One time there was a cute little blonde-haired gal wearing a reaalllly short mini-skirt. Barker made comments about it all during the show.
Since it was obvious she wasn’t going to get off Contestants Row, Barker invited her up onstage–so that everyone could enjoy the short skirt–to make her final bid on the final item. (No, she didn’t win.)
This is one of those thinks I “think” I saw. A contestant’s name was called, and she goes racing to Contestants Row–cigarette in hand! Maybe it was something else, but that’s sure as heck what it looked like. It did disappear shortly thereafter, though.
Another time, a showcase contestant bid $100,000 for something that could not have been more than $25,000. Barker asked her if that was really what she meant. She said, “Yes!.” Of course, she didn’t win, either.
Barker related a story once about a woman’s name being announced–and a man jumps up and runs out of the audience. Turns out the next contestant was his wife who had had to step out to the ladies room.
Here’s a Barker story, but not TPIR: When he was hosting the “Miss Universe” pageant some time in the 70s, for the first time Zaire had a contestant. However, they weren’t pronouncing it as “Zah-eer,” (two syllables), but “Zair” (rhyming with fair).
This contestant also didn’t speak a word of English, and Barker said to the audience that if she had, he would have asked her how far it was “from here to Zaire.”
I once saw a stoner-frat guy (wearing either a college or a Greek letters sweatshirt) get called up, and for his bid said, “Uh, four-twenty, Bob”. He then turned around smirked at his buddies like Butt-Head saying “Hehe, he said BUTT” or something like that. Ahahahaha! Wow, you’re SO CLEVER dude, haha, 4:20!
BTW, anyone notice how similar the Price is Right and Grand Theft Auto III fonts are?
I once saw a stoner-frat guy (wearing either a college or a Greek letters sweatshirt) get called up, and for his bid said, “Uh, four-twenty, Bob”. He then turned around smirked at his buddies like Butt-Head saying “Hehe, he said BUTT” or something like that. Ahahahaha! Wow, you’re SO CLEVER dude, haha, 4:20!
BTW, anyone notice how similar the Price is Right and Grand Theft Auto III fonts are?
I saw one episode recently where all 3 contestants at the halftime point spun the big wheel and ended up with $1.00. Then 2 of them on the bonus spin got it in the green.
And ElwoodCuse, I also saw the stoner guy bidding 420.
I’ve seen where a name was called to ‘come on down’ and two people got up. One of them had a similiar name to the one called and had misheard it as his own. The other person was the one who’s name had actually been called.
And the other day I saw a contestant underbid by $10,000 on the final showcase. But he won when the other contestant overbid by less than $200. I felt bad for the guy who overbid, seeing as if he had underbid by as much he would have won both showcases and the other contestant had underbid by such a large amount. He was so close but got nothing. That sucks.
This is but a mere sample of the mostly useless memories taking up valuable space in my head: at some point during my childhood, I distincly remember seeing the one where Bob decided that the Hole-in-One game would from that point forward be the Hole-in-One-(or Two) game…
I also remember seeing one where Rod called out a name and a bunch of college guys jumped up dancing. The camera went right to them, then corrected itself when the right person stood up on the other end of the room.
I saw a Showcase once that included 2 Lincoln Town Cars (and this wasn’t one of those prime-time specials either). I think the lady ended up winning it. That was the largest Showcase I’d ever seen (until they started running prime-time specials recently, in which they practically give away Fort Knox.)
I remember the day when Bob stopped dying his hair and showed up au natural. It must have been the first show back from a hiatus because the whole show centered on Bob’s now chalk white hair. The image I clearly remember was one of the girls using a piece of chalk to color Bob’s hair correctly on an old set piece that had his picture on it.
I also have fond mammories… er, memories of all those swinging/bouncing boobs coming down the aisle.
There have been some really stupid contestants on TPiR. Here’s one that I will never forget. Towards the end of the 1996 season there was a contestant who first bid two thousand (yes, two thousand) dollars on a toy guitar, the first of the three prizes. Bob was doing as much as he could to make the contestant realize that his bid was waaaayyyy off without actually outright suggesting that he come down on his price. The contestant then lowered his bid to $850. At this point Bob just resigned and accepted this as the contestant’s answer. Bob then mocked the contestant’s stupidity, making comments to the effect of “let’s just get this thing over with” while listening to the yodeling music and watching and waiting for the inevitable and highly predictable plummeting of Hans (supposedly the name of the mountain climber). The guitar, by the way, was only $23 and they never even got to the last two prizes because of this incident.
I saw this as well, it may have been a different incident because as I recall it the two winners were brother and sister, twins in fact, Olympic hopefuls/athletes (which dates this memory to 1975 or 1976), wearing matching white (w/ red & blue stripes) training suits (long sleeves/pants, parachute-like material).
I don’t recall whether they were in the same “half” or whether they then competed in the showcase. Ring a bell?
The largest Showcase I’ve seen was the 25th Anniversary Special which featured a Corvette. This is also the only time I remember seeing the winning contestant close enought to win both Showcases; I think she set a record for the most winnings.
I remember a guy won the showcase, it featured living and bedroom furniture. The other showcase had a Jeep and some camping equipment. Bob announced the guy as the winner and he just stood there looking disgusted. Bob asked the guy if something was wrong and he said he would rather have the Jeep and that his wife will want the furniture and he will have to pay taxes on it. The kicker was the guy had first choice and passed over the Jeep.
I attended a Truth or Consquences show in the early 70’s. The show was traveling on the road and a couple of shows were done in a theatre in Tacoma. A couple of folks were selected from the audience to do a water taste test. 2 tables, each with 4 cups of water number 1 through 4 were brought out. Each contestant took turns tasting the water and giving their opinion of the water. To let the audience know what was happening, cue cards were shown where the audience could see them but the contestants could not. Contestant 1 was a younger guy. Contestant 2 was an older woman. The cups numbered 1 contained plain water. C #1 took a sip and said the water tastes okay. C #2 downed the whole cup and also said it was okay. Cup #2 contained salt water. C 1 sipped, and said he could taste salt. C 2 drank the whole thing then spit it out. She said it tasted terrible. C 1 sipped from cup 3 which had water with lemon extract. He liked it. C 2 took a big swig and spit it back in the cup, told Bob this was not funny and through the cup of water at him. A couple of stage hands came out and escorted the lady off the stage. While order was being restored, C 1 smelled the water in cup 4. Bob asked him if he was ready to continue and he said no, the water in cup 4 had onions in it. He was right, the cue card said it contained onion oil. Bob gave the guy $100 and said he was keeping the other $100 bill to get his suit cleaned.
I remember a woman saying excitedly, “Ooh, my little girl loves this game!” So did I, incidentally. I seem to remember that hardly anyone ever won that game, so you almost always got to hear Hans shriek like he was being catapulted across the Bridge of Death, followed by a CRASH!!. But this woman did win, and afterwards, she asked, “Can you make him fall off the mountain anyway, so my little girl can see it?”
CRASH!!
And there was some kind of supermarket game, where you had to guess the prices of Rice-a-Roni, Listerine and what-not. Very enfeebled elderly man (don’t know why they even called him up) croaked out, “Do you get to keep the products?”