Notes on the Mid-80s Bob Barker Era of "The Price Is Right"

We've known about the 24-hour "The Price Is Right Bob Barker Era" channel for a while now, but a recent household change to the DirecTV Stream provider (our roof dish is now just a useless artifact of technologies past) has made it much easier for us to tune in.  It's pretty much what the name implies: an unending string of "The Price Is Right" reruns from the Bob Barker years.  The channel has been playing as background noise around Cheese Fry Headquarters for about three weeks now.  We've slowly progressed from 1982 to 1985, which is right in the heart of the Cheese Fry's formative years where watching Bob Barker meant either: A) you're home sick from school or B) it's summer vacation.  Childhood nostalgia overload, audio-visual comfort food.

Here are a few thoughts about our ongoing experience with "The Price Is Right Bob Barker Era" channel.

* Obviously, there's a very appealing time travel effect at work in watching these episodes.  The crazy fashion; the poofy, teased haircuts; the charmingly low-tech prizes (lots of grandfather clocks and groovy stereo systems) are all from what sometimes seem like a different universe.
* It's always tricky to evaluate legacy media from a contemporary perspective.  Bob has that polished, tanned, Johnny Carson-style charm. He's got a quick wit and a pretty dry sense of humor.  But, as a product of that era (he was born in 1923 and started hosting the show at age 49), he's also... a little sexist and condescending to the women contestants.  Just when we think we're imagining it and being overly sensitive, Bob says something overt and we'll do a "did he just say that?" double-take.  Lots of housewife jokes, lots of "husbands are the boss" jokes.  Sometimes he leers, sometimes he flirts.  This came as a shock to us, spoiling our 1980s innocence.  It also probably runs counter to America's more recent fond memories of Bob as the spry, white-haired elder statesman during the last few years of his run.
* All these youthful contestants jumping and running around in their 20s and 30s?  They're all now senior citizens. 
* Kind of a bummer to consider that the show no longer tapes in the CBS studio in Hollywood.
* Some things never change: the show today still uses a lot of those goofy synth music cues.  And a lot of the games are not only still being played, but look the same.  Like, zero facelifts or redesigns of any kind.
* In elementary school, our crush was redhead "Barker Beauty" Holly Hallstrom.  But now, looking back, there's no question that it's blonde Dian Parkinson who was truly deserving of any and all schoolkid crushes.
* The "Ten Chances" game has always seemed really to hard to play.
* This stretch of episodes includes the rather unexpected death of genius announcer Johnny Olson in late 1985.
* There are almost no cars given away that cost more than four figures.  
* A lot of these prizes remind us of our fashionable aunt and uncle who lived in a swanky part of Houston.  The brass beds, the chrome and steel dinette sets (is "dinette set" even a term any more?), the polished cherry wooden secretaries (remember those?), the mustard yellow garbage disposals, the big color cabinet TVs.  These are the 1980s trappings of the upper middle class.
* The show gave away a surprising amount of mattresses and carpet.  Were those also considered luxurious perks?  Maybe back then there wasn't a mattress store on every corner.
* Apparently, the presence of air conditioning and power locks are distinctive enough to be merit mention in Johnny's "a new car!" script.
* So there's this big green train that the models use pretty regularly to present the items for bid for the folks in contestant's row, slowly rolling out from the wings and onto center stage.  (Trivia: that game the four contestant prospects play has a name: "One Bid.")  There's a green engine that pulls a green platform.  There's fake steam.  It's all steeped in mid-80s cheese.  But the best part is the "waaAAH-waaaahhh!" wolf whistle sound effect.
* We can verify here that Bob does indeed sometimes wear the same suit more than once.  This is a detail that would only become apparent to a screwball like us watching multiple episodes.
* These shows are really, really old, but we still recognize almost all of the pricing game grocery store item brands.  The breath mints, cleaning products, soups, spaghetti sauces, snacks, cold medicines.  These things you can still find on the shelves at your local grocery store.
* In those days, for whatever reason, the contestants definitely skewed to white women.  Also, we're not hardcore obsessive Drew Carey-era fans, so we are speaking with very little authority, but it certainly seems like the Barker shows welcomed a lot of military folks in uniform.
* We're all the way up to 1985 and still we're not seeing any gag T-shirts with funny "pick me!" text and pictures.  When did that become a thing?

Another treat on this 24-hour "The Price Is Right Bob Barker Era" channel is that sometimes they'll show really old episodes from the early 70s when it first went on the air.  Bob looks and sounds really young; the contestants all tend to be sheltered, slightly dim housewives; the color scheme are these horrible yellows, oranges, and browns; and - get this - there is no Big Wheel.  Three people play and the top two stick around for the Showcase.  Heathens.

Come on down to the the rabbit hole!

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"Come on down, you're the next game theorist to play..."

This is the kind of OCD-driven exploration of meaningless pop culture that the Cheese Fry can get behind.  Ben Blatt at Slate.com recently created a detailed examination of how to use game theory to better contestant odds on "The Price is Right."

If you're a fan of the show, you simply have to take a look at the level of detail Blatt put into this thing.  He's not only offering broad strategies for the Big Wheel, Contestant's Row, and the Showcase Showdown, he is breaking down the rules and odds and theories for every single pricing game.  It is mind-boggling.

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Studio audience breakdown on "The Price Is Right"

86% tourists from out of town

79% will watch the whole show on the TV monitors rather than looking at the stage

77% self-proclaimed die-hard TPIR fans

73% will need the audience's advice to make every decision on stage

68% spunky and spry retirees

60% from the Midwest

55% overweight

42% will scream louder than they did at the Duran Duran concert they saw when they were 13

37% groups in matching T-shirts with cute phrases ironed on the front

34% college students

22% will hug Drew Carey a little too hard

21% have zero chance of ever making the right bid to get out of Contestants' Row

20% active military in dress uniform

19% friends/spouses of self-proclaimed die-hard TPIR fans dragged along

14% locals taking the day off

13% couples in matching T-shirts with cute phrases ironed on the front

11% RV drivers

7% newlyweds

6% too frail/small to spin the Big Wheel

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"And the actual retail price is..."

The Cheese Fry remembers well as a boy watching one contestant rake in hundreds of thousands of dollars from CBS' weekday game show "Press Your Luck." (We miss you, Peter Tomarken.) The guy's incredible, unending, no-Whammy spins chewed up so much time that CBS had to stop the show and pick it up again the next day. Our elementary-school mind was effectively blown. Only later, thanks to the hard-hitting journalism of 1980s TV Guide, did we learn that the contestant had found a mechanical glitch in the "Press Your Luck" big board that allowed him to avoid the Whammy.

Esquire last month exceeded TV Guide by exploring in detail how one contestant gamed the mother lode of game shows - "The Price is Right" - and became that very rare species: the Double-Showcase Winner. We'd heard something about this when it happened, but we didn't understand the drama involved behind the scenes. The producers were sure the contestant had somehow cheated when in fact he'd done something perhaps far more pathetic: he'd learned the prices of every prize put up for bid.

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Knee-jerk review: Drew Carey on "The Price Is Right"

1. The good news is that while the set's got an upgrade (don't worry, it's still ridiculously garish), the overall feel of the show remains exactly the same as the Barker era. That includes the iconic handheld wand microphone.
2. Drew Carey is certainly having a good time, it seems, especially the way he's willing to share a laugh with the contestant...
3. ...but he also seems a little nervous. Fidgety. He keeps dipping one hand into his coat pocket where he keeps the "actual retail price" for the contestants' row bids.
4. He certainly lacks the effortlessly smooth polish of Bob Barker. Doing several thousand shows can probably takes some of the edges off.
5. Carey also misses a chance to pay respect to Barker. Introducing a game called Barker's Bargain Barn, Carey tries to make a joke and say it's named after the founder of the show Ezekial Barker. It's almost like Roger Moore giving Sean Connery the finger. A weird moment.
6. CBS hired Carey to pursue a younger audience. We'll have to wait and see if it works.

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"Come on down, you're the next contestant on The Price is Right!"

“Here it comes... television’s most exciting hour of fantastic prizes. The fabulous 60-minute Price is Right!”

One of the Cheese Fry’s old college professor’s once remarked that The Price is Right is a corrosive influence on society because the only way to win the game is to prove that you’re a skilled and experienced consumer. If looked at in a certain Marxist light, it’s indeed a show that rewards materialism over intellect. He’s got a point.

But one cannot deny the addictive nature of this show or the sly way its perennial broadcast (it’s been running CBS weekday mornings with Bob Barker as host since 1972) has seeped into our collective pop culture consciousness. Just about every Generation Xer has a fond childhood memory of this show, whether it’s the Big Wheel or Bob’s relic of a microphone or that cheesy theme song.

For a young Cheese Fry sitting Indian-style on green and orange pile carpeting just two feet from the TV screen, it seemed like the coolest job in the world would be design and build the game sets used on The Price is Right. Of particular interest were any games with A) a moving part (e.g. the big dials on Safe Crackers), B) an oversized prop (the slot machine-looking thing with the handle on the Race Game), C) some kind of unusual interactivity element (filling out the giant check in the Check Game), D) a weird sound effect (the trill of Penny Ante), or E) all of the above.

Top Ten Classic “Price is Right” Games

10 (tie) Ten Chances, Three Strikes, and Secret X – We’ll begin with three games from the TPIR canon that always seemed a little unfair.

With Ten Chances, you have ten chances at unscrambling some numbers to correctly name the price of three prizes. Coming up with prices like this out of thin air is just about impossible. Here we get the Moving Part (the blue Ten Chances pad slides down the chances) and the Interactivity Element (using a fat marker to write on the pad). How about that groovy white lattice?

Three Strikes is even more unfair. With Ten Chances if you know what you’re doing, you can maybe win. With Three Strikes, you’re totally at the mercy of fate. If you draw three strikes out of the bag, you’re done, whether you know the price of the car or not. But you have to love that omnipresent curly-cue "$" logo.

Secret X is the same deal: you could play it perfectly and still lose. You have to match up the Xs like tic-tac-toe. But because there’s no way to win three Xs it’s impossible to guarantee a victory. This one provides nerd youngsters with the Moving Part (that big middle section of the board flips over to reveal the eponymous Secret X) and the Oversized Prop (those big cardboard Xs).

7 Hole in One – As always, below you can see that Barker’s got the contestant holding his ridiculous microphone for him as he takes his traditional “inspiration putt.” Points will have to be deducted, however, for the game’s recent incarnation as “Hole in One... or Two” which gives the contestant a second chance to sink the putt.

6 Dice Game – The giant red foam dice used in this game are perhaps the king of Oversized Props. Not only did the contestant roll the dice, but then they became part of the game board to help figure out the price of the car. (The runner-up in the Oversized Prop division would probably have to be the Shell Game, with its big fake shiny walnut shells.

5 Range Game – Here again we have a Moving Part (that range finder slides up the scale with its cool little red plastic range window) and Interactivity Element (choose carefully when to slam the red button and stop the range finger). For a first grader in 1978, this game was incredibly bad ass.

4 (tie) Pathfinder and Plinko – Two newer games don’t go back as far as others on this list, but they certainly deserve mention. With Pathfinder you get that WEE-AWW Weird Sound Effect if you step on the wrong number.

And Plinko, supposedly the show’s most popular game, is the show’s best example of an Interactivity Element. It’s all luck, but the contestant’s prize money is left solely in their hands. Bonus points for the way that Plinko used to be introduced: the camera would cut to one of those horrid rotating carpeted studio walls that would flip to reveal not an actual game, but simply the Plinko logo.

2 Clock Game – Perhaps the most classic of all the games and probably the oldest one on this list. Simple it its design but difficult to master. At some point, Barker gives up with this “higher” or “lower” clue and just lets the contestant speed talk (“445, 46, 47, 48, 49...”).

1 Cliffhangers – The obvious choice for obvious reasons. Everyone loves the little yodeler.

The screen captures below and additional useless TPIR trivia (i.e. the origin of the Cliffhangers yodel) can be found at Game Show Central.

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