< The Price Is Right

The Price Is Right/YMMV


A list of subjective Tropes for The Price Is Right.

  • Adaptation Displacement: And how; while the original Price lasted for nine seasons, which is an extremely long run for a game show, the current version is in its 40th season. There are at least two generations of viewers who might have never heard of the Cullen era.
    • As noted on-air by Barker, a case of this had actually occured during the 1994-1995 season, with the syndicated The New Price Is Right, hosted by Doug Davidson, confusing viewers into thinking the daytime version ("the *old* Price Is Right") had been canceled or that something similar had happened, much to Bob's chagrin.
  • Base Breaker: Barker's Bargain Bar, depending on who you ask, may be one of the best or one of the weakest games in their lineup. The same can be said about a couple other pricing games.
    • When the game re-appeared on April 2011 as Bargain Game after not being played for almost three and a half years (and thought to be retired), the general reaction for the game's return was rejoice. The new set for the game, on the other hand...
  • Crowning Music of Awesome: After The Match Game Hollywood Squares Hour ended in 1984, its theme song moved over to become a car cue on Price. The cue nearly always introduces a truly awesome car.
  • Dude, Not Funny / Funny Aneurysm Moment: The first time nighttime host Dennis James played Cliff Hangers (1976), he referred to the mountain climber as "Fritz" (possibly not knowing what had happened to Janice Pennington's then-spouse). When the contestant lost, James yelled "There goes Fritz!", which sent Janice running backstage; the poor girl was in tears, and remained in her dressing room for the rest of that taping.
    • Possibly related is the very first time Cliff Hangers was played — right when Barker says the name of the game, Janice can be seen walking behind it.
  • Ear Worm: The "come on down" music, the main theme, the yodeling music played in Cliff Hangers, etc.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: 3 Strikes, Give or Keep, The Phone Home Game, Plinko, Cliff Hangers, and It's in the Bag, among others, remain fan favorites.
  • Fan Disservice: Barker's affair with Dian Parkinson and the resulting scandals.
  • Game Breaker: Several.
    • About 99% of the time, Cliff Hangers can be won with blind guesses of $25, $35, and $45. Unfortunately, almost no one seems to be Genre Savvy enough to try this trick, leading to some rather boneheaded guesses such as $2 on a $15 tote bag, or $2,000 on a toy guitar. One person was savvy enough to try it, and was only $1 away from a perfect game.
    • In Ten Chances, the right answers always end in 0 (unless that isn't one of the choices, in which case the last number is 5). You would only know this from watching frequently, as it is never pointed out on-air.
    • Now....Or Then always has four "Now"s and two "Then"s. It used to be that any product with "new" on the label was a "Now", but sometimes the staff takes a product that didn't exist in the "Then" period and calculates reverse inflation on it.
  • Gannon Banned: "Showcase Showdown" is when they spin the Big Wheel (or, on some of the Davidson version, "The Price Was Right"). The final round, where contestants bid on the big prize packages, is simply referred to as the "Showcase" (or, in recaps, "Showcase Round"). Never get these confused, or Price fans will hate you forever and a day.
    • ...But unfortunately for those fans, this confusion appears to be a very common thing. Reference books, news broadcasts, and even former contestants call the Showcase Round "Showcase Showdown". Drew even made the mistake on March 11, 2011, but quickly corrected himself.
    • Drew clarifies the difference between Showcase and Showcase Showdown on the March 8, 2012 show.
  • Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The show has had a lot of Canadian contestants, to the point where Bob even lampshaded it a few times, including his last episode.
    • Most infamously, Samoans would appear semi-frequently in Bob's early years.
    • In the second half of Season 37, it looked like Australians would appear on Drew's run as frequently as Samoans did on Bob's.
  • Growing the Beard: The show became a much less staid affair around the time that it expanded to a full hour. Not only were there twice as many games, but the Showcases began using many more skits with then-announcer Johnny Olson (quite bizarre skits too, coming from the quirky mind of then-producer Jay Wolpert), and new gameplay elements such as the Big Wheel were added as well.
    • Some fans argue that this has been happening to the show again since Carey took over, but only since April 2009 (when Bob Barker "returned" to the show to hawk a book amid controversy with Betty White) have their opinions been realized.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: Not long after Barker's cameo in the Adam Sandler movie Happy Gilmore, an unrelated Adam Sandler joined the show's staff.
  • Internet Backdraft: Go to any TV-related forum and mention Barker or Carey, then run for the hills and watch the fur fly. Some forums have a hard time with topics on this show in general because of fears it may quickly degenerate into a "Barker/Carey Sucks/Rocks"-fest.
  • It Was His Sled: The full name of one of the games is "Hole in One... Or Two".
  • Memetic Mutation: See the "Memes" page for Game Show.
  • Misblamed: Some people blame the show for its abundance of short lineups in recent years. [1] However, it's CBS that's to blame because of them demanding more commercial time for the show.
  • Most Wonderful Sound: The "$10,000 Big Wheel" klaxon, which is also used when someone hits a really big prize.
  • Nightmare Fuel:
    • Professor Price, played a mere two times in November 1977. To its credit, it was won both times.
    • Shower Game, played ten times in 1978, was ousted primarily because it was boring and anticlimactic. This said, one viewer complained that the game's premise (enter the shower stall you think has the car's right price and pull the chain) was reminiscent of the Jewish Holocaust.
  • Periphery Demographic: College students love Price, mostly because it airs during typical lunch hours. It got to the point at Penn State where a person wrote in to the campus newspaper complaining about Price being the only thing shown in the dining halls, after which hundreds of letters were sent the next day in support of the show.
    • The producers noticed a surge in popularity after Barker appeared in Happy Gilmore as himself in a Pro/AM golf tournament, getting paired up with (and later beating the everloving crap out of) Sandler's titular character.
  • Replacement Scrappy: Drew gets a lot of the flames, but for Price this mainly applies to the announcer searches.
    • Following Johnny Olson's death in 1985, the show rotated announcing duties among Rod Roddy, Gene Wood, Bob Hilton and Rich Jefferies, with Rod ultimately getting the nod despite having done the least work of the group. Not one fan liked Jefferies' flat, nasal voice. And while Gene was generally considered a great announcer, many thought he was too mellow for Price.
    • With Rod's declining health in the early 2000s, he often asked other announcers to fill in for him, most often Burton Richardson or Randy West. Paul Boland (previously of the 1998-99 Match Game) substituted for one week in 2002, but got the boot because he had No Indoor Voice and refused demands to tone it down.
    • After Rod died in late 2003, the show tried out another string of guest announcers [2]. Opinions vary wildly on those other than Randy, and Barker apparently wanted to hire Art immediately, but:
      • There's absolutely no love for Daniel Rosen. On his first episodes, he had the enthusiasm of a sloth on NyQuil and didn't interact with Bob. While he got slightly better, his attempts at "enthusiasm" sounded painfully fake, and he sometimes came across as if he were trying to imitate Rod. Even his audience warm-ups must have been terrible, as the usually raucous audience sounds unnervingly quiet. Rosen was further hated after infecting popular fan forum Golden-Road.net with multiple Sock Puppet accounts who proceeded to banter about how good his announcing was despite both the site's legit members and the show's own staff having no kind words for him. (To his credit, Rosen got a lot better during the live stage shows at Harrah's.)
      • Burton Richardson (who also did the 1994 nighttime version) is quite divisive: most think he's anywhere from good to excellent, but some think he sounds like the public stereotype of a game show announcer.
      • Don Bishop was decent, but lost major points with the fans for never interacting with Bob. Bob tried pretty hard to get Don to interact with him, but even lines such as "Don, I need a winner. Can you get me a winner this time?" only got the standard-script response of "[Name], come on down."
      • Jim Thornton was almost kicked off after his first day (probably because his voice cracked a lot), but he got better...to the point of becoming the fourth permanent announcer on Wheel of Fortune.
    • Then Rich Fields started to become a victim of this: many simply disliked that he got picked over Randy West, in part because of Randy's major connections to the fanbase, and in part because some just didn't like Rich's style (particularly in later episodes). Fremantle Media was reportedly not that fond of Rich in the first place, and it's been said they wanted him gone when Barker left. Rich ended up leaving after Season 38 ended due to matters that were a mess of his own making and were unrelated to Price...although the powers that be then wanted an announcer with experience in improv comedy.
      • And it continued with the post-Rich substitutes in Season 39. Jeff Davis, David H. Lawrence XVII and George Gray were all considered pretty close in quality, although George's first episode was rough and some felt that he was given the nod mainly because he's good friends with EP Mike Richards. Very few were in favor of Brad Sherwood or Steve White for their phony enthusiasm (and in White's case, giving Drew inane titles like "hip-hop sensation"); JD Roberto, on the other hand, was considered So Okay It's Average. There's also some division over the further Ascended Extra nature of the announcer role that's being called for.
  • Retroactive Recognition: Given the show's incredibly long life, several contestants later became notable in their own right. Among them are Vanna White (June 20, 1980) and Linda Cardellini (1993).
  • The Scrappy: Pricing games aren't immune to Scrappydom, either.
    • Add 'em Up, used from September 1986 to October 1988, may go down in history as one of the most hated. The contestant was shown a total (such as 21) that was reached by adding the four numbers in the price of the car [3]. The contestant chose a free number, then had to figure out the other three with one mistake allowed; on the second mistake, the game ended. In addition to requiring more math than usual for Price, contestants tended to lose because there was more than one way to get to the total (i.e., 5+1 or 4+2). Possibly the only good thing to come from the game was the car price display, which was shared by Pathfinder when it debuted in 1987 [4] and remains a separate prop even today (as shown on a 2008 MDS).
    • Pick-A-Number was instantly hated by most fans the day it debuted (the supposed "4,000th Episode", which itself didn't have much to celebrate the occasion other than this game's debut).
    • Any game that can still be lost if the pricing portion is played perfectly. Even Drew didn't like games that did this, so Joker was retired (despite having not been played in over a year) and ½ Off had its rules altered so that getting any pair of items also won $500 (later changed to $1,000 for winning all three pairs).
    • Professor Price stood no chance of succeeding once the audience found out they weren't allowed to help out the contestant...like in every other pricing game.
  • Seasonal Rot:
    • Season 18 (1989-90). Bob being bored (one playing of One Away on Memorial Day 1990 had him handle a wipeout really poorly and dragged the "historic moment" on too long), and the off-stage controversy with Dian around this point that eventually ended in Bob and Dian breaking up. The only good things that happened were the debuts of Make Your Move (Put on a Bus within a few months, then returned in October 1990 with two three-digit prizes for two playings; they changed it back because of the overlapping numbers being too confusing) and 2 for the Price of 1.
    • Season 37 (2008-09), for a variety of reasons:
      • Roger Dobkowitz planned to make up for the lack of new games in Season 36 (itself done so Drew could learn the games that were already in the rotation) by introducing a new game on every day of the season premiere week, a feat not done since the show returned in 1972 and debuted five games in two shows. Thanks to budget issues and Roger's ousting, only one new game debuted (Gas Money, on the season premiere).
      • Several games were put on lengthy hiatus, including Triple Play, four-prize games, Credit Card (the only five-prizer), and Dice Game. Credit Card still hasn't come back.
      • Drew openly expressed his hatred of Three Strikes on its first playing of the season, which caused the game to have a different set of rules each time it was played before being put on hiatus as well.
      • Make Your Mark was retired after Drew screwed up and the staff feared to correct him.
      • Mike Richards became co-head honcho with Syd Vinnedge, who had become Executive Producer at the beginning of Season 36 and was reported to be reading the newspaper during tapings.
      • Showcases became painfully unfunny "Drewcases" — Drew became obsessed with FRIED CHICKEN!, a pie fight broke out for absolutely no reason, a hockey fight broke out for no good reason, and the models realized they could talk. Rich got the absolute worst of it — he became a Jerkass (he had fried chicken all along!), a Butt Monkey (once suspended over a dunk tank), a Professional Butt-Kisser (reading his copy in weird ways), dyslexic ("A new swim bear!"), and the Most Annoying Sound ("Hey, [contestant]! Do you like x?"; a lady on February 16, 2009 actually said no!).
      • Drew's "something is amiss" mannerisms in the wake of Terry Kneiss' perfect bid. While the bid didn't directly cause a plethora of outlandish prizes and not-provided-by-the-manufacturer "designer items" to be added, it certainly made them more plentiful.
      • Jack Wagner and Ed Begley Jr. made infamous appearances; Wagner "flashed" Drew and kept re-appearing to chew the scenery (to the point that one contestant seemed distracted from their game and lost, which may have been the point), while Begley botched two car reveals.
      • The "trip skins" (giant artwork-filled displays that were usually cobbled together from several sources and needed little to no maintenance) were replaced by green-screen displays in the same shape. Contestant responses to seeing a big green wall with a destination name plastered on the corner were generally less than enthusiastic, Door #3 (which is green) couldn't be shown opening due to said green screen, and a particularly awkward playing of Switch? for two trips had them shown on a single display with a divider down the middle. Over the next three months, a few minor alterations were made until they were simply ousted in favor of the current plasma screens (although they returned briefly during the Showcase on May 19 and October 8, 2009 to show a giant treehouse sitting outside Television City).
      • Many of the classic music cues, some retained since 1972, were ousted in favor of "modern" tracks generally considered vastly inferior.
      • ...But to be fair, the season saw the debut of Gas Money (Roger's last game concept), the ousting of director Bart Eskander in favor of Rich DiPirro, the reinstitution of both the Big Wheel split-screen arrow shot and the Giant Price Tag/Door #3 car reveal shot (both originally used by former Price director Marc Breslow). Also, Drew did admit the Drewcases didn't work.
  • So Okay It's Average: Some pricing games fall into this category. Pity the player who's called onstage to play Double Prices (literally the entire game is "Is it $x or $y?").
    • 1 Right Price has this problem too. One price is shown, you guess if the one right price is Prize 1 or Prize 2. Guess right, you win both prizes.
  • Special Effect Failure: The show has always used (and continues to use) "physical" props — displays, lights, cards, tabs, buttons, flaps, labels, etc. — along with electronic displays and old computers (most notably Magic #; yep, that's a computer). Needless to say, given that most of them have been used since the earliest days of the show's run, something is prone to slip up.
    • According to Golden Road.net's FAQ, Magic # can't be played first because its computer requires time to boot up (which would have one wonder why they don't boot it before taping begins). They refuse to update this game, while since March 2009 the show has used presumably 10,000× faster video screens to present trips and have begun to retrofit other games and set elements with such displays as well.
    • The show was very slow to adopt computer graphics so, since everything was being controlled manually, the whole design was quite error-prone. The border full of flashing lights shown in the intro is the most obvious example — from its 1975 debut until it was replaced in 1998 with a CGI border, it was often misaligned.
    • Still not completely averted, even with CGI. Since early 2010, some three-digit bids in Contestant's Row will align to the left. This appears to be caused by those controlling the displays mistakenly putting in a four-digit bid.
    • In the original series, which aired live on the East Coast, the tote readouts would occasionally malfunction; as a result, the models would write the contestants' bids on a sketch pad behind them with frozen bids circled.
    • Not even the Big Wheel is safe from malfunction shenanigans. On April 29, 2011 the 7 on the 75 space snapped in half; Drew put the broken piece back in place, which managed to stick for the next spin.
  • "Stop Having Fun!" Guys: Anyone who bids $1 over the previous person's bid.
    • Subverted when it's the third contestant who thinks they're so smart to bid $1, only to have the fourth player bid $2 to the roars and cheers of the audience.
    • At least Carey and Richards think the fandom is this Trope, and have basically refused to listen to them...although the staff still trolls Golden-Road.net; take that for what you will.
  • That One Level: A few.
    • Bullseye '72 is probably the only universally accepted example of this, being lost every one of the five times it was played; it was later jury-rigged to become the two-contestant Double Bullseye that forced a win, but that just didn't work either so they canned it. Some more subjective examples are That's Too Much!, Fortune Hunter, Step Up, and Mystery Price [5].
    • Inverted by pricing games that are apparently hated for being too easy, such as Pick-A-Number. To be fair, its easy playings are usually when it has replaced another game which broke down at the last minute (P-A-N is extremely easy to set up and has no electronic parts).
    • Many people hate 10 Chances, which can take forever to play, especially with an inept contestant who is a slow writer and who still, after claiming to have watched the show for years, can't figure out the unwritten rule of the game's prices always ending in zero (unless zero isn't a choice, in which case it always ends in 5).
    • Pay The Rent, which offers a $100,000 grand prize to those who can successfully find the one combination of six grocery items that will satisfy the conditions of the game (a single item, then a pair of items that cost more then the previous, than another pair of items that cost more than the last, and then one more item that costs more than the second pair). Unlike all other games, the "hidden rule" is that contestants will not win by placing the groceries in order from least to most expensive...which, if the first playing is any indication, will get $10,000 and no more. Despite its difficulty, a contestant placed the items correctly within two months of its debut, but didn't realize this until he walked with $10,000.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks: Some fans find the removal of some pricing games as a bad idea. They also see Drew Carey to be a poor host, mainly for his occasional lack of enthusiasm.
    • Inverted by those fans of Carey who were mostly swayed by the backstage nightmare stories about Barker; indeed, a lot of game show fans have turned on Bob — seemingly moreso after he retired. The above DVD issues come to mind, as well as his spat over the GSN Game Show Awards and Betty White. And memories of his past scandals have resurfaced almost more than ever on online forums.
    • The Doug Davidson version was generally hated among longtime fans of the show due to its radical changes (half-hour format, no Contestant's Row or Big Wheel, altered Showdown, glitzier theme and set, different personnel, radically-different games, etc.). Many fans have since retracted their hatred of this version, especially when the Drewcases started up.
    • Fans mostly hate the complete overhaul of prizes; where there used to be grandfather clocks and dining rooms, there are now ridiculously-expensive trips to little-known cities with amenities that are impossible to price (once offered was a two-day trip to about 20 miles from Television City for over $7,000), home photo booths, "designer" items, and things that Drew has stated on-air as having used himself. Although mostly sounding like an attempt to make the show appeal to one of the aforementioned periphery demographics (what college student dreams of winning a grandfather clock?), many games have been lost due to these items that, generally, nobody would know the price of.
    • The reverse product placement, done because the items in question aren't sponsored (i.e., provided for free or at reduced price by the company). So, instead of plugging a jar of Jif peanut butter, the announcer instead says something generic like "Peanut butter makes a delightful snack!"
      • And this then gets subverted after the descriptions, when the brand name is called by the contestant, or by DREW HIMSELF. So after the peanut butter description, the contestant will say "I'll pick the Jif!", and Drew will repeat "The Jif! Actual price..."
    • Even changing the music cues around can elicit this trope. The Big Banana, which was kept mostly the same since its induction in the 1976 music package, until sometime in 1984, when it was changed to a lower pitched version for no apparent reason. It didn't take until the very end of season 20 (1991-92) for it to be replaced.
    • The recent revival of the Australian version. I could state everything wrong with it here, but this page does a much better job of explaining it. [dead link]
  • They Just Didn't Care: Probably the biggest example in the medium. The lawsuits brought against Bob Barker paint him as a deranged, racist, power-mad dictator who lost (destroyed?) his moral compass at some point between October 19, 1981 [6] and Season 16 [7]...and who turned sour once the cameras and fans left. Regardless of whether they have any merit, it's quite evident that nobody in a position of power at CBS or All-American/Pearson/Fremantle thought to A) fire Barker outright and/or B) install some hidden security cameras. The only logical explanation for looking the other way time and again is that Barker was making them so much money they could forego morals, ignore wrongful-termination laws, and issue hush clauses.
    • Deborah Curling's lawsuit allegations imply that the problem got "fixed" — apparently, she was forced to work in a horrible environment (black staffers such as herself were ridiculed and treated poorly) and filed a complaint with CBS despite being told by Roger Dobkowitz not to go against Barker. After telling CBS about the problems and threatening a lawsuit if they refused to do something about it, they offered her an extension with a hush clause; she refused and was immediately fired. Perhaps the most damning claim of all is that this happened in October 2006, which would be (unsaid in the allegations) some days before Barker announced his voluntary retirement on Halloween. If the allegations are true, perhaps "voluntary" isn't the right word...
    • Pick-A-Number's set screams of this. The set has been used for twenty years, and they still haven't bothered to give it a new paint job or update. There's no excuse for them to neglect its set for that long, especially when it looks awful in HD.
  • Too Good to Last: Give or Keep, The Phone Home Game, Hit Me, Split Decision, Super Ball!!, and a couple of others were retired from either the staff disliking the game (Give or Keep), took too long (Phone Home Game and Super Ball!!), or other reasons (Split Decision had a poor win/loss ratio, Hit Me because of how confusing the rules were getting to the contestants {although Barker's handling of Aces held by the House didn't help things, and said playings' outcomes depended entirely on his mood}). Most of these games were well-received by most of the fans. Coincidentally, despite Hit Me being retired for its complexity, Pay The Rent is designed to be confusing.
  • What an Idiot!: See here.
  1. ↑ (example: 1 Right Price, Rat Race, Most Expen$ive, Grocery Game, Dice Game, Take Two)
  2. ↑ (in alphabetical order — Don Bishop, Rich Fields, Burton Richardson, Roger Rose, Daniel Rosen, Art Sanders, Jim Thornton, Randy West)
  3. ↑ (no five-digit cars were ever used)
  4. ↑ (the "Add 'em Up" logo used to be on top, but was removed around this point)
  5. ↑ (which performed the best out of this group, having been won on 11 of its 17 playings)
  6. ↑ (the day his wife Dorothy Jo died)
  7. ↑ (when he let his hair go gray and became Executive Producer)
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