Best game on The Price is Right
When I was young, staying home sick from school meant two things: sipping on ginger ale, and daytime TV. The shows for pre-school children were entertaining, the soap operas novel, but it was gameshows that held the most appeal for me. Programs like Liars Club and Family Feud made for great distractions while stretched out on the couch with a mild fever, but it was The Price is Right that got my sister and I the most excited. It was like a refugee from an earlier TV era, all flashing lightbulbs, vivid 70s colour schemes, beautiful hostesses and a flamboyantly dressed announcer. It was a surreal celebration of consumer culture. It taught me the words "spayed and neutered."
Naturally, I wasn't all that interested in the prices of "stylish luggage" or 2000 Flushes Blue. In fact, because I'm Canadian, the U.S. dollar values of such products are still beyond my comprehension. I was interested in the games.
Many of the games were mind-numbing in their simplicity. It must have been a major letdown for a contestant to be picked to "Come on Down!", avoid being out-bid by a dollar on Contestants' Row, and then discover they're playing a game like Take Two or Swap Meet, two of the dozens of games which essentially required the contestant to guess whether one item was more or less expensive than another, or to find the two products out of three which added up to a certain value. Those games were dull, but they only served to heighten the anticipation.
The Price is Right has a canon of over 70 games. In all truth, only a handful were actually exciting, but even the prospect of seeing them was enough to keep me tuned in. I'd turn up the volume especially loud if I went to the bathroom, out of fear of missing them. For me, they were:
1. Clock Game
This game was exiting for one reason only; suspense. The contestant was given a total of 30 seconds to guess the values of the two items. Through the ingenious use of split-screen technology, it appeared to me in TV-land that the contestant was dwarfed by the immense clockface, its deafening ticking sound matching the accelerating pace of my heart.
Sadly, I could find no images of this game.
2. Punch a Bunch
My little brother's favourite. $10,000 is at stake, and the game is played (like many) in two phases. First, the contestant must demonstrate his or her shopping aisle savy by determining if the prices of four small items is higher or lower than the displayed value. For each correct guess, the contestant receives a single "punch" on the punch board - an impressive grid of paper circles, each guarding a prize worth anywhere from $50 to $10,000. Punching styles varied from contestant to contestant, with old grannies sometimes karate chopping the board, or beefy college students in football sweaters sometimes delicately sliding their hands into the cavity.
3. Cliff Hangers
Commonly called "The Yodel Game". If I were in the bathroom for this one, I'd be downstairs in a seconds, with my pants still around my ankles. It was one of the most rare games of its day, always certain to start a frenzy in the studio audience that almost matched my elation at home. It was a sinister type of joy, laced with cruel hope that the contestant would fail. Failure, of course, resulted in the gruesome death of the mountain climber.
The contestant sees three items. He or she must estimate the price of the first item. The climber is sent one step closer to his death for every dollar that the contestant is away from the actual price. It was always my sinister hope that the contestant would exceed $25 in mistakes, and the happy Swiss alpine adventurer would plummet to the rocks below.
4. Plinko
For many, this seems to be the only Price is Right game that mattered. It was the only game capable of exceeding Cliff Hangers for sheer excitement. Like all Price is Right games, it was deliciously low-fi, simply a slanted peg board and some flat discs. But it had the power to make dreams come true.
One again, the player must guess the prices of four small grocery items. For every correct guess, Bob Barker gave the contestant a Plinko disc. Then he or she climbed the curving stairs, and met their destiny. Many would try to strategize, experimenting with disc placement. Once released, the disc would fall into the game, bounce from peg to peg (making the "plink" sound that gave the game its name), and land in a slot with an assigned value. It was enough to put me into delerious ecstacy.
Also entertaining: Septuagenarian Bob Barker liked to molest his 'beauties'!
I was going to make this a poll, but with seventy games to choose from, I decided to present it like this. Also, I would love to have a sound file of the failure sound the show used. You know, the sad trumpets. Anybody have it?
Naturally, I wasn't all that interested in the prices of "stylish luggage" or 2000 Flushes Blue. In fact, because I'm Canadian, the U.S. dollar values of such products are still beyond my comprehension. I was interested in the games.
Many of the games were mind-numbing in their simplicity. It must have been a major letdown for a contestant to be picked to "Come on Down!", avoid being out-bid by a dollar on Contestants' Row, and then discover they're playing a game like Take Two or Swap Meet, two of the dozens of games which essentially required the contestant to guess whether one item was more or less expensive than another, or to find the two products out of three which added up to a certain value. Those games were dull, but they only served to heighten the anticipation.
The Price is Right has a canon of over 70 games. In all truth, only a handful were actually exciting, but even the prospect of seeing them was enough to keep me tuned in. I'd turn up the volume especially loud if I went to the bathroom, out of fear of missing them. For me, they were:
1. Clock Game
This game was exiting for one reason only; suspense. The contestant was given a total of 30 seconds to guess the values of the two items. Through the ingenious use of split-screen technology, it appeared to me in TV-land that the contestant was dwarfed by the immense clockface, its deafening ticking sound matching the accelerating pace of my heart.
Sadly, I could find no images of this game.
2. Punch a Bunch
My little brother's favourite. $10,000 is at stake, and the game is played (like many) in two phases. First, the contestant must demonstrate his or her shopping aisle savy by determining if the prices of four small items is higher or lower than the displayed value. For each correct guess, the contestant receives a single "punch" on the punch board - an impressive grid of paper circles, each guarding a prize worth anywhere from $50 to $10,000. Punching styles varied from contestant to contestant, with old grannies sometimes karate chopping the board, or beefy college students in football sweaters sometimes delicately sliding their hands into the cavity.
3. Cliff Hangers
Commonly called "The Yodel Game". If I were in the bathroom for this one, I'd be downstairs in a seconds, with my pants still around my ankles. It was one of the most rare games of its day, always certain to start a frenzy in the studio audience that almost matched my elation at home. It was a sinister type of joy, laced with cruel hope that the contestant would fail. Failure, of course, resulted in the gruesome death of the mountain climber.
The contestant sees three items. He or she must estimate the price of the first item. The climber is sent one step closer to his death for every dollar that the contestant is away from the actual price. It was always my sinister hope that the contestant would exceed $25 in mistakes, and the happy Swiss alpine adventurer would plummet to the rocks below.
4. Plinko
For many, this seems to be the only Price is Right game that mattered. It was the only game capable of exceeding Cliff Hangers for sheer excitement. Like all Price is Right games, it was deliciously low-fi, simply a slanted peg board and some flat discs. But it had the power to make dreams come true.
One again, the player must guess the prices of four small grocery items. For every correct guess, Bob Barker gave the contestant a Plinko disc. Then he or she climbed the curving stairs, and met their destiny. Many would try to strategize, experimenting with disc placement. Once released, the disc would fall into the game, bounce from peg to peg (making the "plink" sound that gave the game its name), and land in a slot with an assigned value. It was enough to put me into delerious ecstacy.
Also entertaining: Septuagenarian Bob Barker liked to molest his 'beauties'!
I was going to make this a poll, but with seventy games to choose from, I decided to present it like this. Also, I would love to have a sound file of the failure sound the show used. You know, the sad trumpets. Anybody have it?
posted by *~~_Jenny_~~* @ 9:23 PM
1 comments
