Grocery Game

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Host Bob Barker explaining the rules of "Grocery Game" to a contestant

Grocery Game is a pricing game on the American television game show The Price Is Right. Debuting on September 5, 1972's show, Price's second episode, it is played for a four-digit prize, usually valued between $3,000 and $10,000, and uses grocery items.

Grocery Game is one of Price's original five pricing games.

1 Gameplay
2 Trivia
3 Foreign versions of Grocery Game
4 See also

[edit] Gameplay

The contestant is shown five grocery items. The contestant chooses one of the items and how many of it he would like to buy.

Host Bob Barker reveals the price of the product, and one of the models totals the amount for that item on a cash register. If the contestant fails to hit the winning range of $20 to $21, he can then select one of the remaining items. The total of that purchase is added to the running total.

The game continues until one of the following three outcomes is reached:

Hitting the winning $20 to $21 range at any time, which wins the prize.
Exceeding $21 at any time, which loses the prize.
Exhausting all five grocery items before hitting $20, which also results in a loss.

[edit] Trivia

Grocery Game's original winning range was $6.75 to $7. This was adjusted on January 26, 1989 due to inflation.

In shows produced during the first week of tapings, the contestant was given a $100 at the start of the game. If he/she won the game, he/she also won the $100 in addition to the prize. If he/she exhausted all five grocery items but did not exceed $7, they still got to keep the $100. Due to the earliest programs being taped out of order, this rule is present on the second and fifth episodes, but not on the replacement third episode.

The first four times Grocery Game was played, the contestant playing it automatically won supplies of all five grocery products. The amounts awarded varied from show to show, but they always totaled at least $100 and they counted toward the contestant's winnings.

The model operating the cash register has a note card that lists the prices of each of the five items in quantities up to 20. This usually results in slight confusion if a contestant purchases more than 20 of a single item.

Grocery Game holds the distinction of being the only pricing game that has ever been played for three rooms of furniture – a living room, dining room and a bedroom – on the Coast Guard Special in Season 30.

One playing of Grocery Game accidentally used Shell Game's title banner. [1]

Until some time in 1974, the groceries were described before the bonus prize.

Until Janice Pennington left the show, she was almost always given the duty of running the register.

During one playing of Grocery Game, a contestant mispronounced the cat litter product name Tidy Cats as "titty cats", prompting huge amounts of laughter from the audience. [2]

The largest losing amount has been $56.36 on March 6, 2007.

[edit] Foreign versions of Grocery Game

The game is played in many other countries with the same rules, only the win ranges are completely different.

A list of examples:

Australia - $10 to $10.50 on Larry Emdur's version; Ian Turpie's version used the US pre-1989 range of $6.75 to $7.
Canada - $9 to $10
France - 95F to 99F
Germany - DM12 to DM13 (earlier DM27 to DM30)