starting in 1902, the company's oatmeal boxes came with a coupon redeemable for the legal deed to a tiny lot in milford, connecticut. the lots, sometimes as small as 10 feet by 10 feet, were carved out of a 15-acre, never-built subdivision called "liberty park". a small number of children (or their parents), often residents living near milford, redeemed their coupons for the free deeds and started paying the extremely small property taxes on the "oatmeal lots". the developer of the prospective subdivision hoped the landowners would hire him to build homes on the lots, although several tracts would need to be combined before building could start. the legal deeds created a large amount of paperwork for town tax collectors, who frequently couldn't find the property owners and received almost no tax revenue from them. in the mid-1970s, the town put an end to the oatmeal lots with a "general foreclosure" condemning nearly all of the property, which is now part of a bic corporation plant.