Showing my age a bit, but I remember whenever I was sick and home from school, I could watch some very cheesy game shows on television. Between "The Price is Right", "Pyramid", the morning edition of "Wheel of Fortune" and a slew of others which I've forgotten about, there was alwyas something on television. (What was the one with that 'noid' looking character again?) Anyways, I got to thinking... the winners of game shows get some decent prizes but the runner ups and general losers get crap 'parting gifts'. The thing about it is that some of the gifts are so bad, they'd probably be better off without them. So here's the task - I can only really remember one or two of the parting gifts from these shows, like maybe even Jeopardy for example. Just list the parting gifts that you remember because they were just sooo bad! Mine - for starters... Jolly Green Giant vegetables. That one was horrible. Like... great. $2.00 at the supermarket. You're really helping them forget about losing $10,000.00 just now. And my personal favorite.... SHASTA SODA. Have you ever tried this stuff? Like adding soda water to flavored Crisco oil. Gross stuff!
The San Francisco treat! Yeah, pretty cheesy. If you're of a certain age and live on the east coast, there was a kid's show back in the 70's called Panorama. All the kids got Lactona (sp?) toothbrushes.
Damn, that was fun to watch when I was a kid! I cracked up when a Whammy would come out dressed as Michael Jackson and moonwalk all of the dude's money away. Plus, that show had some pretty sweet prizes.
I knew a guy who was on Cards Sharks in the 80's, and along with some Jiffy Pop, he had a box filled with those aluminum-like blankets that they hand out at marathons. I can still see him laughing his ass off showing me and another of his friends these.
We just watched a documentary about one guy who figured out the pattern to this game and took it for some cash. It was interesting, mostly because my g/f loved that show, but it wasn't done all that well, so I ended up changing the channel before the end. They had about 30 minutes worth of interesting material and tried to make an hour and a half documentary. I think it was on GSN, but it may have been one of the thirty 'discovery' channels. I always thought The home version of our game (whatever game it might be), was the lamest prize they gave runner-ups.
