This is one of those things that occurred to me completely out of the blue. It’s not a perfect system (“Blockbusters” is meaningless and “Beat The Geeks” is just confusing) but it works beautifully a decent percentage of the time. The game shows mentioned in this strip are among the first that occurred to me – I did scour Wikipedia for funnier titles after my first draft, but unfortunately some of the best ones were shows I’d never heard of and which you’ve probably never heard of, like “All About Faces,” “Hold Everything,” “Alumni Fun,” “The Big Payoff,” “That’s My Dog,” “Finders Keepers,” the amazing “Do You Trust Your Wife,” the jaw-droppingly unnecessary “My Dad Is Better Than Your Dad,” and my personal favorite: “Let’s Play Post Office.”
MRS. SHOEBOX’S ASSESSMENT OF TODAY’S STRIP: I laughed even though you already told me about it, so it must not suck!
In other news, remember a few strips ago when I went off on how I used to win pizzas with the Little Caesar “Brain Teaser” games? Well, thanks to the obsessive insistence of nostalgia and the miracle of Internet commerce, look what showed up on my doorstep last Friday!
That’s right, I can now win pizzas (or in this case Crazy Bread, as that’s the highest prize on this machine…clearly it’s from a severely cheapass Little Caesars) from the comfort of my very own basement! It’s shown here with a button I rigged to bypass coin insertion, but the coin-accepting mechanism has since been repaired by my lovely wife, who not only figured out what sort of piece was missing from the device but fabricated a replacement for it out of copper. Seriously, people, marry a metalsmith. You’ll never look back.
-=ShoEboX=-
That’s awesome! … and the strip’s not bad either
From the ESPN archives, how about “Stump the Scwab”?
Where in the world is Carmen San Diego?
And thinking about it, what with Bob Barker’s fixation on spaying and neutering, does anybody really want “The Price Is Right” in their pants?
Numberwang!
The Joker’s Wild
Name That Tune
Password (like having a safeword, but with celebrity guests)
Sale of the Century (for professionals)
Wheel of Fish (eeeewww)
That’s great, I love it when the punchline doesn’t appear til the very end and ease your confusion over the rest of it.
@BigNet–That’s Numberwang!
…no one has suggested Jeopardy? Or Win Ben Stein’s Money? Or Beat the Geeks?
“Wheel of Fish?” I suppose that’s something for the LBGT crowd. Like “Queen For a Day.”
Sorta glad “Beat the Geeks” wasn’t used — it sounds like a one-player show.
Yahoo provides a huge list, including “2 Minute Drill”, “$50,000 a Minute”, “The Dating Game”, “Funhouse”, “Press Your Luck”, “Second Chance”, “Show Me The Money”, “Strike It Rich”, “Temptation”, “Whammy”…
These actually sound like good gigolo names.
Of course, the worst game show title to be so appended is ABC’s Split Second….
“Cash cab”?
the worst? ‘most extreme elimination challenge’
Really? Nobody thought of The Newlywed Game or Joker’s Wild?
Minute to Win it?
Press Your Luck?
Beat the Geeks?
WIN BEN STEIN’S MONEY???
I could do this all day…
How about Two and a Half Men
Obligatory: Not only is this the second time this art was used, but the previous one (“Working Late”) *also* had a joke about appending a phrase to various things.
This is a good way to guarantee that the comic strip gets read twice by everybody!
“Almost Anything Goes”
“Match Game”
“What’s My LIne?”
“Kids Say the Darndest Things”
“America’s Funniest Home Video”