Veteran production designer Scott Storey worked on the series, and would later go on to apply that knowledge toward the similarly themed Guy’s Grocery Games with Guy Fieri. It was, of course, a soundstage built to look like a supermarket rather than an operating store, as was used in the original 1960s version. That uncanny valley feeling begins with the Supermarket Sweep set, which did look for all intents and purposes like a functioning grocery store, save for the absence of checkout aisles and the presence of a hooting and hollering studio audience. Put simply, this show was far stranger than you remember, and now is clearly the time to unearth its weirdness. Lost in the nostalgic remembrance of “that game show with people running through the aisles of a supermarket,” however, is the memory of just how bizarre an assembly of elements Supermarket Sweep really was, particularly in its first revival in the early 1990s. Both of those versions were hosted by the magnetic and beaming David Ruprecht (who was once nailed in the crotch by a runaway shopping cart in the clip below), although it’s less well known is that the series originally began as a 1965-1967 ABC game show hosted by Bill Malone, and has also had several U.K. It’s a series that viewers of a certain age are all likely to remember watching at some point, whether we’d now like to admit it, first in its run on Lifetime from 1990-1995 (and then in endless re-runs), and then in a shorter revival on PAX TV from 2000-2003. Even when calling the players down to the podium, immortal (he’s 96) game show announcer Johnny Gilbert is rattling off absurdisms like “Who has the Pace Picante Sauce? Alright, you’re on Supermarket Sweep!” Never does Supermarket Sweep miss a single opportunity to plug random products. Of course, the corporate greed in particular extends far beyond the hopelessly earnest contestants, though, to the very DNA of a game show that existed solely as an excuse for product placement. “Unbridled avarice?” I’ve seen them make hilariously stupid decisions in their greed as well. “Quivering with desire?” That is spot on-I have seen contestants physically quivering in anticipation during these episodes. Truer words describing the series have never been written, a fact that is now being discovered by countless viewers thanks to a collection of 15 vintage Supermarket Sweep episodes that appeared on Netflix at the beginning of July … something we can assume is in no way coincidental, as a revival of the series hosted by SNL’s Leslie Jones is meant to debut on ABC this fall.īut those words of Shepherd’s ring with deep truth, applied toward the random assortment of episodes Netflix has gathered, which represent a perfect time capsule of runaway, Clinton-era American consumerism. Had he written it in the mid-1990s, however, I would have assumed it was a pitch for a more writerly description of one of the decade’s most quintessentially ‘90s TV game shows: Supermarket Sweep. “We plunged into the cornucopia, quivering with desire and the ecstasy of unbridled avarice.” - A Christmas StoryĪs he wrote that particularly florid sentence, author Jean Shepherd was describing the nostalgic, unfettered joy of two children diving into a pile of Christmas gifts, hoping to find that sought-after Red Ryder BB gun.
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