Thursday, 28 May 2009

• The Price is Right: Battle of the Price Games

  If you've ever stayed home sick from school, you've watched the best game show ever: The Price of Right. Now hosted by Drew Carey, Bob Barker charmed us for decades of price-bidding, wheel-spinning and showcase showdowns. The games on this show were usually carefully designed, extremely tacky and full of cheesy music, and always epic. Here are some of my favorites:

  Cliff Hangers

   

  The more off you were in your guessing on prices of hemorrhoid cream, the further this little guy yodeled his way up the mountain. Make too many errors, and uh oh! The mountain climber took a Swiss tumble off the top. But face it, the cheesy carnage was often the best part of this game.

  Dice Game

  

  I don't remember the exact rules of this one. It had something do with guessing a price by guessing each digit to be higher or lower than what you had rolled. But the best part were the gigantic foam dice which rocked everyone's world.

  Hole in One

  

  This game ruled for so many reasons. First, you got to put the standard drugstore items in price order, which means the more correct you were, the closer you could get to the hole. When people would get all the way up there, you were just buzzing with excitement because you KNEW that ball was going in there. Next, Bob would do his practice putt while the contestant held his skinny microphone. He would invariably miss. Sometimes, one of Barker's Bimboes Beauties would also get to putt. Then, if the contestant missed the putt, there was that glorious moment when Bob, the Hero of the Day, would stride over to the cheesy game display and hit the button to reveal that it was Hole in One...or Two! And everyone would scream like they had no idea the second chance was coming. Seriously, Hole in One rocked. I would kill for the chance to play mini-golf for a dinette set.

  Punch-a-Bunch

  

  This one seems kind of obscure, until you see that board, and you remember how desperately you wanted to punch one of those dollar-signs in and take out your little slip of paper. Just think of the craftmanship that had to go into putting that tacky board together! Punch the right ones and you could end up with A! NEW! CAR!

  Plinko

  

  If you doubt the sheer awesomeness of this game; if you have never longed to climb the Plinko staircase with confident assurance; if you have never scoffed at the contestant's chip-positioning strategy and claimed you could do much better; then you would never have what it takes to spin the wheel, let alone get through a Showcase Showdown. Enjoy that parting-gift bag of Werther's Originals.

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