Bob Barker retiring

I like the performance art of the Showcase Showdown. They've got some sort of Berthold Brecht/Igor Stravinsky thing going there.

Or not.

 

Ten Chances is tough, but Lucky Sevens is fucking impossible, particularly when car prices went above $10,000

For the uninitiated: In Lucky Sevens, they roll out a car, and you have to guess the last four digits of the price (they give you the first one). You get seven dollars, and for every number you're off, you have to pay a dollar (if you guess 5 when it's 3, you give up two dollars). You have to have a dollar at the end to buy the car.

So you've got to guess four numbers and be off by one or two, tops, on all four. And invariably the price of the car's going to be something like $23,491, but nobody in their right mind ever guesses 1 or 9 on those later numbers, because they could be off by as much as eight, ending the game right there.

Fucking impossible.

 

I really like the older games the best, even though I can't remember the names of all of them. I do recall the Grocery Game with the spinning numbers on the old-fashioned cash register.

Surprised no one has mentioned Hole-in-One....or Two!

 

Forgot the name, but loved the baseball/three strikes game.

 

Pretty sure it was called Three Strikes. Never could figure out why the contestant wouldn't try to sneak a peek at what they were pulling out of the bag -- if it's red, drop it quick!

I liked the Shell Game, the Dice Game and the Clock Game. People would get so screwed up on the Clock Game:

Contestant: "$500"

Bob: "Lower."

Contestant: "uh....$600."

Bob (puzzled): "Lower."

Contestant: "um...$700."

There were times Bob would get so exasperated by these morons that he would actually stop the game to explain the rules once again. Too funny.

I'm trying to remember the name of the game where someone would win prizes and then use one digit from each prize to try to guess the price of a car. Bob would push a button to reveal the car's price, one number at a time. He would always stall before doing the last number, driving the contestant and the audience crazy. What was that game called?

 

Here's another: Spelling bee.

 

Anyone have a youtube link to the 420 guy?

That was priceless.

 

Ah, featuring the delectable Janice manning the keys.

 

Temptation. You get four prizes, and you select one digit out of their retail value to determine the car price. Bob gives you the option of taking all four prizes before he starts revealing car numbers. If I ever got there, I'd take the prizes and run -- the last three digits in a car's price are pure crapshoot.

 

But like James Bond, sometimes at night he hears the screaming of the souls of all the women he failed to protect.