I've been watching a lot of 1991-1994 Supermarket Sweep
 

And uh

This show is CAPITALISM: THE GAME SHOW and it makes me feel gross
but at the same time, damn this is a good setup for a game show


the 2020 revival kind of sucks, but I think it's just because Leslie Jones says YASSSSSSS too much


Canadian Supermarket Sweep is fuckin weird and they all have fanny packs, I think for their lav mics, instead of a belt clip? I guess? S'weird.

Anyway Supermarket Sweep is fun.

The adjusted rules in the 2020 series also bother me a little bit

90s show had $25 penalties if you knocked something off the shelves and didn't pick it up, and some sort of penalty for running into someone's cart or a cameraman

The new show seems to have removed that rule (as well as bumping the item limit from 5->6) but like
nobody takes advantage of it to just start free wheel tossing shit into their carts
They just knock shit over and move on
And that lowers the stakes a bit, I think

A thing that I really enjoy about the 90s episodes is uh

So quick rule of thumb, $1 in 1992 = $2 in 2022, close enough. I think it's 1.9x or something

But then you do that math, and then you have to take a guess in your brain if like, a certain food was just more expensive 30 years ago just because of technology or it's exotic and there's not enough demand to form a standard supply chain etc

Like this episode told me that a can of tuna was $2.85, which like
fuckin $6 can of tuna? how? what?

And I find it kind of ironic that the 2020 show is a lot less of an ad than the 90s show? Like I would expect a modern revision, with 10x the prize, to be even more ads, but it's somehow not. A lot of the """"trivia""" is just about food rather than BRAND DO YOU KNOW THE BRAND YOU LOVE THE BRAND and instead it's "strawberries"
and the 90s show has the bonus prizes as like, a giant inflatable can of CAMPBELLS SOUP REMEMBER THE BRAND YOU LOVE THE CAMPBELLS and the 2020s show is "yeah it's a pizza shaped pool float."
2020 show isn't even sponsored by a ham company

I got that good good medical weed

and while it's easier for me to hold nostalgia to the late 90s-2001 episodes

somehow the super early 90s ones just hit a lot harder

David Ruprecht wearing a sweater? Nothing better.
David Ruprecht in a shirt and tie? It'll be fine.

also like
it's weird to ponder if like
did this fuckin thing just come out?

I watched three people not get very obvious clues for I Can't Believe It's Not Butter, so I guessed like, aight, late 80s maybe, whatever-- First out in 1981

Also see a lot of people not get Progresso, a frequent clue, but that's been around forever and confuses me. Like, hella easy questions, hella dumb people in a stressful environment, but there's like two brands of soup, and I can't explain it


Inverse- something fascinating when the brands don't exist anymore, especially when they're comparing the price of 3 distinct brands that don't exist any more.

I guess it's like... if I watch some stuff from the 50s-60s it's stuff that my parents grew up with, but it's completely foreign to me and super easy to divorce myself from- but I was alive when this show was airing, so I guess it's maybe hitting some of them Mandela Effect neurons or something

Like, there's no possible way that this is a product that you could purchase in the fucking 1990s, right?

Have you ever
EVER

seen someone use the coffee grinder in a grocery store?
like
take a bag of whole bean coffee off the shelf
and grind it up
at the store

I'm sure it was different in 1993 but right now I've got a fancy automatic burr grinder and it cost me $50 to grind it fresh every day, and I had a $15 grinder before that. Why do these machines exist in stores?

in the 91-94 era, before they started dropping loads of extra bonuses, final scores would be like, $700-1200
And like yknow
Subtract some bonuses, you pull out $300 of groceries in ~3 minutes, alright, yeah, okay, I do plenty of $300 grocery trips, and I'm not throwing 5 fuckin turkeys in my buggy

But the 2020 show, they're pulling like $2500 cart totals and like
nah man
no you didn't
this is bullshit
I know what things cost right now.

Seems like you’re using a very different kind of grinder to me

https://twitter.com/SweepScreens

Woo I made a bot

hahaha I came across that bot on Twitter and was a bit weirded out when I saw this thread

yeah right !

Nice.