Plinko
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Plinko is a pricing game on the American television game show The Price Is Right. Debuting on January 3, 1983, it is played for a cash prize of up to $50,000 and also awards prizes valued under $100. It is frequently said to be the most popular of all the pricing games.
Plinko was created by former Executive Producer Frank Wayne. On the game's first playing, host Bob Barker explained that the name came from the "plink" sound the chips made as they came down the board.
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[edit] Gameplay
The contestant is given one round flat disc, called a Plinko chip, and can earn up to four more using small prizes, for a total of five chips. The small prizes are presented one at a time, each bearing a two-digit price with one of the digits incorrect. The contestant must decide which digit is correct to win another Plinko chip as well as the small prize.
The contestant then takes the chips they have earned up a set of stairs to the top of the Plinko board. The board is made up of a field of pegs, with each row offset from the previous row. At the bottom of the board are nine slots marked with the values $100, $500, $1,000, $0, $10,000, $0, $1,000, $500, $100.
One at a time, the contestant lays each Plinko chip flat against the top of the board and releases it. The pegs send the Plinko chip skyrocketing all throughout the board, and the contestant wins whatever money corresponds with the slot the chip lands in, with a running total displayed on a scoreboard next to the Plinko board.
If a chip becomes stuck on the board, it is knocked free; the drop does not count, and the chip is returned to the contestant to drop again. When a chip is stuck above arm's length, the host will usually use a long stick to dislodge the chip.
[edit] History
At the time of its debut, Plinko's $25,000 top prize was the largest prize ever offered on The Price Is Right, as Barker noted on the game's much-promoted debut, and the largest allowable under CBS regulations (CBS upped the limit to $50,000 in 1985, $75,000 in 1988, and abolished the limit on game show winnings in 2006).
During Plinko's first playing, a spinning disco ball with "$25,000" labeled around it was lowered from the ceiling. On its second playing, the "Plinko" sign was introduced. The sign was originally placed in the back of the audience. Sometime in 1985, the sign was moved to the Turntable, where it remained until 2002, when it was replaced with a "$50,000" graphic ("$100,000" prime time) on screen. In 2009, the introduction was changed twice. After Rich DiPirro took over as director in March 2009, animated Plinko chips rolled across the screen, after which one stopped and rolled over to unveil $50,000. At the start of Season 38 in September 2009, the Race Game curtain rising is shown to reveal the Plinko board as the game is announced and Plinko chip animation is shown (the Race Game curtain is used because the Plinko board, the tallest free-standing game in the show, is too tall to be concealed by the Giant Price Tag). That effect works well with high-definition televisions only, as the entire reveal uses nearly the entire width of the 16:9 picture, and cuts off parts of the game board in 4:3.
When the game debuted, the cue music they played to introduce it was the same one that is normally heard in Grand Game. From its second playing until sometime in 1995, the first regular music sting combined the harps from Golden Road and Punch a Bunch with a famous prize cue titled "The Cats"; two subsequent harp stingers (introduced in 1995 and 1998, respectively) were also used to precede "The Cats". Since 2003, only the harps have been used to introduce the game.
For Plinko's first playing only, different "WIN!" cards were used for its small prizes. When a digit in the price of a prize was guessed correctly, the panels on the front of its corresponding podium were flipped over twice, first to reveal the word "WIN!" (which was written diagonally on a white card) along with a Plinko chip, and then again to reveal the actual price. Currently, the panels are flipped over only once, to reveal either a "WIN!" card and the actual price with a Plinko chip for a correct guess, or the actual price on two red cards if the guess is wrong.
When first introduced, the front of the Plinko board was open, meaning that the chips were occasionally able to bounce off of the board and out onto the stage, and had to be re-played. To remedy this problem, a Plexiglas cover was placed over the board; however, that became a problem when chips got stuck and had to be retrieved. The board's Plexiglas cover now features triangular grid shaped holes that prevents chips from flying out and still allows stuck chips to be knocked loose through the grid.
The only value on the board which has changed since the game was introduced is the center slot. It began at $5,000, with a top prize of $25,000. The slot was increased to $10,000 for the first time during the 25th-anniversary prime time special on August 23, 1996. The change was subsequently made on the regular daytime series on October 15, 1998.
The most anyone has ever won in Plinko is $21,000 on November 30, 1990 with the $5,000 slot;[1] $30,100 on December 25, 2007 with the current $10,000 slot; and $41,000 on May 7, 2008 on prime time specials with the $20,000 slot. The $21,000 win in 1990, with four Plinko chips landing in the center slot and one landing in $1,000, is the most successfully played game that can be played without being won (it would be $41,000 — or $81,000 on a prime time show — with the current values).
On March 14, 1995, every chip the contestant dropped landed in the zero slots. This has happened at least three other times, on March 26, 1996, December 10, 2003, and March 18, 2008.
[edit] Nighttime appearances
1994's syndicated The New Price is Right used the $25,000 top prize, however not the board layout described above. Most episodes featured a layout of $2,500, $500, $1,000, $0, $5,000, $0, $1,000, $500, $2,500. On Plinko's first appearance only, the game had a layout of $2,500, $1,000, $0, $5,000, $0, $5,000, $0, $1,000, $2,500. This version also used three-digit prizes and a "higher/lower" format for the small prizes.
For the Price is Right Live! stage show, the top prize is $2,500 with a layout of $50, $100, $200, $0, $500, $0, $200, $100, $50.
Beginning with the Military Specials in 2002, the center slot has been worth $20,000 on prime time specials, with a top prize of $100,000. The top prize was also $100,000 when Plinko was included on the Gameshow Marathon.
On the March 7 and May 7, 2008 Million-Dollar Spectaculars a $1,000,000 bonus was offered if a contestant could get a bonus golden chip in the $20,000 slot. The golden chip was won if a contestant could first get at least $60,000 (three regular chips in the $20,000 slot) during the normal gameplay. Neither playing featured such an amount won.
[edit] "Rigged board" incident
The Plinko board is often used by RTL Group-licensed lottery promotions, CBS affiliates, and Ubisoft to promote the show. For the promotions, two fishing lines (one on each side of the board, hanging from the side down towards the center slot) are used to "rig" the game, so the dropped chip would always land in the $10,000 slot. After an advertisement for the video game was taped, the wires were mistakenly left in place for the July 22, 2008 1:00 PM taping of The Price is Right.
As a contestant was playing the game, three consecutive chips she dropped landed in the $10,000 slot. As the fourth chip was being dropped, co-producer Adam Sandler (not to be confused with the actor) realized that the wires were still in place and stopped the chip as it bounced down the board, informing host Drew Carey of the situation. The wires were removed and the entire segment was re-shot for the show from the point where the contestant began dropping chips. CBS Standards and Practices allowed the contestant to keep the $30,000 won prior to the removal of the wires as well as the money won with the five chips after the mistake had been corrected. However, the segment that aired (when the show was broadcast on December 5, 2008) did not reference the mistake or the amount of money won prior to the removal of the wires.[1][2]
[edit] Foreign versions
[edit] United Kingdom
On Bruce's Price is Right and the subsequent Joe Pasquale version, Plinko was played differently. Instead of playing for just cash, contestants played for a bonus prize (usually a car). Once all chips were used, a model replaced the cash amounts with "Win/Lose/Win/Lose/Win/Lose", although contestants had the choice of keeping the money earned. If "Win" was hit the player kept the cash and won the prize, while "Lose" lost both the money and prize. On Forsyth's last season in 2001, there were also two spaces with pound (£) signs. If either one were hit, the player instead doubled the money they had risked.
To earn discs, the player had to determine which of two prices was correct for one particular item (similar to Double Prices). Up to three (later four) more discs could be won in this manner, in addition to the one disc given at the start. In the early days of the Forsyth version, the American method of pricing was used.
Money slots were £100, £250, & £500 (later changed to just £250 and £500), with the maximum being £2,500 (dropped to £2,000 in 1997). Only one contestant, Emon, managed to win the maximum in 1999, but quit with the money instead of playing for a motorcycle; host Bruce Forsyth had Emon drop the chip anyway to see "what would have happened" – the chip hit a "Lose" space.
The Pasquale version used amounts of £50, £100, and £150 for a maximum of £600. Otherwise, the rules were the same as the first six series of the Forsyth version. In the event that a disc got stuck, it still counted when it reached the bottom (although Pasquale simply shook the board). Plinko had an Asian theme on this version, although no reason was ever given for this.
[edit] Portugal and The Netherlands
Portugal's O Preço Certo and the Netherlands' Cash en Carlo used a similar format to the UK version, but for smaller prizes such as trips; in addition, contestants were forced to take the gamble for the higher-priced prize.
Portugal's version had the player trying to determine if the price of the given product was true or false (similar to Five Price Tags), and could earn up to four discs. In addition, its board had amounts of €100 and €200, with a maximum payout of €1,000.
[edit] Germany
Germany's Plinko was also played differently. The game offered no cash and was instead played for three prizes. The contestant was given one chip and could earn up to three more by winning small prizes. The board had seven slots, numbered 3-2-0-1-0-2-3. Hitting a "3" won the least expensive prize, 2 won the middle-priced prize, and 1 awarded the most expensive prize. Landing on 0, of course, won nothing with that chip.
[edit] Others
Still other countries, including Mexico's Atínale al Precio, Italy's OK, il Prezzo è Giusto!, France's Le Juste Prix, and Vietnam's Hãy chọn giá đúng, have used Plinko with the cash prizes offered being the only significant change. MX$25,000 is the max in Mexico, ₤10,000,000 [€5164] in Italy, 100,000₣ (€15,244) in France's original version (now €10,000), and 10,000 diem (10,000,000₫) in Vietnam.
Perhaps most notably, the lowest value on Vietnam's board is 200 diem (200,000₫), making it impossible to walk away from the game empty-handed.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
[edit] References
- ^ ""The Price Is Wrong! - TMZ.com"". "The Price is Wrong! - TMZ.com". TMZ.com. http://www.tmz.com/2008/07/29/the-price-is-wrong/. Retrieved 2008-07-29.
- ^ Drew Carey explains the Plinko incident
