Egg on my face, it must have been 2007. I tried searching their Youtube account and it's not there. We put up a little poster in our shop to commemorate the occasion.
We should be getting the new games anytime now, either today or tomorrow would be my best guess. Depends on whenever the UPS guy decides to show up and deliver it.
As for mistakenly throwing away winning tickets. I always tell my players to check their tickets before tossing them. Even if you think it's a non-winner. I can't tell you how often I've seen tickets redeemed that someone picked up off a table or trash can. The highest value I've seen redeemed in this fashion was a $500 winner.
Another suggestion is never tell the retailer how much you've won unless you've previously verified it on a terminal. If it's a place you trust then this isn't an issue. This is also a suggestion I tell to my newer players. Sadly, there are a lot of dishonest retailers out there who will cash your ticket and will only give you the amount you stated.
In the next 4-6 months you'll hopefully see more of those little ticket checking thingies out. Currently, each one is hard wired to a terminal, so if a store has one lottery terminal, they only have one ticket checking thingie. They're currently testing a wifi enabled one at my shop, and from what the GTECH guys tell me, it's the only one in California so far so they're checking it for software issues and making sure it's ready for primetime before putting them in more retailers.
I have my own personal thoughts on odds and how to best play the Scratcher games. It's a bit long winded so if anyone is interested in hearing it I'll type it all out.