit to one per child. Events recommended for children ages 4 years and up.

Click here to view the Toys R Us flyer.

Click here to get more information on this event.

Cineplex Canada has released their new schedule for July, August & September, 2017. Here’s a list of the upcoming weekly movies line-up at Cineplex Family Favourites for only $2.99:

July 2017:

• Saturday, July 1 2017: Back to the Future
• Saturday, July 8 2017: Ballerina
• Saturday, July 15 2017: The Wild Life
• Saturday, July 22 2017: A Monster Calls
• Saturday, July 29 2017: Monster Trucks

August 2017:

• Saturday, August 5, 2017: Pup Star
• Saturday, August 12, 2017: Lego Batman
• Saturday, August 19, 2017: Pup Star 2 Premiere
• Saturday, August 26, 2017: Pup Star 2 Encore

September 2017:

• Saturday September 2, 2017: Power Rangers
• Saturday September 9, 2017: Smurfs: The Lost Village
• Saturday September 16, 2017: Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul
• Saturday September 23, 2017: The Princess Bride
• Saturday September 30, 2017: Boss Baby

Click here to view a list of participating Cineplex movie theatres locations

For the summer, McDonald’s Canada is bringing out two new items to their menu. One of them will be going onto their all day breakfast menu, while the other is a dessert specialty that would be best enjoyed in the afternoon on a hot summer day.

The first new menu addition is the Egg BLT McMuffin, which will be like the regular egg McMuffin, but this one will include bacon, lettuce, tomato, cheddar cheese and a dollop of mayonnaise-like sauce. This will only be around for a limited time this summer.

The second new menu offering is the Mud Pie McFlurry. The McFlurry will mock the flavour profile of the iconic Mississippi dessert special by using a combination of chocolate cookie crumbles and chocolate chips with a swirl of hot chocolate fudge sauce.

Click here to find the nearest McDonald’s Canada location to you.

Canadian Tire has an awesome promotion to celebrate Canada 150th. Get FREE Canada 150th Limited Edition Canadian Tire Money.

This promotion is valid for 3 Days Only Starting Friday, June 30, 2017 until Sunday, July 2, 2017! Limit one 10¢ Canadian Tire paper bill per customer. While supplies last. No purchase necessary.

Click here to View Canadian Tile flyers.

Amazon Prime Day is coming soon and we have some news on what to expect from the big day.  If you are not an Amazon Prime member, you can sign up for a trial here to take advantage of Amazon Prime Day.  Just remember to cancel it if you will not get $79 worth in benefits you will actually use.  Prime membership includes 2 day shipping on all orders (same day or one day in select cities), Twitch Prime, Amazon Originals, early access to deals, and unlimited photo storage.

Amazon Prime Day will start early giving Prime Members 30 hours of shopping this year.  So log on starting at 9pm on July 10th to see all of the deals. New deals will start every 5 minutes and many are in limited quantities.  Deals on Prime Day move fast and not all are actually great deals, so do your homework on prices you are willing to pay.

They are changing things up a little this year after some changes to Prime benefits.  Twitch members will get some added bonuses and rather than thousands of electronics deals all over the front page all day, they recommend setting up wishlists in the Amazon Shopping App to get alerts on your chosen Prime Deals.  Prime members who sign in to the Amazon Shopping App for the first time on Thursday 6th July will receive a $10 off promo code towards a future purchase on Amazon.ca.

The deals are under wraps for now, but they have released a few spoilers

• VIZIO tvs at 30% off regular prices
• Up to 40% off subscribe and save offers in baby, beauty, health and grocery categories
• Buy a Kindle book on Prime Day and get a 40% credit back towards a future Kindle purchase

In previous years, they have had an early morning deal for 40-50% off diapers so worth getting up early and checking if you have babies in the house.

This is perhaps the most out there, if not ridiculous, marketing techniques that retailers have implemented in an attempt to capitalize on Canada’s 150th anniversary. KFC Canada announced that they would be temporarily changing the name of America’s favourite fried chicken supplier to a more Canuck friendly version – K’ehFC (eh, do you see what they did there?) – for the summertime to celebrate their neighbour to the north’s birthday.

“Canada Day is about togetherness — for the country, our communities, and for our friends and family, and bringing people together over a bucket of chicken is what K’ehFC stands for,” said Stephen Scarrow, senior marketing manager for K’ehFC, in a news release.

The new name will be appearing on buckets across the country and, on one lucky store in Saskatoon, they have actually fastened on a brand new sign to reflect the company’s rebranding.

This little gesture has well intentioned thought behind it, but perhaps the masterminds at KFC’s marketing department could’ve consulted some experts before sandwiching the two-letter interjection into their logo. The Toronto Star recently discussed some of the myths and misconceptions surround the use of this specifically Canadian speech pattern and that it’s use may not be as universally Canadian as the world outside Canada perceives.

Nonetheless, it’s a thoughtful gesture from our friends to the south and the buckets I’m sure will provide countless moments of humour and fun on social media (use #KehFC on Twitter and tag a friend for your chance to win a KFC bucket seat!)

Here’s a short explainer video to help you understand how to pronounce the new KehFC brand (*tip, it’s the same as before…)

Click here to find the nearest KFC to you.

The day is finally here! Toronto’s first Cineplex Canada entertainment centre, The Rec Room, has opened at the old Roundhouse Park. The building that the entertainment centre is taking over, previously occupied by Leon’s, provides the centre with 40,000 sq ft of freedom to add games, bars, large plasma screens, patios and even a stage for live entertainment.

While The Rec Room is being advertised as an ‘Eats and Entertainment’ experience, the entertainment – in my opinion – seems to outweigh the eats, but only because there’s just so much to choose from. Whether you’re looking for a futuristic voyage into a VR world, like the Ghostbuster themed quest game called The Void, or are looking for something classic, but nonetheless entertaining, like shuffleboard or ping pong, there’s something for everyone at The Rec Room.

The games will work on a credit based system, where you’ll pay $10 for 40 credits (each game costs about four to six credits, so budget accordingly). Or, if you’d like a bit more freedom and fun for the night, you can purchase an unlimited bracelet (the credits will be loaded onto a wristband that you will then wave in front of the games to activate for play) for four hours, plus 1,500 redemption credits, for just $50.

After playing all those games for a night you’ll most likely have worked up quite an appetite, and the Rec Room does not disappoint in their selection of both big and small bites. There’s two restaurants, Three10 and The Shed, that will be serving up unique dishes as well as old arcade room classics like pretzels, popcorn and fried chicken.

Keep an eye on the entertainment schedule, as the Rec Room is sure to be churning out great live shows throughout the year, especially with The Hall, which is a space at the back of the venue where the stage is perfectly sized to accommodate for small, personal concerts.

Click here to learn more about Toronto’s Rec Room.

Woohoo! The secret is out! To mark Canada 150, Tim Hortons Canada is launching a special edition RRRoll Up the Rim to Win today! There are plenty of prizes to be won. Game ends on July 21 2017 or while contest cup supplies last.

Click here for more information on this Tim Hortons promotion.

When the Tragically Hip farewell tour tickets sold out last summer in record time and were almost instantaneously being resold well beyond their original asking price, the Ontario government took notice. More specifically, they took action after hearing the many complaints from their constituents who have been dealing with this ongoing problem of tickets for sporting and musical events being up-sold for often times more than 50 percent of the original value.

This will hopefully no longer be the case, at least in Ontario, where the government is proposing the Ticket Sales Act. The act is an attempt to curb some if not all of the foul practises involved in the secondary ticket business – an industry that is globally reported to be worth as much as $8 billion US.

The Act will strive to protect the customers from over priced resale tickets, prevent “bots” from buying out all of the tickets ahead of time, and providing more transparency between businesses and customers purchasing tickets on their sites.

In total, it will cover these four areas:

• capping the resale price of tickets at 50 percent above face value
• banning tickets bots and the sale of tickets purchased using a bot
• businesses become more transparent with relevant information (i.e. number of tickets available to the public)
• enforcing new measures to help ticket selling and reselling businesses meet these industry standards

Often when people go to a website to purchase tickets for say a Blue Jays game or a Bruno Mars concert, they are floundered by the fact that in just a matter of minutes the event will become completely sold out. This is in part the result of ticket buying bots, technology that can – with the click of a button – send a script of code that has the ability to purchase up to 15,000 tickets in just two minutes.

But another less talked about reason for these tickets being sold out so fast is that venues selling the tickets actually set aside a large portion on behalf of local businesses, colleagues or the venue’s own promoter. The tickets are then actually sold ahead of time in a much quieter – less advertised – exclusive pre-sale event.

This is another trend that will, hopefully, be quashed as part of the rules for transparency in the Ticket Sales Act will require venues to disclose exactly how many tickets are available at the time of their purchase and what the capacity of the event it also. Ticket resellers will also be required to display how much the ticket’s face value was, where the exact seat location is and the all-in price of the ticket (including taxes, fees, etc.)

Do you think these rules will make a difference in ticket resales in Ontario?

Click here to learn more about the Ticket Sales Act from the Ontario Government.

IKEA Canada has some great sales in each store every Wednesday, also known as Wacky Wednesday! The following list includes the IKEA Canada Wacky Wednesday deals and sales that will be valid on Wednesday June 28, 2017.

Check out the list below before you visit your local IKEA store to take advantage of the savings! If your location has yet to be announced, stay tuned for more details!  It’s a 1-day only sale and limited to the stock available.

IKEA Boucherville:

With this being Canada’s 150th anniversary, you can expect that Canada Day events are going to be stepping it up a level, no matter where you are living. There are usually a host of free activities and events going on in cities across the country on each July 1st, but this year the offerings are much better and are being offered in far more cities. Apart from fireworks, there are a number of free concerts, activity days, discounted tickets to local attractions and even free food in some cases. We’ve taken some of the hassle and work out of it on your end by rounding up some of the more popular free Canada Day events being offered in some of the bigger locations across the country.

PEI, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador

• Starting on the east coast, with PEI, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador, there is of course the Tall Ships, which will be making pit stops across Canadian waters this summer, but a lot of these ships will be stopping in Maritime ports over the Canada Day weekend. Check out your local city here to see when and where the ships will be stopping in.
• PEI has an event offering in almost all of the major cities this weekend. Whether you’re heading to Cavendish Beach for some Canada Day yoga or Charlottetown, there’s something going on all over the island, better known as the birthplace of Confederation
• In Nova Scotia, if you’re in the capital city of Halifax you’ll be able to catch free concerts, grab a bite to eat with the free pancake breakfast, plus catch the Nova Scotia Tattoo Canada Day Parade. In other parts of the province, there are fireworks, parades, folk festivals, bbq’s and much more going on
• New Brunswick has a proud history as being one of the founding four provinces, and with that in mind they have put together a year-long list of activities and events to celebrate the 150 years of Canada. More specifically this weekend though, you can check out the Youth Orchestra, a 150 display in Fredericton and much more!
• Newfoundland and Labrador has free events being offered province wide, but if you happen to find yourself in St. John’s over Canada Day weekend, be sure to check out the Wake Up Event at Signal Hill followed by a free breakfast and concert series, that will be headlining The Sheepdogs

Ontario and Quebec

• Toronto and the GTA alone have enough free events and activities going on this weekend to fill up one entire post, but if there’s one thing you’ll want to check out this weekend if you’re within driving distance on the 401, it’s the free concerts by Canadian gems like the Barenaked Ladies, Ron Sexsmith, Shad and newcomer dvsn.
• Of course the nation’s capital, Ottawa, will have a full weekend lineup of free fun for the entire family, particularly on the look out will be the notable Canadian Citizen Ceremony and the special presentation of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the Governor General of Canada and the Royal Highnesses the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall, who will be celebrating their first Canada Day in Ottawa as part of their Royal Tour of Canada this summer
• Other events to be on the lookout throughout Ontario include Muskoka’s Canada Day boat cruise, Sesquifest in London and much, much more!
• Quebec has great free events in both Montreal and Quebec City this weekend, but for those of you living in other parts of this historically rich province be sure to check out all the free events in your region here to help celebrate the country’s birthday

Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta

• Manitoba is offering residents of Winnipeg the chance to recreate a human Canadian flag at Main and Portage (don’t forget to wear a red t-shirt!), or if you’re more of a history nerd, then you can spend Canada Day at the Royal Canadian Mint
• If you find yourself in Regina over Canada Day weekend in Saskatchewan, then you could catch a free concert of Marianas Trench (plus fireworks, of course) Regina Beach, Denare Beach and Ituna will also be hosting free and fun beach activities all day long!
• Olympic Plaza in Calgary is going to be celebrating Canada Day in style, while those of you looking for a less traditional and more musically inclined way to ring in 150 might want to head over to the free Tegan and Sara concert happening at Riverfront Avenue. Fort McMurray will of course be hosting a big party over two days, while other parts of the province may begin kicking off the party on Saturday!

British Columbia

• Vancouver will be hosting a free concert by Sam Roberts, or, for those of you preferring to chill out than rock out, you can also partake in some free yoga at Mountaintop Plaza
• Victoria will have the Arkells to rival Vancouver’s Sam Roberts show, and will also be offering free square dancing at Gorge Park
• There are plenty more free events and concerts happening around B.C., including a headlining show by Tom Cochrane in Surrey, which you can learn more about here or here

Yukon, Nunavut and NWT

• Iqaluit is hosting a landmark Canada Day celebration, beginning with a Fun Run and ending with a concert featuring the Trade-Offs, while the Yukon will be bringing in their Canadian pride with a concert from July Talk in Whitehorse
• There’s going to be face painting, a bouncy castle and a water slide for the kids at this Canada Day party in Yellowknife, and for the adults there will be concerts and a CIBC Reaffirmation Ceremony

Happy Canada Day partying!

A miniature version of the 1990s Nintendo fan favourite – the Super NES Classic console – is going to be re-released this fall, said Nintendo, and will come with 21 pre-loaded retro games, including the never before released Star Fox 2.

The Super NES console is a follow-up to Nintendo’s relaunching of the NES classic last year, which became so popular that it caught the entertainment system retailer off guard and led to the revamped retro systems being resold on sites like eBay for nearly double the retail value.

This iteration of the Super NES Classic, which is more compact than the 1991 version, will cost customers $99 CAD and will come pre-loaded with 21 retro classics, such as Super Mario Cart, Star Fox, Super Mario World and much, much more.

Gamers young or old, casual or dedicated who have either grown up with this system or aren’t familiar with what continues to be ranked as one of the “greatest video game systems ever made” will be able to purchase the Super NES Classic starting on September 29 and can rest a little easier knowing that Nintendo has assured that they won’t make the same mistake as last year and will supply more units to be shipped out until the end of the 2017 calendar year.

Here is the full line-up of games that will come pre-loaded onto the Super NES Classic console:

• Contra III: The Alien Wars
• Donkey Kong Country
• EarthBound
• Final Fantasy III
• F-Zero
• Kirby Super Star
• Kirby’s Dream Course
• The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
• Mega Man X
• Secret of Mana
• Star Fox
• Star Fox 2
• Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting
• Super Castlevania IV
• Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts
• Super Mario Kart
• Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars
• Super Mario World
• Super Metroid
• Super Punch-Out!!
• Yoshi’s Island

Click here to learn more about the Nintendo Super NES Classic console.

If you were at an LCBO this weekend, you may’ve noticed that things were much busier and over picked for your regular weekend – especially since it wasn’t a long weekend. With lines stretching all the way to the back of the store and even circling back in some of the more crowded cases, patrons of Ontario’s liquor corporation are getting a taste of just how difficult life could become should their main supplier of wine, beer and spirits no longer be accessible, which may be the reality come Monday at 12:01am.

LCBO employees have threatened to begin their strike ahead of a weekend that a lot of Canadians would be sad to be enjoying without a cold beer in hand, which is probably why LCBO’s over this past weekend resembled what grocery store aisles look like ahead of a natural disaster.

The Ontario Public Service Employees Union and the LCBO have said that they will be working around the clock to negotiate with LCBO employees, but details of the bargaining will not be released to the public until Monday as the OPSEU has declared a media blackout.

The 8,000 unionized LCBO employees are asking for job certainty, as 84 percent of the workforce remains employed on a part-time basis and is asking for more security when it comes to gaining full-time status and general scheduling. The union has been without a contract since March 31, 2017.

Some locations have extended their hours so customers can stock-up ahead of this weekend should the strike negotiations not work out in the employees – or Ontarians – favour.

Will you be stocking up for Canada Day weekend before the potential strike?

The Home Depot Canada has a new FREE workshops available today! The Home Depot Canada today FREE workshops includes: Do-It-Yourself Workshops – Build a Wood Fence: Install Fence posts, rails and boards. Participants will learn how to build a fence for you home, hot to install and trim posts, and then attach pickets to the rails.

The Home Depot Canada FREE workshops is valid today, Sunday, June 25, 2017 – 01:00 pm to 02:00 pm.

To book your slot at a workshop, contact your local Home Depot location.

Click here to get all Home Depot Canada online offers.

Click here to view The Home Depot flyers

After a period of no redemptions and a limit of $50 per day due to fraudulent activity on cards, Air Miles are making some more changes.  As of tomorrow, you will now be able to redeem $100 per day at all Air Miles Cash retailers with the exception of Shell which is capped at $60.

You will need a physical card to redeem your Air Miles but can continue to use your e-card for earning miles and checking transactions.

The added security on your Air Miles account is still in place, but you still do not need a PIN to redeem.

• Every AIR MILES Cash transaction prompts an email to inform you of the activity and also provides instructions on what to do if you were not the one who used Cash Miles in-store
• You must log in with your PIN to view your balance and not just transactions
• A new easy card lock page that allows you to earn but not redeem can be found at airmiles.ca/cashlock

There are now Load & Go offers available through the Air Miles app rather than requiring a separate app too, with more than just Rexall available.