CBS: (Late 1984 - Mid 1985)

Sometimes I wonder in the world of The Price Is Right, how do they come up with some of the pricing games?  Well, I have a theory.  Certain pricing games are created by taking inspiration from pricing games that are still in existence or retired, and adding a couple things to the game and making it a brand new game.  Think about it for a second. If you take the retired Double Digits, add in gifts that were worth more than $200 or so, and add in the risk of the car or keeping the gifts, and you have one of my favorite games in Temptation.

So, in the early 80s, a game would come around and become one of the most popular games in history.  They took the popular pastime of Mini-golf, and added the key element of the show in pricing items and we got Hole In One (or Two).  So, with that being as popular as it was, a spin-off game was created with more sports being played.  While they thought it was going to be a recipe for success, it became one of the biggest flops in the shows 40 year history.  It's time to go to the TPIR playing field and go On The Nose.

The game was played for a car and played in two parts.  The first part was quite simple.  The contestant was shown 4 prices, which were behind big door #2.  The contestant must then select the right price of the car.  If they do get it, or as they say "On The Nose", then they get 4 chances at the event and a $1,000 bonus.  If the price is the closest to the ARP of the car, they get 3 shots, then 2 shots for the price that's further away and only 1 shot that's farthest away.  It looks like they took the 2nd portion of 5 Price Tags and made it the first part of this game. 

I didn't think it was a bad way to start the game.  Usually it'll be exciting to see someone win the $1,000 bonus, which will more than make up for what was coming up, plus the reveal was very nice.  It would give you either the number of attempts you get or the On The Nose logo, in which the mid 80s $1,000 graphic shows up on your screen.  Either way, it was a great tease....

and then we see the utter disappointment that follows.  Now what the contestant must do on the Price Is Right Athletic Field is perform a "simple" sporting task in order to win the car.  For example, the contestant must throw a football through the Wide Receiver's arms...

Or pop a balloon with a dart...

Or throw a baseball through a hole...

Heck, they even had tennis where they had a contestant try to serve a ball through a hole.

Sadly, what all these stunts had in common was that most of them looked and felt impossible to win, which did illicit a very audible groan when the task was revealed.  It got to the point where even Bob was wondering why they were groaning.  Maybe it was because the audience knew that you had to have some sort of athletic competence in order to do this, whereas they figured they would get by with their knowledge of pricing items.  What made it worse is that unlike Hole In One, where in the better you did, the easier the putt was to make where if you got all the items in the right order, you got to make a 2 foot putt, where a person with zero golfing or mini-golf experience would be able to make the putt.  For On The Nose, it was balls hard to begin with and it wasn't made any easier by getting the exact price of the car, you just had more attempts at the goal.  Not to mention, the contestants knew the game was like the half-time or pre-game publicity stunts that sporting events would do in order to give cars or cash away.  So the game ended up featuring loss....

after loss...

after nauseating loss....

after painful loss.

So when the season came to the end, the Price Is Right Athletic Field was renovated into the Johnny Olson Memorial Parking Lot and was quietly retired.  It could have been a good pricing game if they had a set amount of tries, like 3 but the closer to the price you got, the easier the game was made, like Hole in One.  But since this game focused more on athletic prowess rather than knowing the pricing of the car to make it easier, it was doomed.  I mean, the pricing part was there, but that was just for a $1,000 bonus and more tries.  It's like certain physical games on The Cube without the help of a Simplify.  Either way, it was a nice concept and the setup was slick, but it was all style and the substance was non-existent and it fell apart faster than the Triple Crown of Polo.