Nothing against "Barbara", the guest hostess on the '70s Let's Make a Deal episodes, but she's awful. She has this ridiculous pose that looks so awkward, and half the time she's not standing in front of the right curtain.

Wasn't Susan Stafford available?

 

posted by Brad @ 11:53 PM   0 comment(s)

While we're celebrating classic US Price with the DVD set out this week, how about a look at the first episode of UK TPiR from 1984. It's worth watching just to see the manual labor the models have to perform during Race Game. What kind of union is that?

 

posted by Brad @ 3:17 PM   4 comment(s)

The DVDs are here, and for the most part they rock. Here's my take:

Packaging/Menus: The box packaging itself is great, probably the best of the three sets so far. In addition the liner notes were written by golden-road.net, so they were bound to be good. I found the menus kind of weak to be honest. The big doors were nice but the layout of the episodes on the prize pedestals kinda fell flat in my opinion. Overall: 8/10

Video quality: Doesn't look like any quality lost from the studio masters, and the slates and ticket plugs look mostly intact. Overall: 10/10

Episodes: This is where the set is kind of a mixed bag, but you can't blame BCI for this for the most part. No first episode, thanks to the fur (consarnit). It's a glaring omission but again, BCI did their best to avoid it. Apparently they offered to make a donation to an animal rights charity or show a disclaimer and that wasn't acceptable.

We do get three first week episodes, including Boo Boo's infamous turn at Grocery Game. In addition there's an episode from the test hourlong week that was never on the trading circuit, another plus. For most power traders though, a large percentage of these episodes were already in their hands.

The last 5 Barker episodes tacked on for disc 4 can be viewed in two ways. If it had been planned for the set originally, it would seem odd that the rest of the set so focused on earlier episodes. But since the last 5 Barker shows are considered "bonus" material, it's hard to fault their addition, especially his last show, which is a must have. OVERALL: 7/10

Summary: It's still a must have for any game show collector, and hopefully some passing fans picked it up too. I would have liked to see a larger spread of episodes, especially some later '70s and '80s stuff (not as many furs there anyways). If the set is successful, hopefully that will come to pass.

 

posted by Brad @ 11:06 PM   10 comment(s)

I'm still going through the Price DVDs, but I nearly fell out of my chair during the Lucky Seven playing on the Rainbow Wheel episode. The car was priced $7010!! Who on Earth is going to win that?

 

posted by Brad @ 7:25 PM   4 comment(s)

Speaking of Price, I noticed today's ticket plug actually had a phone number for tickets, something I don't recall ever seeing on the show.

 

posted by Brad @ 11:28 PM   5 comment(s)

March 25th is finally here! How many of you will be at the store tomorrow picking up a copy?

Best Buy has the set for $29.99 and lots of availability in store (well, at least in Southern California). I'll post a full review later tonight.

 

posted by Brad @ 11:26 PM   3 comment(s)

On the heels of yesterday's Clock Game debacle, we had a Plinko game for the ages today. The contestant could not get a grip on how the small prize game worked, consistently thinking the first number shown was the given last number of the prize and vice versa. Then she almost became the first player in an age (if not ever) to earn zero extra Plinko chips. Finally, with a total of two chips, she earned $0.

"Do I get a Plinko chip for being likable?" she asked at one point. No, and no.

 

posted by Brad @ 10:07 PM   7 comment(s)

Sports are fun. Game shows are fun. But for whatever reason, sport game shows usually stink. SNL captures that better than anyone else.

 

posted by Brad @ 2:00 AM   1 comment(s)

Miss Bobby Tremain (finally) won the Over 80 Tournament on today's Tic Tac Dough rerun. As much as the questions were ridiculously easy and the contestant interviews were way too long, this was a cute tournament. It must have been a hit for them back in '79 because I know there's at least a second one in a later season.

I'm kinda bummed that Bobby's 96 year old opponent couldn't pull off the win, but the visual category of People turned out to be her undoing. Both in terms of two incorrect answers and her inability to see the slide projector from the contestant podium, prompting an admittedly cute need to walk across the stage and look at it up close. But unfortunately she couldn't nail Sgt. Bilko or Danny Thomas (that's Lebanese, Blanche) and that was the end of that.

Of course the tournament ended 15 minutes into the show, prompting a lot of tap dancing by Wink to fill the time, but the two nice ladies helped out as well with their cute rambling.

 

posted by Brad @ 1:39 AM   0 comment(s)

I thought I blogged about this last month but I totally spaced on it. Anyways I was in the audience (third row, maroon long sleeve shirt) of Price as a guest for the episode that aired today. And let me tell you, that $1 bid in the showcase was a total disaster.

First off, the contestant initially bid $1 because the other guy (freaky sign my belly guy) was so obviously over. Well Drew promptly told the contestant "You can't bid $1 in the showcase."

Stopdown.

After a few minutes of conferring with the contestant, the contestant changes his bid to $25,000.

Commercial.

20 minute stopdown. Suits (standards and practices) everywhere, huddling with the producers, audience growing restless.

Finally, Roger addresses the audience, "We're going to allow him to keep his original $1 bid."

ARP of the showcase: Less than $25,000.

And yes, that Clock Game contestant was a mess.

 

posted by Brad @ 4:53 PM   6 comment(s)

Mmm, Popjax. Sounds like something you might munch on at the movies. Instead it's a new internet game show site with some historical chops -- the creator is Jack Barry's son. Read about it at SFGate.com, or go to the site directly and play a game that looks shockingly similar to The Joker's Wild.

 

posted by Brad @ 4:00 PM   0 comment(s)

There's been a lot of discussion on the current "Million Dollar Games" so far on the Price is Right primetime specials, so I'm curious what people thought of Half Off being tonight's Million Dollar Game. I figured before the rules were revealed that it would involve a 14-1 or a 15-1 shot at the million. What I didn't like was that the player had to risk their winnings to go for it. No one is going to do that!

Also, how obvious was it that he'd won the $25,000 when, after he got his chosen box, the doors randomly started closing behind him (most likely to hide the check)? Also, the fact that he couldn't get the box undone and the win bells were going off didn't help either.

 

posted by Brad @ 9:04 PM   18 comment(s)

Please tell me that the bottom three prizes weren't the correct ones in the Credit Card game again? I mean, that's like 10 times in a row. This game is rigged and contestants can't figure it out!

 

posted by Brad @ 11:06 PM   2 comment(s)

For whatever reason I've been totally into Tic Tac Dough since it came back to GSN in reruns. And now we've got the ever-exciting Over 80 Tournament. That's over the age of 80. The first game today actually featured one contestant who was 96 years old. Of course you could never really lose sight of that because Wink didn't hesitate to mention their ages about 15 times.

These episodes border on the bizarre. Some observations:

1) Contestant names include Mr. and Mrs. (or Dr. in one case) on the podium.
2) No score kept during the game.
3) Unique categories like "Senior Achievers" (Although seeing "Where Am I?" and "Ancient History" as categories caused me to chuckle as well).
4) Multiple choice! (And only two choices at that. Sigh.)
5) Desperate avoidance of the center square.
6) Some curious tic tac toe strategy (as in, missing clear blocking opportunities).

Did anyone notice that GSN seems to have skipped the first two days of the tournament? I guess two days when you're dealing with octogenarians really doesn't matter.

 

posted by Brad @ 1:40 AM   5 comment(s)

Rosie O'Donnell won't be winning any award for cinematography any time soon, but we appreciate her behind the scenes Handycam shots of the Million Dollar Password set, shown here on her website blog. Looks like she and Tony Hawk were celebs for a recent episode.

 

posted by Brad @ 12:15 PM   2 comment(s)

It seems like every prize package on Tic Tac Dough has a theme, which isn't a bad idea, except when the theme and the prizes simply don't match. On Friday's episode the theme was "gifts of extravagance", which for some reason consisted of:

1) A *door* (yes, a door, like to the front of your house)
2) A metal detector
3) I forget this one, something equally bad
4) An Apple II computer without monitor (according to Jay, "Just like the computers that run our Tic Tac Dough board!")

 

posted by Brad @ 2:06 PM   2 comment(s)

Wow, it seems like winning $1 Million on the Price is Right is getting easier than the Clock Game. To be fair, Michael was less than $500 away from his showcase bid, which is what I think the limit should be ($1000 just seems to high). So all in all it was a good win for him, and I liked him a lot better than the first $1 Million winner.

By the way, did anyone notice that Drew has a "tell" when he's revealing a $1 Million winner? Both times now before he read the actual price he had a pause and a chuckle. Hope he's not a poker player.

 

posted by Brad @ 2:04 PM   22 comment(s)

Eagle-eyed game show viewers, like myself, have a knack for detecting odd vibes in game show episodes. I got that feeling while watching today's Temptation, and sure enough, it turned out to be the first taped episode from last Summer. The pacing was weird, Rossi was totally uncomfortable, and there was an odd format twist -- a $25 second Fame Game after the 2nd Instant Bargain.

It's interesting that they dumped this second Fame Game and replaced it with...nothing.

 

posted by Brad @ 9:32 PM   4 comment(s)