Home Shopping Game (1987)

The "Home Shopping Game" was among a handful of ill-fated game shows that attempted to cash in on the exploding popularity of shop-at-home networks, a relatively new concept at the time. Two contestants competed in the game portion. Announcer Circosta reads a description of a merchandise item, which viewers can purchase by calling a special 1-800 number. Contestants answered general knowledge questions to earn the right to correct the placement of one letter in a scrambled word; up to three words were scrambled per round (worth $100 for the first word, $200 for the second and $300 for the third). Correctly identifying two of the three words in each round won the player the merchandise item just described. Four rounds were played, with the double stakes for the last two rounds. The highest money winner of the day played a two-part bonus game. In the first half, the player was shown the first letter of each word in a well-known phrase (e.g., N------ V------- N------ G-----). A correct guess after seeing just one letter of each word won the player $2,000; the value of the phrase decreased in value for each letter revealed down to $100 (correct answer: "NOTHING VENTURED NOTHING GAINED"). In the second part of the bonus game, the contestant was given one of the phrase words and had 30 seconds to form as many words of at least three letters using that word. The player won cash based on the number of acceptable new words formed.