[Omar1510]

When I first read the blog entry my mind immediately ran to sustainability and recycling. I saw it as:
Coke ----> Aluminum Cans
Crackerjack boxes -----> Cardboard/paper
Haggen Daz ice cream ----> plastic containers
I am speculating that the ice cream containers are made of plastic or have a plastic coating. And I guess that is my homework to confirm this weekend.
And about the part from tacos that could mean food waste as in compost.

So what does it mean for game design?
It is definitely a sorting game on three levels or types of game pieces with three different storage containers for depositing the respective game pieces. There will also be a bonus "WASTE" category that needs to be stored in it's own location or on the robot.

How does it fit with the FIRST message?
FIRST is all about training future scientists and engineers to solve the world's problems and sustainability is one of those leading options.

As a side note I initially thought that instead of hagen daz ice cream they were referring to 7eleven or DariyQueen frosty cups that are definitely plastics.

Finally my 2 cents on rumors. Last years fish picture blatantly showed the relation between it and that years game on one level of uncertainty (i will explain) by saying that the game was to mimic conditions on the moon and the fish was referred to as "moon fish" or "lunar fish". By this I mean that we absolutely knew that it was a picture of a fish, and we needed one level of derivation to find the name of the fish and thus the answer to the hint (we didn't know that it was the answer but we knew the information). We didn't for example go find the name of the book or page number that the picture was taken from and used that information to learn about the game.
So for this year's hint it is my opinion to pay more attention to the direct information we learn from the hint.