The Price Is Right/Awesome

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


The Price Is Right has aired for years on all three "big" networks (NBC, ABC, CBS) and both kinds of syndication (weekly and daily)...so you'd better believe there are quite a few.

In General...

  • Every Double Showcase Win. This extends to bids that would have awarded both Showcases had the Double Showcase Rule been in effect.
  • Any time a player gets the price exactly right after another player had tried bidding $1 more.
  • Any time a player bids $1 less than a previous contestant (normally an example of What an Idiot!) and still wins.
  • Johnny Olson. He never missed a taping [1], coming in regardless of his health. Holly Hallstrom recalled a taping where Johnny was throwing up in a pail next to him but continued to sound like he always did; director Marc Breslow told him to speed up the reading of the Showcase copy, and Olson managed to comply without missing a beat. The man was a trouper.
  • Janice Pennington. Having been on the show since its 1972 return, she, Vanna White, and maybe Cindy Crawford and Naomi Campbell are the only known models to stay on past their "expiration dates" (although Cindy these days "models" her own furniture collection). In 1988, an inexperienced camera guy swung the wrong way during the opening, causing severe injuries to Pennington. The resulting surgery left her unable to model swimsuits, and yet she continued for 12 more years, remaining loyal to Bob Barker even through all his scandals in the 1990s. She and Kathleen Bradley were fired after the December 15, 2000, show; Barker said it was budget cuts, but it was really after they had testified against him in a trial.
  • Any win off a "Big 4" game: Golden Road, 3 Strikes, Triple Play, Pay the Rent (although the latter has yet to see a winner).
  • For pricing games:
    • In Any Number, picking all the numbers in the price of the car without putting any numbers in the smaller prize or piggy bank.
    • Winning on the first try in Bonkers or Race Game, or winning on the final guess after the buzzer.
    • Winning Cliff Hangers by having the mountain climber stop on the very last (25th) step.
    • Winning Cover Up or One Away on the first guess.
    • In Dice Game, have each roll be the correct number, a 1, or a 6, automatically winning the car.
    • In Hole in One, getting all six items in the correct order, or making a putt from the last line, or having a putt bounce off the backstop and into the hole.
    • In Pathfinder or Pocket Change, getting the price of the car without making any mistakes.
    • In Rat Race, winning all three rats, then having your chosen three rats come in first, second, and third, winning all three prizes.

Bill Cullen (1956-65)

  • Doris Wiltse holds the original show's all-time top winnings record. In seven weeks on the nighttime show, she accumulated $76,110 in merchandise.
  • Nancy Griebel, a contestant on a 1963 nighttime show, came closest to the price of a light bulb--67 cents--without going over, and as a bonus prize, she won over $8000 in electric appliances.
  • When the show moved to ABC in the fall of 1963, there was an addition to the usual home sweepstakes. The winner, flown to New York to be a contestant, was offered his/her choice of a working oil well or $25,000 in cash. An elderly gentleman was the winner of that sweepstakes, and he chose the $25,000 because "I haven't got time to wait for the well!"
  • Richard Keyes was a contestant in the final weeks of the NBC nighttime show, and his bonus, after winning a sailboat, was to be an honorary judge at the Miss America Pageant. He got to do a meet-and-greet with all the contestants and after observing them in various categories, he wrote down the names of the five girls he thought had the best chance to crowned Miss America. Those selections were placed in a sealed envelope and kept in abeyance until the first ABC nighttime show on September 18 (eleven days after the pageant). If any of Mr. Keyes' selections made it to the semi-finals, he won $2500. If any of his selections became a finalist, he won $5000. If any of his selections was named Miss America, he won $10,000. (It is unclear if the September 18 show exists, so the results of Mr. Keyes' selections remain an enigma.)

Bob Barker (1972-2007)

  • September 4, 1972: The first contestant ever to play Bonus Game got all four prizes, winning the bonus prize by default. To top that off, he won his Showcase with a difference of $4. (There was no Double Showcase Rule until April 1974.)
  • March 24, 1975: The "Greatest Showcase War". Both women bid within the Double Showcase threshold ($100), with the winner getting both Showcases by being $1 closer.
  • March 12, 1986: The utmost perfection in 3 Strikes +. Yes, that's right — all five numbers in order, on the first try, with no Strikes...and this came after she won $100 for a perfect bid!
  • September 11, 1991: On the first pricing game of the day, a lady wins One Away by getting all five numbers right on the first try. That's awesome it itself, but what makes it even more awesome was that she was playing for a Cadillac, AND she admitted that she never did as well playing along at home.
  • September 23, 1992: The only perfect playing of Super-Ball.
  • 1990s: A Genre Savvy contestant named Chad owns Cliff Hangers. The prices? $20-$30-$40.
  • January 26, 1996: A guy named Bryan played Punch-A-Bunch, got $5,000 (then the second-highest value) on his first punch, and gave it back. The audience was nearly unanimously against him, and his response? "Audience, if you're scared, buy a dog. I'm going for it!" The next slip was $10,000!
  • Circa 1998: Two contestants got $1 during a Showcase Showdown, then got it again in their Bonus Spin-Off. Obviously, these two contestants had to do a second Spin-Off. During this Spin-Off, one of the contestants spun $1 a third time and went to the Showcase.
  • 2001: Three consecutive playings of Switcheroo are completely won on the first try (see below).
  • November 10, 2004: A man proposes during the Showcase Showdown, while also getting $1.00 on his spin and eventually winning the Showcase. She said yes.
  • September 18, 2006: Most of the Season 35 premiere, culminating in a Double Showcase Win for the current highest daytime win of $147,517.
  • April 17, 2007: A contestant playing Half Off picked a box as Bob explained the rules of the game. The same box remained at the end of the game, was chosen, and contained the $10,000.

Tom Kennedy (Nighttime, 1985-86)

  • A contestant playing Punch-A-Bunch found a Second Chance slip worth $50...and then a $10,000 slip, the first time in the game's history that somebody won more than the stated top prize.
  • A contestant playing Switcheroo was the first to win everything on the first try. Note that the prop doesn't actually have its clock yet, and it would be at least another four years before it did.

Drew Carey (2007-Present)

  • March 7, 2008 (Million-Dollar Spectacular; aired April 4): Clock Game was played with a million-dollar bonus where, while winning the game within the normal 30 seconds still won the standard primetime $5,000 bonus, if the contestant guessed both prices within 10 seconds (which had happened something like twice in the previous 36 years), they would win an additional million bucks. Taking full advantage of the show's subversion of And 99 Cents, the contestant nailed the first prize on her first try, got the second in eight seconds, and won the million.
  • July 4, 2008: A perfect Check-Out.

Drew: And she's from Canada! And she got it right on the nose!

  • November 11, 2008 (aired November 3): Contestant Dorothy from the second episode (actually the fourth show taped), the first person to ever play Grocery Game, came back. She didn't play Grocery Game again, though.
  • November 27, 2008 (aired December 16): A contestant named Terry Kniess did what no other contestant had done for about 35 years — make a perfect bid in the Showcase. In fact, the producers were convinced that Terry had cheated somehow and ordered a 45-minute show "stopdown" to investigate. Turned out that Terry's helper, a Golden Road.net guy named Ted who had been a contestant in 1992, was just a devoted watcher who had memorized the prices of most of the items that turned up in the Showcases — although Kniess later said that he watched the show regularly, and in fact wrote a book about his perfect bid. Drew, however, had a feeling that something was up, and made no attempt to hide his suspicion.
    • Drew noted afterward that it was the first time a contestant had made a perfect Showcase bid "since 1972 or '73", which was less epic than it could have been due to the lack of a Double Showcase Rule. Fan research has since narrowed this down to between January 16, 1973 and April 1974.
    • This Esquire article refers to that event as "TV's Crowning Moment of Awesome". TV Tropes is not mentioned by name, but really, where else would they have come up with that headline?
  • Unknown date, 2008: Let's sum up Taylor's day: he came on TPiR on his 19th birthday. He plays Lucky 7 for a Mustang, loses all but $1 on the first three digits. Drew promises to "go berserk" if he manages to pull it off. He does, even with numbers designed to screw up people who guess middling digits. Then he spins $1 twice on the Big Wheel for another $26K. Then his opponent in the Showcase overbids by less than $500, giving him another car. Not a bad birthday.
  • April 1, 2009: An entire show with some really weird stuff going on, however played remarkably straight throughout by all involved. Most notable:
    • Kathy Kinney reprised her role as Mimi Bobeck and modeled during the show.
    • Drew became the star of of The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson
    • Match Game think music played during two games, and its main theme during the credits.
    • The Turntable refused to stop spinning during one segment.
    • Most Expensive was played for three Howard Miller floor clocks. All different models, mind you.
    • In a moment of the show coming full circle upon its history, the Bob Barker Studio was renamed...to the Bill Cullen Studio.
  • April 27, 2009: A contestant playing One Away made all five numbers the same color (red, signifying the number one down from the "base" number). Despite this setup's extremely low likelihood of having ever been the winning solution in the game's history, it was the price!
  • June 26, 2009: This one didn't happen on the show itself, but on the internet. Drew opened his own personal blog and within days (not weeks as was expected), ruthless fans (most of them from Golden-Road.net) began attacking him. One took his commentary too far and pushed Drew into disabling comments temporarily. Since July 3, 2008, a lot of users over at that website had been hurling all sorts of invective at Drew and Fremantle Media over the firing of Roger Dobkowitz and various other things. When Drew disabled comments, he made a blog entry announcing that he had disabled them, and in this blog entry he stuck it to the fans by calling them "telephone pole screamers".
    • PriceisRight.com, which started two years prior to this incident but died, was revived as an intended replacement to Golden-Road.net, and Drew has plugged this website on every episode since the beginning of Season 38. An attempt at The Man Is Sticking It to the Man, the official Price forums are nowhere near as active or well-moderated as the site it's trying to replace (among other problems, racial slurs).
    • Besides the above, Roger Dobkowitz has stated his support for Golden-Road in the past, appearing on the long-running Stu's Show with site admin John Sly to discuss Price and even attending the wedding of site founder Marc Green. Rich DiPirro has also shown his support, posting this message "to my fellow fans" about his firing and answering questions about his tenure as director.
    • Speaking of Golden-Road.net, another MOA occurred on that website in 2004 when they ousted a troll who was making sockpuppet accounts all supporting Daniel Rosen, a man who was auditioning to replace Rod Roddy. The troll is believed to have been Rosen himself, mainly since the legit posters (and the show's staff!) almost unanimously thought his announcing sucked.
  • January 4, 2010: In 1978, a contestant named Cynthia played Any Number and won only the piggy bank. 31 years later, she (now older, larger, and walking with a cane) played Any Number again and won the car. During her Showcase Showdown, clips of her first playing were shown.
    • Note For Collectors: The 1978 clip shows the yellow tiles in front of Contestant's Row. While this may seem to be an insignificant detail, their presence rules out anything from June 5 (by which point those tiles had been removed) onward. This effectively means that GSN may have shown Cynthia's original appearance...unless it was on the nighttime show, in which case it's unlikely to show up again.
  • March 4, 2010: A contestant playing Let 'Em Roll gets all five cars on the first roll!
  • April 1, 2010: It looks like April 1 is becoming a new tradition for Price, with Kathy Kinney reprising along with:
    • Stagehands replacing the models and vice versa. Most notably, Gwennie Osborne became a page and Rachel Reynolds operated Range Game.
    • Prize cars being pushed onto stage as if they were broken-down; one of these was a Hyundai, a company whose several last advertising campaigns have been totally dedicated to reversing this image in the wake of Toyota's scandals, so one has to wonder how well this bowled over with the sponsorship.
    • Every single contestant having nametags reading "Pat" (Mimi thought it would help Drew remember everyone's name), and a Credits Gag where the staffers were renamed Pat (Pat Greco, Pat Richards, R. Pat DiPirro, etc.).
    • Both Showcases being completely identical, except the second one threw in a Mini convertible at the last minute — The Reveal of which is itself an MOA.
  • April 15, 2010 (aired April 16): A contestant wins Half Off with no boxes removed from play.
  • April 21, 2010: A contestant won a restored 1964 Bentley (an extremely expensive British line of cars) playing Hole In One. The clincher? He putted from the first line (the farthest from the hole), and had narrowly missed on his first try.
  • May 18, 2010: Another contestant playing Let 'Em Roll gets all five cars on the first roll!
  • 2010-11: Season 39's ten Double Showcase Wins, which is a record for the show in at least the past decade (from September 2000 onward, the DSW record for one season was eight).
  • September 20, 2010: A contestant playing Stack the Deck only gets one digit in the price of the car given to her (the third one), and must pick out every other digit correctly out of six possible numbers. The odds against this are huge and it has never been done before in the game's history, but she manages to get the price correct and win. (The facial expression on the model (Rachel)'s face is priceless.)
  • November 16, 2010: A contestant playing Any Number picks off the numbers in the car's price...in order. The secondary prize and piggy bank are left untouched.
  • December 1, 2010 (aired November 9): A contestant playing Clock Game wins both prizes in 3.5 seconds.
  • January 31, 2011: A contestant playing Dice Game rolls three sixes and a one, automatically winning the car.
  • February 4, 2011: After being led to believe she had won the first One-Bid due to an error from Drew (which he apologized for after the actual winner came up), she eventually got onstage and won $25,000 on the Big Wheel!
  • February 18, 2011: The first win in one of the Big Four games (Golden Road, Three Strikes, Triple Play, Pay The Rent) in over three seasons came on a full count in Three Strikes for a Cadillac.
  • April 22, 2011: The immediate next playing of Three Strikes is for an electric car...and this one crawled back from two Strikes to a full-count win!
  • June 3, 2011: Three consecutive playings of Three Strikes, all won on a full count!
  • June 16, 2011: A contestant plays Bonkers and gets it right on the first guess.
  • September 19, 2011: Season 40 opened with a perfect bid right off the bat, followed by Race Game for four cars. She won them all on the first try.
  • September 28, 2011: The ceremonial 7,500th show, which actually was #7,500!
  • January 25, 2011: A contestant in the Showcase makes a bid of $25,000 but then changes her mind and asks to change her guess to $22,500. Her first guess was locked in already and she was told she couldn't change it. When it came to revealing the actual price, her bid of $25,000 won by being $41 closer than her opponent's bid was--meaning, had she been allowed to change it, she would have lost.
  • March 19, 2012: A contestant is the 3rd generation in her family to have appeared on Price, and she has a lot to live up to: her grandmother won her showcase, and her mother won her pricing game. She keeps the family legend going by winning Pathfinder, notorious for being one of the toughest games on the show to win.
  1. ↑ (the first ~2,700 daytime shows, all 301 shows of the 1972-80 nighttime version, and about half of the 170-episode Kennedy run)
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