1. 1980's Contestants
I loved Press Your Luck as a kid during it's three year run from 1983 to 1986. But it is immeasurably more entertaining looking back through our retro spyglass. I was but a small child in the '80's so my perspective is a bit hazy, so a question to all you older folks: was everyone just ugly and/or awkward looking during the Reagan years? It's not just the bad haircuts, earth tone blazers, novelty sized eyeglasses, bushy mustaches, or in some cases all of the above. You don't have to look too hard at your nearest hipster hangout to see a lot of "fashion" of the era has come back, and with a vengeance. So it's not just the style, but the people themselves. Everyone either appears to be a giant dork or a hayseed. This was long before the reality TV era, where everyone and their uncle's cat thinks they can and should be on TV. You can see a noticeable difference in the sensibilities of the eras. I'm sure the producers told the contestants to act excited and whatnot, and you can see that their trying so hard. But John and Jane Q 1980's were, generally, just not ready for the spotlight. On a recently viewed episode, one of the female contestants, Bea, was so nervous on camera she could barely even speak! Sort of an important aspect of game show contestanting. Can you imagine such a thing on today's game shows, like Minute to Win It or Who Wants to be a Millionaire? It's the exact opposite. With the exceptions of Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, and the Price is Right--all hold overs from the golden age of game shows mind you--contestants on today's shows never shut up. Before each question or challenge we're subjected to some inane reasoning for their answer or an obnoxious soliloquy about how when they're grandmother used to bake apple cobbler she always made sure to grease the pan with genuine hog lard and that memory gave the contestant the insight needed to complete the challenge in record time. Or something equally stupid. Yes, even Press Your Luck had it's share of blowhards, but they were much fewer and further between. So, awkward and ill-dressed as they are, give me the unassuming not ready for prime time game show contestant of the '80's any day over today's fame seeking blabbermouth.
2. Terrible Prizes
If you're not familiar with Press Your Luck here's how it worked. It featured three contestants who would buzz in to answer a series of trivia questions to win "spins." Their were two rounds of questions, and after each round contestants would get a chance to use their spins on the "Big Board." The Big Board features many squares displaying dollar values or fabulous prizes. And of course, the whammies (more on those later). A lighted border would flash around the various squares and when a player would hit their buzzer and yell "STOP!" one square would remain lit, netting the contestant either a whammy, cash, or fabulous prize. Except many of the prizes were far from fabulous.
Examples:
- A water conditioner - Huh. A really nice, practical prize, I'm sure. But maybe the most unexciting prize ever. Wouldn't you have to live somewhere with the most mineral enriched water ever to truly appreciate a game show water conditioner? As in, your faucet is basically dispensing rocks?
- A graphic - To this day I'm still not sure what this is. The prize tile simply read "Graphic" and had a poor representation of American Gothic displayed on it. I'm guessing it's art of some kind? Why wouldn't you just say that? Art. Doesn't that sound better than Graphic? Am I getting a decal to stick on the side of my car? Or a single graphic on a floppy disc to display on my Tandy? This still boggles my mind--way more than it should.
- A Jog 'n Tramp - Um, we actually had one of these. Pretty fun as a little kid. Pretty awful as a game show prize.
- A silver service - Great, something to collect dust in my china cabinet. Has anyone ever actually used one of these sets to serve tea?
- A trip to Concord, CA - So........I.......wha......I just.........huh. Concord.
- Silver gifts - What's with all the silver stuff? Who's picking the prizes, Paul Revere? And what exactly are silver gifts? Is this a sneaky way of unloading the leftover silver services from the warehouse? Is it a pocket watch, a paperweight, just a solid bar of silver? These are questions that need answers.
- Catamaran - This is my personal favorite. It's the epitome of impractical game show prizes. Sure, it might be fun on the open water, the wind in your face and sea mist in your hair. Too bad it's going to spend the next decade taking up room in your garage or costing you money at a self storage facility.
Compared to the high-tech, slick TV programming we have today, a lot of vintage TV looks pretty creaky. Bad sound, fuzzy pictures, cheesy graphics and special effects are not the fault of the era. They were doing the best they could with what they had. But even amongst its contemporaries, Press Your Luck was pretty bad. On more than one occasion I've seen cue card holders and stage hands clearly in the frame. It's not like this was a live broadcast. Couldn't they have re-shot those sequences. Other times I've noticed people just sort of milling around behind the set, their silhouettes clearly visible behind the host. When the contestants would hit their buzzers to answer the trivia questions, it sounds like you or way slapping our dining room table. Presumably, the buzzers were not active until the host finished reading the question and only then would they actually buzz when struck. But contestants were always trying to buzz in early, so there was always cacophony of table slapping to accompany the questions. It just really hurt the overall professionalism of the show. No, really. Also, sometimes the tiles on the Big Board wouldn't light up and you'd just have empty spaces. Or pieces of the set literally falling apart on camera. I guess that's what separates the greats from the rest. Can you ever remember Plinko on the Price is Right not working correctly, or some stage hand loitering just behind Alex Trebek? I didn't think so.
4 Host Peter Tomarken
Do people aspire to be game show hosts, I wonder? Well, if Peter Tomarken ever did he certainly found his calling. The perfect blend of smarm and charm, he was actually kinda funny and appeared to have a good time ribbing the contestants. Always with a smile that seemed genuine, he signed on with, "Welcome to Press Your Luck, the game where you can win a bundle or lose your shirt," and always signed off with a goofy little poem about whammies. They were always terrible. At one point they were sent in from viewers at home (allegedly). Who would actually take the time and then spend the stamp to sent it in. But as game show hosts go, he was pretty good. Not as dignified as Trebek or Barker, not as creepy as Richard Dawson or Wink Martindale after too many plastic surgeries, it's a shame he never did much of note after Press Your Luck.
5. The Whammies
As mentioned earlier. other cash and prizes, whammies also resided on the Big Board. If you hit a whammy, a devilish looking little cartoon creature that bore a resemblance to the Tasmanian Devil wearing a cape, you lost all your money and prizes. Get four whammies in a game and your disqualified. As a kid I loved the whammies. When a player got one a little cartoon whammy would appear next to the players money total, manically laughing and erasing their winnings with a lawnmower, WWI era fighter plane, or by moonwalking across them (this was the 80's after all), or other such silliness. It's a ridiculous gimmick that fans of the show love and haters hate. Because that's what they do; haters gonna hate.
Bonus Reason:
In 1984 was embroiled in something of a scandal when contestant Michael Larson won over $110,000 utilizing 47 spins in one game, both a record by far. The game actually had to be split between two episodes. Believing Larson must have cheated, CBS initially refused to give him his winnings. However, they could never prove it. Larson had learned the pattern of the flashing lights and timed his buzzes accordingly. His run is available on YouTube and is pretty fun to watch. You can almost hear the producers' brains exploding. Tragically, Larson lost all his money in bad business deals and died in 1999 of throat cancer. He was only 50 when he died, though he looks like he was pushing 65 at the time of his winnings in 1984. People just looked older back in the olden days I guess.
Here's Larson's record-breaking run:
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