Give or Keep speculations

[illustriousrocket]

Bob was supposedly the reason Gallery Game died a swift death around the same time, so that would check out.

I never thought about it this way before, but I agree that it makes sense.

[tpirfansince1972]

That would indeed check out (no pun intended).

I was never a huge fan of Gallery Game.  It's replacement Pick A Number is far superior, even though the game seems kind of boring to many.

Pick A Number is basically one third of Golden Road, usually the 4 digit prize, although it has been played for 5 digit prizes as well.

[GRWHAMMY the 2nd]

also, for all the hype around Golden Road...

isn't it just a progressive version of Pick a Number with 3 prizes and a difficulty jump for each one?

edit: and i missed this point being made in the post above me... carry on

[brosa0]

I love Give Or Keep, but I can see why the staff came to dislike it by 1990.   

The prop looked like an off-brand Bonus Game with the same classic 1972 shape and the sliders for the prize names with G-T asterisks in place of the arrows on the right.  The emphasis on 'keeping' or winning small prizes seemed impressive to the studio audience in 1972-73 (not just in this game but in others like Bonus Game, Mystery Price etc) but I'm guessing by 1990 they did not have anywhere near the same allure.

What's interesting to me is how Give Or Keep features gameplay elements that came to be used in a number of other games.  Aside from the obvious Finish Line and Trader Bob, there's also Hurdles (choose the lowest in each of 3 pairs of items, but with no room error), Mystery Price (trying to cover an unknown 'target price' - Give Or Keep was a lot easier to understand with 3 x 50/50 choices instead of open-ended choices) and even something like Shopping Spree (picking the most expensive items to cover a known target price).

I'd love to see it return as a themed game.  Finish Line was a very neat idea of how it could work as a themed game but had dreadful execution.

[JayC]

I love Give Or Keep, but I can see why the staff came to dislike it by 1990.   

The prop looked like an off-brand Bonus Game with the same classic 1972 shape and the sliders for the prize names with G-T asterisks in place of the arrows on the right.  The emphasis on 'keeping' or winning small prizes seemed impressive to the studio audience in 1972-73 (not just in this game but in others like Bonus Game, Mystery Price etc) but I'm guessing by 1990 they did not have anywhere near the same allure.

What's interesting to me is how Give Or Keep features gameplay elements that came to be used in a number of other games.  Aside from the obvious Finish Line and Trader Bob, there's also Hurdles (choose the lowest in each of 3 pairs of items, but with no room error), Mystery Price (trying to cover an unknown 'target price' - Give Or Keep was a lot easier to understand with 3 x 50/50 choices instead of open-ended choices) and even something like Shopping Spree (picking the most expensive items to cover a known target price).

I'd love to see it return as a themed game.  Finish Line was a very neat idea of how it could work as a themed game but had dreadful execution.

That makes me wonder if the staff created Finish Line and Trader Bob to try to replace Give or Keep, but Finish Line had mechanical issues and the horse racing element didn't fly with Bob's animal rights stance, and Trader Bob didn't last long either.

[Nick]

That makes me wonder if the staff created Finish Line... to try to replace Give or Keep

In fact, the staff appears to have intended to replace Give or Keep with Finish Line, as the two games were never in the rotation at the same time.

the horse racing element didn't fly with Bob's animal rights stance

This would not have been an issue at the time and any way a part of the decision to retire Finish Line.

[JayC]

Ah yes, I didn't think to look in the FAQ. It also notes Finish Line wasn't played for two months after its second playing and Give or Keep returned to play during that time.

This would not have been an issue at the time and any way a part of the decision to retire Finish Line.

Yes, the game was retired prior to Bob taking on the animal rights activism, though I have to think had it still been around they would've either retired it or redid the set to remove the horse (or other animal) racing motif.

[jhc2010]

If Give or Keep was ever revived, would the eight-pointed daises return? Or are those extinct?

[Alfonzo]

My biggest issue with Finish Line was it was the exact same game as Give or Keep, but slooower. The mechanical horse movement added about a minute or two to its playing time. This is a case in which "snazzy" presentation wasn't necessary because Give or Keep did pretty much the same job, but faster.

[Nick]

This is a case in which "snazzy" presentation wasn't necessary because Give or Keep did pretty much the same job, but faster.

I've never looked at pricing games as "doing the job".  By that logic, why have Side by Side and Coming or Going when you have Double Prices?  They're all games in which you choose the correct price between two alternatives.  I suppose you could argue they were different in that the former two had conventions for how the two prices were formed, whereas Double Prices has no restrictions on how the the fake is constructed, and that is enough to make the concepts distinct, in contrast to Finish Line which had only "window dressing" that Give or Keep didn't have.

But I still like Finish Line and think it was a good game, even if it did move more slowly; and that's a problem you could have fixed.  Instead of the mechanical gate that moved down the track as slowly as it did, you could have done it Give or Keep style putting up a running total and having a model manually move the gate along the track.  As for the horserace, well... this was no different than Hurdles, but they needed to do a better job at showing the prices of the items placed on the horse to keep tabs on if the correct choice was made or not.  They had these dim lights that lit up as the horse passed the prices of the selected items, but by then you didn't even remember what the price of the item placed on the finish line was and couldn't see them.

[tpirfansince1972]

Very good observation about forgetting what prizes/prices were placed on the horse.

As for how the game board would look were Give or Keep resurrected, I would imagine they would perhaps give the gameboard a much more 2020's look rather than the dated 1970s 8 petaled flower look.

I could see them perhaps incorporating the Goodson asterisks though, but Bonus Game already has that, as does Five Price Tags, so I would imagine they would go a different route with respect to how the game board would appear.