1983 - 1987(?) (Retired)
Phone Home Game may be one of the kookiest (yet quite enjoyable) games ever conceived of on the Price is Right. At the beginning of the game, the on-stage contestant was paired with a home viewer who had sent in a postcard earlier to enter the game. The home viewer communicated "live" with the contestant via a telephone on the Phone Home Game podium. The game consisted of seven grocery items. The home viewer had been given a list of the items and their prices. The home viewer would tell the contestant a price of one of the items and the on-stage contestant had to guess which of the items it belonged to. If the contestant guessed right, a secret cash value attached to the item was won. After a total of three items had been played, Bob revealed the secret cash value attached to any item(s) the on-stage contestant guessed correctly. The potential cash values were $200, $1000, $2000, $3000, and one $10,000 item. The home viewer and the on-stage contestant split whatever cash was earned. A total of $15,000 (or $7,500 each) could be earned.
The home viewer was given the list of both the items and their prices for strategic purposes. The best strategy for the home viewer was to pick "outlier" values, such as 30 cents or $7.00, which would be more obviously associated with items rather than something ambiguous like $1.79. However, should the home viewer accidently read out an item instead of a price, that turn was lost. I'm not sure if that ever actually happened, but Bob did warn against it.
The phone Bob used to talk to the home viewer had an extremely long and flexible cord as to allow Bob mobility to walk around the setup of the game with it.
The podium that housed the seven grocery items was NEVER shown; the producers instead used a chroma key shot that showed each item at a time; the entire podium was never seen.
The home viewer of the day was chosen at random and called before the show by the producers. The producers would explain the rules to the home viewer and then would list the grocery items and their prices.
CBS hyped up Phone Home Game moreso than any other pricing game to promote home viewers to participate. The game premiered on TPiR's 12th season premiere in September, 1983, and prior to that date, the show solicited viewers to send in postcards to play. The response was great. Interestingly enough, every time the Phone Home Game was to be played, Bob would announce it one day before, further saying, "Make sure to watch, because I might just be calling you!" This undoubtedly excited a lot of naive viewers who were not aware that the shows were in truth taped up to three months in advance, and that the episode (and the game) to be played the next day were already on tape.
Not surprisingly, Phone Home Game was never made part of the "Play Along" promotion in which home viewers would win duplicates of the prizes contestants won in randomly chosen pricing games or in the Showcase Showdown. That would have been pretty confusing.
Home players of the Phone Home Game may be the luckiest of all TPiR contestants. Any time a contestant is picked from the TPiR audience (no matter if they get to play a pricing game or not), they immediately become ineligible to participate on the show ever again, even if the show changes networks, gets cancelled and comes back; no matter what. However, Phone Home Game home viewers can collect their money and then are still eligible to be studio contestants should they ever make the trek out to CBS in Hollywood. Pretty interesting.
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| Is that an expensive diploma? No, it's your chance to SHARE up to $15,000 in cash! | Let's see who today's home viewer is. Assuredly someone who doesn't have a job. |
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| Hello, can you put me through to E.T.? | Bob always made the on-stage contestant and the home viewer chit chat. It was always a humorous adventure. |
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| Here's a good shot of the Phone Home Game setup; very sleek and purple. | These peanut butter chips were one of the items that could lead to $10,000 in cash. We never saw the podium it sat on. |
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| The home viewer gave the on-stage contestant a price of 79 cents. The contestant guessed it was the sponges and she was right. | The contestant matched the home viewer on two items. Now the two will share whatever cash awards are tied in with those items. |
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| Wow! Those shrimp had the $10,000! The home viewer and the contestant split $12,000! | Here's an even bigger win from 1985! This pic shows the "shared winnings" display at the bottom of the board. |