In My Footsteps: A Gen-X Nostalgia Podcast

Episode 181: Weird 1960s News Stories, Supermarket Sweep/Shop til You Drop, 1980s Music Fails(2-5-2025)

• Christopher Setterlund • Season 1 • Episode 181

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Two shopping-based game shows? Weird but true news stories from the 1960s? Laughable 1980s music fails?

Episode 181 kicks off the month of love with some nostalgia sweeter than candy hearts.

It all starts with a look back to the strangeness of the past. Weird but true news stories from the 1960s are on the docket. From innocent to malicious, from dirty to downright crazy, these stories all seem like they couldn't be true, but oh they are.

Shopping can be a contact sport, just ask people during Black Friday sales. However, we go way back in the day to look at a pair of shopping-based game shows. Supermarket Sweep and Shop Til You Drop both carved a niche in the 1990s. Fast-paced, fun, frantic, these words can all describe these shows. 

The 1980s were a great decade for music. Judging by this week's Top 5 some might disagree. We will look back at some of the biggest music failures of the 80s. From albums to videos to musicals that shouldn't have existed. It's all here.

There is a new This Week In History and Time Capsule centered around the first Groundhog Day celebration.

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Speaker 01:

Hello world, and welcome to the In My Footsteps podcast. I am Christopher Setterlund, coming to you from the vacation destination known as Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and this is episode 181. We're officially in February, the month of love. You will love all this nostalgia I got coming for you just in a few minutes here. We're going to kick it off with some funny, weird, bizarre news stories from the 1960s. Most of these you won't believe are true. We're going to go way, way back in the day and do a double dip of shopping game shows as we look back at Supermarket Sweep and Shop Till You Drop. There'll be a brand new top five that will feature the top five musical failures of the 1980s. There are some obvious ones and some you'll be surprised by. And there'll be a brand new This Week in History and Time capsule centered around the very first Groundhog Day. All of that is coming up right now on episode 181 of the In My Footsteps podcast. Ah yes, February, the month of love. The shortest month of the year, but unfortunately it's also smack dab in the middle of winter. I'm sure somewhere it's a beautiful day in the neighborhood depending on where you're listening from. I don't record these on the day they come out on Wednesday, so I don't know if it's going to be nice on that day. I can tell you it's currently chilly and rainy, so that's just a perfect combination. But I'm recording the podcast to share with all of you, so that at least gives me a little bit of joy. I can't kick this podcast off without thanking my Patreon subscribers, Lori, Mary Lou, Ashley, Kevin, Leo, Marguerite, Neglectoid, Crystal, thank you so much for being my biggest fans, my backers. I hope you all enjoy the new bonus podcast episode that went up on February 1st. I've also got something planned for Valentine's Day. It's already finished. It's in the can. It just has to go up on Patreon. $5 a month gets you access to all of that bonus content on Patreon. But as I say always, I'm trying to increase my free tier. That includes sharing an old e-book that I made probably back in 2008. Back when I was still trying to celebrate Valentine's Day even on my own. It was a book I called Love Is. It was filled with poetry that I wrote. I had a lot of my female family, friends... choose some of their favorites of my poetry to kind of make the book so it was made by women. That I am sharing on Patreon on the free tier so you can check that out. As far as other fun and excitement, the end of this month will see me filming a couple of my scenes for my very first acting role, the indie horror film that's directed, produced by Frank Durant. One neat thing, I am playing myself. I'm playing a podcaster. Like, I'm going to be doing this type of show in parts of the movie. I know, it's a hard role to play myself. Anyway, one of the scenes, I have a sponsor for the podcast, but it's unnamed. So what I've done is I've put out a blast on social media, seeing if there are any Cape Cod area businesses that want to be my sponsor. Obviously, it has to be kind of a product that I can hold up for the camera as I'm recording. So that does limit it a little bit, but that's fine. We'll see. I put the blast out on the day that I'm recording the podcast. So if I get one or if I get several sponsors, I'll let you know. Frank said if we get several sponsors that want to be a part of the movie, he'll find ways to write them into the script. Other than that, currently when it comes to my acting role, it's memorizing my script, my lines, trying to get down nuances. I've never acted before. I mean, people would say I act like a fool, but I'm in an actual movie role. I'm just trying to do my best to make it the best it can be because you never know. Maybe it's my one and only acting gig ever, or maybe it leads to something else. You just never know. I don't want to take it for granted. I'll keep you updated as my filming adventures go on. But right now, let's dive into the meat of this podcast. Let's talk about some of the weirdest, most bizarre stories that I could find from the 1960s. You won't believe some of these are real. This is definitely going to be a segment filled with laughter and head shaking, but you won't be able to hear my head shake unless my neck cracks when I do it, and that's probably not good. Back in episode 158, I did a segment on weird news stories from the 1970s. So if you want to go and check that out, it's got a lot of weird things in there. That was fun to do. This was fun to research, and it's going to be even more fun to share with you. There might be, when I look at these, I've got eight different stories. And when I look at them, some of you out there, listeners that grew up in the 60s, you probably have some memories of this. There's definitely one that I will go back. I will say that I do have some knowledge of. Let me just start this off with one immediately that just makes me shake my head with what in the world is going on. Let me take you back to September of 1960. And one of the weirdest divorce stories that I think I've ever heard. The gist of it is that a couple from Cincinnati got divorced. The reason why is the problem. The wife, Rita Adams, complained that her husband, Earl, never talked to her. Which that immediately is like, okay, why'd you get married if you never want to talk to each other? But then, during this court case, Rita Adams went on to say that her husband Earl did odd things. And what were these odd things? Well, according to this news story, they included things like squeezing a tomato in my face, is what she said. Can you imagine that? It's just, it's so ridiculous, but so specific. You imagine being the wife, being Rita Adams, and you're just sitting at the dining room table. Your husband just walks in, never talks to you, just grabs a tomato out of the fridge and just squeezes it in your face. I'm assuming based on the news story that I read that he didn't smash it in her face, but he just squeezed it like juice would be in her eye. It's like that's the start of this segment is this foolishness. Let's move on, though, to the next one that it's even crazier. For this, we are going back to January 1963, and we're leaving the United States to go to Sydney, Australia. We are looking at an unnamed woman. She didn't give her name, and I wouldn't either. She was driving from Sydney to Melbourne, Australia, and I can only assume this must have been at night. because there's nobody that could be this stupid. So this woman was driving in a car with her two young sons, and she drove into a tunnel. She's driving down the tunnel, driving, driving, and she finally, about a half mile in, she ends up hitting something called a pit prop. Now, what is a pit prop? It is a wooden beam used to temporarily support the roof of a mine, tunnel, or shaft. So there you go. This woman mistook a mine shaft for a tunnel and drove half mile down into this mine shaft and only realized it wasn't a tunnel when she hit a wooden beam. The woman emerged from the mine shaft with her sons six hours after she drove into it. She said that she took a wrong turn on a mountain road and mistook the mine shaft for a tunnel. Again, I go back to this had to be at night because is there any of you out there that if you're driving that you would mistake a tunnel for a mine shaft or vice versa? Everything worked out fine. They had to get mine employees to go down into the shaft and push her car out. And hopefully they gave her directions like, get the hell out of here. This next story is every bit creepy as it is weird. We're in June, 1963. We're back in the United States in the state of Texas and a man named Ralph Farrar. This man, Ralph Farrar, he suffered from a condition known as hemochromatosis, which means that his blood accumulated too much iron. And he ended up having to have a pint of blood taken from his regularly because the iron would build up in the heart, liver and pancreas and cause complications. So he had to have this done. But the thing is, when he would get the blood drawn with too much iron in it, it couldn't be used to help anyone else. So as a side note, Ralph Farrer, I guess he had a beautiful garden of beautiful roses. And people would ask him, how do you get these beautiful roses? And you can see where this is going. Mr. Farrer used his heavily ironed blood to fertilize his roses. All I keep thinking of is Little Shop of Horrors with Audrey 2. That one of these roses would just come to life and be screaming at him, feed me, Ralph. I mean, I guess it's good that he was honest, but man, if you're asked about that, would you want to share it? Yeah, I fertilize my roses with my blood. That's why they look so good. This next story, this is one of the ones that it made me laugh so much because it is so ridiculous, but yet so specific again. We're in June 1966 and we're in Texas again. Boy, a lot of weird stuff happens there. This has to do with a couple that are buried alive practitioners that they literally get buried alive and they have a pipe that goes down into whatever casket they're in to have air and then food drop down to them. This is a hobby of theirs that they enjoy doing. The couple is Lottie Howard and Country Bill White. So I guess they had something in common that brought them together. Anyway, after being buried alive for a week outside of a drive-in theater in Denison, Texas, Lottie Howard married Country Bill White. Then they went off on their honeymoon. No word if they were buried alive on the beach in Cancun or something to celebrate. This is where the story is just, if you don't laugh, I don't know. The marriage did not last. Lottie ended up divorcing country Bill White two years later. The way she did it is she served him his divorce papers while he was buried alive in Austin, Texas. She had a sheriff's deputy roll the papers up and send them down the pipe that he was using for air and food. I mean, can you imagine that? Just the absurdity of this scene. This man is buried alive and he hears something coming down the pipe and he thinks it's something to eat and it's divorce papers. And what's he going to do? Immediately yell up. I need to be retrieved so I can go and beg my wife to take me back. It's like when you hear about weird hobbies that people have, I don't think anything would talk being buried alive for fun. Oh, and the best part was that Lottie Howard, her nickname was Mrs. Living Corpse. So there's that. In the 1960s, obviously one of the biggest things then and one of the biggest things of the 20th century was the rock band The Beatles. So I got two weird stories that have to do with them. One, I won't gloss over it, but it's the one thing that I'm sure a lot of you know about. And that's the urban legend about Paul McCartney being dead. For those that don't know this story, in 1966 there was an urban legend that started that Beatles member Paul McCartney had actually died and he was replaced with a lookalike. And there were supposedly clues in the music, there were imagery, especially the Abbey Road cover album where Paul McCartney has no shoes on, like he's supposed to be a corpse. Not Mrs. Living Corpse, but an actual one. I mean, it's the same old conspiracy theory garbage that you hear today, where everyone looks for super deep meaning in everything that's not there. McCartney came out. He's like, no, I'm not dead. The Beatles management came out. No, he's not dead. But people still to this day persist that, no, the real Paul McCartney died in a car accident in 1966. But then we get into the story of one of the ultimate Beatles super fans. 12-year-old Carol Dryden. This is from June 1966. She was 12 years old. She lived in Sunderland, England, and she came up with a scheme of how to meet the Beatles. This was by mailing herself to them. So this did not go well. She put herself in a box and And immediately there were probably red flags when the address said, To the Beatles, care of their fan club, London. Like if you did that today and had a box that said, To Taylor Swift, care of her fan club, that thing would have bomb-sniffing dogs around it before it even left her house. She actually got as far as a railway station, but a clerk noticed that the box she was in was wobbling back and forth. And the reason it was wobbling is because she was trying to take her sweater off because she got hot and she hadn't put any air holes in the box. She had no air. She didn't bring any food. She hadn't thought this through. So if she had actually gotten mailed, she probably would have suffocated and died. And then the Beatles would open the box and there's a dead girl inside. There's a great present for you. Next, we move on to something that is still weird news to this day, and that is UFOs, UAPs, whatever the hell they want to call it now, flying saucers. We go to September 1967 in southern England and reports of six flying saucers being spotted all over the place. Obviously, these were a hoax perpetrated by Farnborough College's upcoming Rag Week, which was the beginning of 1967. The saucers were fiberglass and then covered them in metal. Inside each flying saucer was electronic equipment that would make an eerie sound. These saucers were then driven into selected locations in the dead of night and left there emitting that weird sound. When these were noticed, the military came out and they approached one of these flying saucers and drilled into it. and there was a mixture inside that exploded, and it covered the police in a foul-smelling slime. The people responsible were Christopher Southall and Roger Palmer that were both 21. They claimed that they didn't think this hoax would create such a media storm. Luckily for them, there were no action taken against them, and they actually raised £2,000 for charity. And the final weird news story from the 60s, at least for this part one, comes in book form. This is a story of a 1969 novel titled Naked Came the Stranger. The book was credited to a woman named Penelope Ash, but she was not a real person. This book was a literary hoax that poked fun at the American literary culture of the time. It was written by 24 journalists led by Newsday columnist Mike McGrady. And McGrady's intention was to write a book that was deliberately terrible and contained a lot of descriptions of sex to illustrate the point that American literary culture had become mindlessly vulgar. And the book actually fulfilled all of those writers' expectations. It became a bestseller. And then after they revealed the hoax later in 1969, it became more popular. The gist of the book itself, the story, is a couple, Jillian and William Blake, that host a popular New York City radio program. Jillian finds out that her husband is having an affair, so she decides to cheat on him with a variety of different men from their neighborhood. In the time since its release, Naked Came the Stranger has sold nearly half a million copies. And it's just a weird story, both in the pages of the book and just these two dozen writers that said, let's make a terrible sex novel and see if it sells. But there you go. Eight of the weirdest news stories I could find from the 1960s. Don't worry, this will be a segment that I will be doing for a lot of different decades, 80s, 90s, probably even 50s. Because it seems like the further back in time you go, the weirder stuff you find. But what to you is the weirdest story of the ones that I shared? I still go with Mrs. Living Corpse. That's just the funniest one. Divorcing your husband while he's buried alive. That's great. This week in history, we are going back 138 years ago to February 2nd, 1887, and the very first Groundhog Day. I had debated putting in some sort of a tie to the Groundhog Day movie, maybe repeating what I just said or something like that, but then I realized, no, this has to do with the holiday. The roots of Groundhog Day are traced all the way back to ancient European traditions. with the holiday's predecessor, Candlemas Day, being celebrated on February 2nd as a Christian feast marking the midpoint between the winter solstice and spring equinox. So literally as deep into winter as you can get without spring being on the way. Over time, folklore emerged linking weather predictions to this day, Candlemas Day. with an old English rhyme being, if Candlemas Day be fair and bright, winter will have another flight. If Candlemas Day brings cloud and rain, winter won't come again. I guess to make it rhyme. German settlers brought this tradition to America where they substituted the groundhog for the European hedgehog as the weather prognosticator. The epicenter of Groundhog Day celebrations is Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, home to the world-famous Punxsutawney Phil. Each year, thousands of visitors gather at Gobbler's Knob to witness Phil's prediction. According to tradition, if Phil sees his shadow, there will be six more weeks of winter. If he does not, spring will arrive early. And if you've seen Bill Murray's classic 1993 movie Groundhog Day, you know the festivities in Punxsutawney include a lot more than just Phil's forecast. There's parades, live music, food, speeches from members of the inner circle, a group of top-hatted individuals responsible for caring for Phil and interpreting his predictions. So they speak Groundhog. Here are a few fun facts about Groundhog Day. According to folklore, there has only ever been one Punxsutawney Phil, so he's immortal. The inner circles say Phil's longevity is due to the magical elixir of life he drinks every summer. Now, despite his fame, Phil's weather predictions are not reliable, so don't base your vacations on what he says. Studies show his accuracy rate hovers around 39%. That being said, if he was a baseball player, he'd be a Hall of Famer with the highest batting average ever. One fun fact that I love to share is the fact that there's other weather predicting animals out there. In Canada, there's Wyerton Willie, a white groundhog who is beloved. Staten Island Chuck and General Beauregard Lee are also notable forecasters in New York and Georgia, respectively. And just so you know, both of them are groundhogs as well. So even though there's other animals that predict the weather besides Punxsutawney Phil, it seems to be something that only groundhogs can do. There is no hurricane predicting horse, blizzard predicting bear, slightly foggy sleet day snail. I don't know. The main thing at its core is Groundhog Day is a lighthearted celebration that breaks up the winter doldrums. And it brings a significant economic boost to Punxsutawney. Millions of dollars annually for Tourism for Groundhog Day. And that first ever Groundhog Day... where supposedly the original Punxsutawney Phil, the only one made his predictions, happened 138 years ago this week in history. I tried my best to find the time where Sonny and Cher's I Got You Babe was the number one song, just to be fitting for the brand new time capsule. Unfortunately, that was in August and not February, back in 1965. So I chose an arbitrary date, Groundhog Day, 1971, February 2nd, 54 years ago. What was going on in the world of pop culture back then? Let's find out. The number one song was Knock Three Times by Dawn. It's credited as just Dawn, but it's Tony Orlando and Dawn. This is off of the album Candida by Dawn. And the reason that Tony Orlando was going by Dawn was that he actually had a contract with another record label. So it was like he was cheating on his record label and his cheat song went to number one. It eventually sold more than six million copies, the single. Tony Orlando has sold more than 100 million albums during his career, and only last year in 2024 did he finally end his singing career. The number one movie was Love Story, and you could get into the theater with a ticket costing $1.65. This movie stars Ryan O'Neill and Ali McGraw as two people from different backgrounds who fall in love. The film was a massive hit, making more than $173 million on a budget of $2.2 million. This would put its box office at about $1.4 billion when adjusted for inflation to 2025, so there's no denying how big this movie was. The number one TV show was The Flip Wilson Show. This was a variety show starring comedian Flip Wilson. that ran for four seasons between 1970 and 1974, and a total of 94 episodes. Wilson's most famous character was Geraldine Jones, and his clout as a comedian allowed him to get some massive stars on that show, like George Carlin, Richard Pryor, The Jackson 5, The Temptations. And if you were around back then, February 2nd, 1971, Maybe you were needing to go to the grocery store to get some food before you sit down and watch the Flip Wilson show. Well, you're in luck. There's a great circular from A&P Supermarket this week. Now you can get yourself four bouquet pattern stainless tablespoons for $1.29. But the star of the show is the Jane Parker baked goods. 22 ounce lemon pies for 49 cents. Jane Parker Donuts, three dozen for a dollar, man. And for those of you that might have grown up back then that are familiar with the Jane Parker Bakery, they are still around. JaneParker.com, you can order your favorites. And on their website, they even say their claim to fame as being the main baker of the A&P supermarkets. It is a bit of a dated reference as A&P went out of business 10 years ago, which I actually thought they went out of business long before that. But still, there's a lot of younger people out there that have no clue what A&P is. And on that sad note, that ends another time capsule, another This Week in History. Oh, but the failures, you can smell them in the air. We got a brand new top five music fails of the 1980s. Oh, get ready for them. This is going to be a lot of fun. Failures take lots of shapes and sizes. And this is a new topic that I have researched for the podcast, for the top fives. Music fails of certain decades. What I tried to do here is not make it just albums that failed. There has to be more than just that. So I've got loads of different things. I do have failures of albums, songs, genres of music, music videos. Oh, man. I always go on and on about how I love the fact that I'm so lucky to have been able to be a child of the 80s. This top five is making it where I'm shaking my head like, do I really mean that? Yes, I do. As with many of these top fives, there are some honorable mentions, and the top five itself is in no particular order. So let's get into this top five so you who grew up in the 80s like me can shake your head in amazement at some of this. Honorable mentions for music fails of the 1980s include the band Jethro Tull winning a Grammy Award for Heavy Metal Artist. This was in 1989, and they won the Hard Rock Metal Vocal Grammy over Metallica. Literally metal in their name. Jethro Tull has flutes in it. It's like heavy metal flute music. Another honorable mention is the Clash album Cut the Crap from 1985. This album was The Clash's last album ever and was a massive failure compared to their previous album which included the all-time classic song Rock the Casbah. Another honorable mention is the Birdie song by The Tweets from 1981. This is also known as that god-awful chicken dance song that you can probably hear in your head. And the last honorable mention is the song Stars, the charity song by the heavy metal all-star group Hear N. Aid. The group was led by Ronnie James Dio, members of Dokken, Quiet Riot, Judas Priest, Blue Oyster Cult, and others. So those are the honorable mentions for music fails of the 1980s. I apologize if that chicken dance song is still in your head. Well, get ready. I'm going to put more bad stuff into your brains right now. Let's kick off the actual top five with number one. Captain EO. Michael Jackson's sci-fi fantasy musical short film. This was Michael Jackson at the very peak of his thriller fame. 1986. This was before he released the Bad album. and was pretty much the first new music he did since Thriller, unless you count We Are the World. This was shown once on television, on MTV. The film was in 3D and shown in Disney theme parks from 1986 to 1998, and again after Michael Jackson's death. But it was shown once on TV, has never been released on any sort of home media. And the only way you can find it is bootleg versions on YouTube. If you want to go, you can watch Captain EO. It does have a pretty good song, We Are Here to Change the World, which is worth a listen if you've never heard it before because it's Michael Jackson at the peak of his fame, even though the movie is terrible. Number two is Billy Squire's Rock Me Tonight video. Billy Squire was a pretty popular rock musician in the early 1980s. And he figured MTV was gaining steam and gaining popularity. So in June 1984, he released the song Rock Me Tonight from his album Signs of Life. And he released the music video, which it's unbelievable. The song Rock Me Tonight was his highest charting song, but it was also his last hit because of the video. where he essentially destroyed his macho rock image, writhing around and dancing in this bedroom with a white t-shirt but a pink low-hanging tank top over it. It is said that after this video came out that immediately ticket sales for Billy Squire concerts went down. He ended up firing his management because of this video. It's amazing. He had some big-time songs in the early 80s. The Stroke, Lonely is the Night, My Kinda Lover, and then he had this video, and boom, that was over. Number three is The Death of Disco Music. Your timeline may vary, but disco music was on its last legs as the 80s started. The disco demolition night in the summer of 1979 was kind of the beginning of the end. But you had punk, new wave music, growing college alternative music in the early 80s, and the emergence of hip-hop music. The waters start to get muddied by 1982-83, where you have songs that are probably more classified as R&B that could be disco but probably aren't. You had artists that had done big business during disco, like the Bee Gees, Kool and the Gang, Casey and the Sunshine Band. Even Michael Jackson, altering their styles a little bit. The last true disco number one song was Funky Town by Lips Incorporated, and that's March 1980. So the exact year that disco really went away is up for debate, but there's no doubt that by the mid-80s it was all but a memory. Number four on the list of music fails of the 1980s is Carrie the Musical. Yes, this is a musical based on the infamous Stephen King horror movie. You want to talk about movies that don't really lend themselves to be musicals. Those of you that have seen Carrie, could you imagine that being on a Broadway stage with songs? The show premiered in England in February 1988, and it even had mixed reviews then. And it was transferred to Broadway for $8 million. The show started previews on April 28th, and at the end of the first show, there were boos mixed in with cheers at the end of the performance. The show closed after only 16 previews and 5 full performances in May. For the last show on May 15th, 1988, the theater was only 62% full. Yeesh, what a disaster. Oh, but speaking of disasters, I'm sure a lot of you were thinking of this one. Finally, number five on the list of musical fails of the 1980s is the song We Built This City by Starship. Starship used to be known as Jefferson Starship and before that Jefferson Airplane, a late 60s psychedelic band, White Rabbit. This song, this video, it is so 80s cheese. It is so bad. It destroyed the band. This is from Starship's 1985 album Knee Deep in the Hoopla. And the song went to number one, which is amazing. But if you look up any list of either worst songs of the 80s or worst songs ever, I promise you this is near or at the top. Starship actually had two other major hit songs, Sarah and Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now, which it all depends on your taste in music. I enjoy both of those songs. They're not as bad as We Built This City, but maybe it's Rose Colored Glasses from growing up then. So there you have it. Top five musical fails of the 1980s. I'm figuring those that are my age are probably familiar with most of them, except maybe Carrie the musical, which was the one I'd never heard of until I researched this. Next up, Friday the 13th, the musical with Jason breakdancing. So we go from terrible fails to a couple of better ways to spend your money in game show form. So let's talk about supermarket sweep and shop till you drop. The older I get and the more years that are in between present day and when my grandparents passed away, the more I kind of look for reasons, excuses to talk about them, to kind of keep them alive. But naturally in podcast form, in a nostalgia podcast form, I'm not going to just tell stories all the time about my grandparents. I want to make it where... A lot of you can relate. And that includes finding things, shows, foods, music, whatever, that reminds me of my grandparents that then you also can remember if you're of a certain age group. That is where this Back in the Day segment originated. The game show supermarket sweep is fully entwined with my nana. Because I remember watching that show. The only place I watched it was at her house. And then as I was thinking about it, I also thought of the game Shop Till You Drop. And I said, well, they're kind of two sides of the same coin. I figured rather than milk it and have two different segments, I would combine them into one. Television game shows have entertained audiences for decades, for generations. You go all the way back to radio even before, 1940s, 50s. But there are a few that capture the thrill of an everyday activity like shopping. You know, none quite like supermarket sweep and shop till you drop. They didn't just offer entertainment, but it was chaos and strategy with shopping. This wasn't just make your list and go into... Stop and Shop or Kroger or Publix and get what you need. This was how do you win the game? Interestingly, Supermarket Sweep first premiered in 1965 on ABC and was created by producer Al Howard.

Speaker 00:

It's Supermarket Sweep, the show that comes to your hometown and gives you a chance to run wild through your supermarket.

Speaker 01:

The concept for the game was simple, but it was ingenious. Contestants would answer trivia questions to earn time for a shopping spree. And in that shopping spree, the goal was to grab the highest dollar total in groceries. There were three teams, and you started with a base time of 1 minute 30 seconds for your shopping spree. And then there were four items shown and you'd have a contestant try to guess the retail price of it. And whoever got closest would get 15 extra seconds. So you could theoretically get two minutes and 30 seconds total of supermarket sweep time. This original version only lasted for two years. It was from 1965 to 1967. And I guess it's considered what would be a modest success. But the thing is, this type of shopping spree game show, that concept is timeless. And so the revival of the show is what I remember. The new supermarket sweep debuted on Lifetime Network in 1990. It was hosted by Dave Ruprecht. He's basically only known for Supermarket Sweet. But I remember as a kid watching this, so I would have been 12, 13 when this show came on. I thought that Dave Ruprecht was David Leisure. And those from the 80s know David Leisure was a fictional character called Joe Isuzu in the Isuzu automobile commercials. I mean, if you look them up, they look pretty similar. Even to this day, they're both in their 70s. This revival of the show became more of a cult hit. It had a quirky energy, colorful supermarket set. In the unforgettable imagery of these people racing through the aisles with the carts smashing into each other, trying to find the most expensive foods. This game was similar to the original. Three teams of two people. There was a question round. There was the big sweep where all of them were out there running around trying to get food. And then the bonus sweep, which whoever won the big sweep would get. the revised supermarket sweep that I remember watching at my Nana's house. That was on from 1990 to 2003 and actually came back again in 2020, but that only lasted to 2022. So it was kind of like the 60s show, not a big hit. Sensing a hit show on their hands, Lifetime, after getting supermarket sweep, debuted Shop Till You Drop in 1991. So both of these shows at one point were on the same channel. Shop Till You Drop was hosted by Pat Finn, and the announcer was a man named Mark Wahlberg, but not that actor Mark Wahlberg, another totally different person.

Speaker 00:

They're all here to play the wildest shopping game ever, Shop Till You Drop. The

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difference here was Shop Till You Drop wasn't so much a supermarket, it was more of a mall-themed set. There were teams of two who competed in rounds that tested their knowledge, teamwork, and sometimes their physical coordination in wacky games. Shop Till You Drop was on off and on from 1991 to 2002, where it wasn't on straight through. There'd be periods of inactivity, and it didn't stay on Lifetime the whole time. Actually, much like Supermarket Sweep, these shows went to the PAX network, which is today known as ION television. I didn't watch Shop Till You Drop. I may have seen it a couple of times. I just knew that there were two similarly themed game shows. I didn't even realize they were on the same channel. Even though if you don't remember these shows, there's no doubt that they were very popular at the time. Supermarket Sweep had over a thousand episodes. Shop Till You Drop had almost a thousand episodes. A big part of it for me was the relatability because everyone shops. Even when I was 12, 13, 14 years old watching this. I could imagine going in a supermarket and taking my cart around and just grabbing the most expensive things I could and whipping them in the cart and trying to win. I would think that people that were older watching these shows in the early to mid-90s, they would have given you nostalgia even back then. Thinking about leisurely strolls in the mall or Sunday shopping at the supermarket. You know, it was different from Double Dare on Nickelodeon. I didn't have any nostalgia of picking a giant nose with slime in it to get a flag. But I definitely had nostalgia of walking through the Cape Cod Mall or going to Angelo's Supermarket. There was definitely a family appeal to both of these shows. Like I said, I remember watching it at my Nana's house. So it would typically be me, probably my sister... Maybe my father and my grandmother. I mean, right there, that's three generations that were watching this. There's nostalgia now if you see reruns of it, or you see products from the early 90s and just remember going around the supermarket. Both Supermarket Sweep and Shop Till You Drop were unique. They have to be. To last roughly a thousand episodes each. You had supermarket sweeps start off with the announcer announcing the show with the theme song.

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Everything in this supermarket is yours and it's all free. From Hollywood, where dreams do come true, it's the return of the one and only supermarket sweep.

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Are you ready to go shopping? And then it's a fully stocked grocery store with an audience there. Whereas Shop Till You Drop was a two-story mall, complete with escalators and themed stores. Both these game shows were perfect combinations of physical activity and mental acuity. Trivia, but then also running around stores. Although Shop Till You Drop was more into the physical stunts and creative tasks, like building towers of boxes or matching items to specific categories. So even though they were similar shows, they weren't the same. One thing that always made me laugh about these shows was that the prizes, when you won at the end, it was never huge jackpots. Maybe a couple thousand dollars. So going on Supermarket Sweep or Shop Till You Drop was probably not going to change your life, but it was still fun. You'd get appliances, vacations. It was sort of similar to a smaller showcase showdown on Price is Right. Both of these shows have an enduring appeal. Even though Shop Till You Drop wasn't quite as big of a deal as Supermarket Sweep, it did have an influence in modern competition shows that blend trivia, physical stunts, consumerism. And the idea... The concept of gamifying shopping has even found its way into apps and online experiences. For me, like I said at the beginning of this segment, it brings back memories of sitting in my Nana's living room and us trying to answer the questions that were there or laughing at the people as they run around the supermarket trying to throw stuff into their carriages. Even if you didn't watch this show with family, it still was fun. an escape from reality, celebrating the everyday act of shopping and transforming it into this thrilling, I guess, competitive spectacle. If you're nostalgic for those classic Supermarket Sweep episodes, they are available on Buzzer, B-U-Z-Z-R. Go to buzzertv.com and you can watch old episodes of Supermarket Sweep. I'll put a link in the description of the podcast if you want to go and relive Dave Ruprecht's over-the-top supermarket antics. And tell me if you think he looks like Joe Isuzu. But just remember, don't try this at home. Don't shop like them when you're in Publix or Kroger or Stop and Shop. But until next time, that's going to wrap up episode 181 of the In My Footsteps podcast. Thank you to all of you who tune in Wherever you're from, if you're on Cape Cod, in New England, the Northeast, anywhere in the United States, or all across the world, I try to make this nostalgia as inclusive as I can. As long as you're of a certain age group, you'll get most of the references. And even if you're younger, if you don't get them, you can laugh at stuff that amuses older people like me. If you want more of me, you can subscribe to my YouTube channel. Check out the Initial Impressions 2.0 blog. I'm kind of putting a pause on the Webcam Weekly Wrap-Up podcast, the video podcasts, mainly because it's a lot of work for not as much of a return on investment as I had wanted. So I'm going to try to put my time elsewhere. I'll probably bring it back at some point. Like I said, if I end up with the ability to monetize my YouTube channel and then I'm able to do live streams, maybe I'll turn the Webcam Weekly wrap-up into a live stream. But I've still got hundreds of YouTube videos, hundreds of blogs, hundreds of these audio podcasts. I am all over social media, Instagram, threads, Blue Sky. I've got a Facebook fan page. I have a homepage, ChristopherSetterlin.com. It's got links to all nine of my books. You can become a subscriber on Patreon for $5 a month. You can also, if you don't like the monthly subscriptions, you can buy me a coffee. I think those you can do as little as a dollar, which I don't even think can buy me a coffee. Just ways to support me, my quest to be a fully functioning, self-sustaining content creator. I love doing all this. But it's also the more content I have, the more chance there is for people to find me. It's easier to get new viewers, readers, listeners. If I have literally hundreds, maybe a few thousand different pieces of content all over the internet rather than just a couple of handfuls. And I'll keep adding to the content. I'm sure there will be new YouTube videos, new blogs, new podcast next week, episode 182, where I get to talk about What a privilege it was that I grew up when I did and got to watch the one and only Michael Jordan in his prime as next week is his birthday. Any chance I get to talk about MJ, I'm going to take advantage of. It's just another way that I lean into things that make me happy. That's what I say to you all the time. You know, the deep, dark days of winter. You want to lean into what makes you happy to get through it to spring. Favorite foods, favorite people, hopefully favorite podcasts. If you're listening and made it this far, I would hope that you enjoyed it. And if you can, if the weather's nice, take the podcast outside, get that vitamin D, because I'm pretty sure a lot of us are deficient in it as winter goes on. I know I'm not outside as much as I want to. So thank you all again for making me a part of your week. And remember, in this life, don't walk in anyone else's footsteps. Create your own path and enjoy every moment you can on this journey we call life because you never know what tomorrow brings. This has been the In My Footsteps podcast. I am Christopher Setterlund. You already knew that. And I'll talk to you all again soon.

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Christopher Setterlund

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