As one TV executive told Forbes in 1992, “In markets where programming is scarce, nothing sells better than game shows. Game shows are one of America’s most plentiful natural resources. They are now available for your viewing pleasure on YouTube, thanks to loyal fans who recorded the show during its golden age of exportation and its years of subsequent syndication. Altogether, at least 12 countries produced versions of the show. Ukraine and Greece had their own Supermarket Sweeps. In Vietnam, there was Siêu T hị M ay M ắn. And, like many other popular game shows, it was repackaged and resold internationally, creating Supermarket Sweep clones that aired on nearly every continent. A 1992 New York magazine review of a TV production of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead concluded, “Still, even mediocre Stoppard on TV is superior to Supermarket Sweep.”Īs you might have heard, the program is getting revived more than a dozen years after it went off the air. If you could put only one thing in a time capsule from the ’90s to show what America was like back then, a box of recorded episodes on videotapes - replete with perms and economic sunniness predicated on a shoddy premise - would do the trick. If the above sentence gives you nostalgic pangs for Lifetime’s ’90s offerings or reminds you that a channel called PAX once existed, you, of course, know the store in question was located on a studio lot in Los Angeles and was used to film a game show. But when these customers return to their regular grocery purveyor, you can be sure that when they hear the beep, they’re thinking of all the fun they could be having on Supermarket Sweep. After the shoppers finish checking out, they leave the food behind. Jugs of Mazola oil, bags of coffee, diapers, and a herd of colanders are chucked in the cart.
They heave five of them in their cart before heading to the wedges of imported Swiss cheese, which cost $24 apiece. Nearly every customer runs to the back of the store, cart careening wildly through the aisles, until they reach the gourmet hams.
In this store, no one has ever witnessed a customer buying a fruit or vegetable, unless you count the inflatable bananas that women in baggy red sweaters sometimes sprint through the canned goods aisle to get. But there is one supermarket chain with locations all over the globe where that never happens. When you walk into your neighborhood grocery store, you might first drift toward the inviting rainbow of the produce section conveniently located near the entrance, optimistically loading your cart with bananas and broccoli before being tempted by the corn-laden pleasures that lurk deeper in the market.
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