The Price is Right: The Barker Era on Pluto TV

[pricefan18]

There's another "special event marathon" coming up on September 12, and this time they claim it will be all new-to-Pluto episodes instead of repeats of existing ones in the rotation. Which probably means Pluto will be debuting episodes out of order for the first time. They will probably do the opposite of what they've done with the previous marathons: debut these episodes during the marathon, then skip their "spots" when the episodes before and after them are first added to the rotation.

Hmm, Season Premieres? It's the day before the Season 50 premiere.....and it says it's about Big Bucks....(and no whammies......sorry had to lol  ), so...not sure what else it could be. Guess we will find out though.

[RatRace10]

It sounds like this is one of the usual "Episodes where Pricing Game X, Y, or Z is won" marathons, but with Punch-a-Bunch, Grand Game, and Plinko (likely counting $5K+ as a win).

[Thatgameshowguy]

It sounds like this is one of the usual "Episodes where Pricing Game X, Y, or Z is won" marathons, but with Punch-a-Bunch, Grand Game, and Plinko (likely counting $5K+ as a win).

So far during this most recent episode dump, 4 episodes have been skipped yet were still assigned numbers in the loop. Those 4 episodes were 5231D, which had a Plinko playing. 5235D, which had a Grand Game playing. 5273D, which had a Punch a Bunch playing. And 5291D, which had a Plinko playing.


5275D was also skipped from this most recent run, but it was not given a Pluto loop number.

[RatRace10]

Oh, so they're being held over to debut during the marathon. That makes sense.

[C8]

 If anyone is watching, the ep airing now (5281D; it’s 10p CDT 9/1/21) has the debut of Balance Game ‘84.

[C8]

If anyone is watching, the ep airing now (5281D; it’s 10p CDT 9/1/21) has the debut of Balance Game ‘84.

Sorry for the double post but I’ve never seen the ep and it has to feature the most heartbreaking Grocery Game loss I’ve ever seen.

The contestant picked 5 Tootsie Pops to get to $6.45. The win sign flashes, the win bells sound, and the theme plays. The contestant and audience begin to celebrate. Bob, realizing the mistake, brings the proceedings to a halt and gives Roger the what for. The game continues and the constant picks 1 ramen, which is $.25 and only gets her to $6.70. The contestant then picks a sponge at $.79 and goes over and loses.

Just painful.

[Wayoshi]

That's wild......coulda had a perfect bid years before the first daytime one really happened. What does WSQ mean BTW? I feel I should know but it's not occurring to me.

Sorry, threw a CSS term in there.

A WSD is when you go over by the DSW range or less on a SC. WSQ is simply both of them (inverse of QSW, Quadruple SC winner, when a player DSWs both SCs).

BTW to all: the schedule is resetting at 9am eastern, after 35 new eps, and presumably 12 more coming on Sept 12th.

[FanOfDrew87]

At least there is a good chance that (at least) many of the skipped episodes may be on tap for the September 12 marathon.

Regarding the resetting, does this mean Pluto goes back to September 13, 1982 at 9 a.m. ET?

[SeaBreeze341]

Yeah we're back to Microphone Elbow (9 AM Eastern)

[holdme]

Well this was my first time ever seeing the original Balance Game...all I can say is I see why it didn't last. The contestant appeared confused about when the Barker Dollars came in to play and never got the opportunity to use them. At one point, she even asked Bob if she could use them, yet he seemed to ignore her and didn't answer.

[C8]

Well this was my first time ever seeing the original Balance Game...all I can say is I see why it didn't last. The contestant appeared confused about when the Barker Dollars came in to play and never got the opportunity to use them. At one point, she even asked Bob if she could use them, yet he seemed to ignore her and didn't answer.

I didn't want to post 3 times in a row above so I'll add to this. I actually thought this was a game that worked very well on paper. I actually loved the core idea: using the prizes to balance one another out. It had several problems though:

1) It seemed under-rehearsed and/or as if the on-camera talent didn't understand the game. Bob did a terrible job explaining it (at one point he was talking about thousands of dollars and I was at sea), Janice seemed lost about where to take the Barker dollars during the game and relied on Bob who also seemed flustered.

2) The way to win was obscure. Basically you needed to put the most expensive prize on one side and balance it out with the less expensive prizes. So in that playing the $100 recorder needed to be on one side where as the other prizes needed to be on the other in some combination. The contestant using the smaller prizes to balance each other out was noble (and pretty much how you'd think to use a balance) but they never worked to balance each other out since their differences were causing the balance to be off in $10-$15 increments going either way as the contestant added prizes (when the contestant could only be unbalanced by $5). It got to be super unlucky that the last prize left was the recorder, which just led to an anti-climactic mega-loss.

3) I concur that Bob really botched the explanation of the Barker dollars. Its simple: you can be unbalanced by $5 in either direction and you can use the 5 Barker dollars I'm giving you to correct the imbalance. And yet he was just like "here's $5 with my face on it" with no real instructions as to what to do.

I loved Balance Game '84 for what it was. But it definitely didn't pan out in execution.

[FanOfDrew87]

I did learn that the game was played 14 times in a single season (I would assume 1984-85 season, perhaps?).  I wonder if this game had a bigger number of losses than wins, or were there slightly more wins than losses?

I had no problem understanding Balance Game '84 - after viewing a few clips on YouTube a while ago.

However, I did learn that the Barker Silver Dollars were recycled for version 2 of Balance Game in 2006, but after Drew took over hosting, they were renamed "Drew Dollars", but according to what I read one time on another site (I don't remember where, maybe the Pricing Games FAQ site?), the so-called "Drew Dollars" were believed to be metal discs shaped like coins (which are called  "slugs" in slang) with decals depicting Drew.

[actual_retail_tice]

I just want to be sure I didn´t have a sleep-deprived hallucination...did I hear them use "Do the Hustle" as a grocery item cue in Phone Home in one of the latest batch of episodes (around 9 or 10 oclock Wednesday night)?. Extremely random.

[Casey]

You did - I thought it was quite out of place also.

[plinkowin2010]

What was the name of the last model filling in for Holly before she came back the following week. She looked like the actress who played Katherine Wentworth on Dallas.