Zonk

aka: Booby Prize

On the bright side, it doubles as a lawnmower and fertilizer.

"This deal is worth nothing."

— Announcer, Let's Make a Deal

Some Game Shows have gag prizes of negligible value. The name of this trope comes from the term used on Let's Make a Deal, where they almost always involved animals. Though there to cater to Rule of Funny, sometimes these prizes can still be desired by someone; poorly researched ones have even caused legal trouble for the givers.

Sometimes, the gag prize can have something valuable hidden with it, with the producers pulling a fast one on the audience by completely defying expectations that it was a joke. Say you get a cheap birdhouse for a prize — oh, look, someone neatly tucked a roll of money inside! Which in itself can be a feint if said money inside is a skimpy amount.

Contrast Undesirable Prize, which is actually offered seriously and with the best of intentions; and Irrelevant Importance, when important items cannot be discarded even after having served their purpose. Also contrast Consolation Prize; it's unlikely anyone who lands on a Zonk will be actually consoled by it. And, of course, contrast Whammy, which leaves you with nothing, not even a Zonk. The video game equivalents are Power Up Letdown and Poison Mushroom, "Power-Ups" that are mostly useless, or actively hurt the player respectively.

Not to be confused with Air Zonk, a Spin-Off from Bonk.

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Examples:

Trope Namer

Let's Make a Deal, the Trope Namer, was famous for offering such booby prizes: animals, absurd amounts of food, old and broken motor vehicles, etc. If the Zonk was an animal, it was usually a goat (or goats) or a cow, although the 2009 revival has also offered other farm animals, and even a "Zonkey" (a donkey painted with zebra stripes). The practice was discontinued in the middle of the first season when PETA (naturally) complained about it.

• You can buy most of those food-type Zonks at Sam's Club nowadays.
• The producers did make a mistake on this once, which, if they had been caught, would have been expensive. One of the "Zonks" offered was an oil derrick. At that time, an used oil derrick was worth about $6,000, more than the highest prize on that show. The contestant didn't know this, of course, and took the consolation prize, a then-expensive color TV.
• Winners of Zonks on Let's Make a Deal also had an option to sign a certificate of forfeiture after the show. If they did so, they would receive another prize of equal value to the Zonk; that's why some of the Zonks were risky for the producers.
  • Some Zonks would actually contain more legitimate prizes within them. A week's supply of garbage cans, for instance (labeled for each day of the week), would sometimes have a perfect-condition fur coat in one. The food-based Zonks were also 100% legit, if you wanted them.
  • One time, as a Zonk, a contestant won a (beef) cow. Off-camera, the contestant was offered a consolation prize of a television, but was convinced by his friends that the cow was actually a better investment, and decided to take the cow. Wanting to use the cow for other shows, the producers were able to convince the contestant how much extra work and money owning the cow would be, including transportation, storage, and feed, that the contestant backed out and decided to take the television.
  • During the days of Door #4 on the 1984-86 version, the "Zonk" space on the wheel was always awarded as a red T-shirt emblazoned with the phrase "I was Zonked by Monty Hall!"
  • Then you have the Brady version, which averts this altogether as the Zonks are never actually meant to be prizes. Almost anything shown as a Zonk during the first season, even the large amounts of food, was usually spray-painted, smashed, or otherwise defaced to render it worthless. This practice now seems to be abandoned for the most part, to the point where certain Zonks contain things like DJ mixers and tube TVs that appear to be in perfect condition and often even shown to be working... but they're still not actually prizes. Instead, the contestant gets a small sum between about $100-$300, depending on how much effort it took to put the Zonk together (and, hence, why the Brady-era Zonks have a large "ZONK!" sign).
  • It is very common now for the Zonks to be completely ridiculous and/or Exact Words-based (which makes them funny), such as "Literal Slippers" (shoes shaped like banana peels), a "compact car" (a car that went through a crusher), comical furniture sets (such as the "Teeny Weeny Bedroom" and "Velcro Living Room"), "Laundered Money" (giant fake bills hanging on a clothes line), "'Apple' Watches" (they're made of apple peels), and a "Cardboard Boombox", but they still can't actually be taken home by insistent contestants. A few recurring Zonks are trips to fake locations accompanied by animated shorts, such as Zonk Island, ZonkyLand, "The Big Apple" (not New York, but the world's largest apple), the "Swiss Alps" (which are made of cheese), and "Whine Country" (instead of wine country).
  • In one instance of the "trip to The Big Apple" Zonk, the contestant got to keep a leather travel bag that the tickets were presented in.
  • Some food Zonks have fallen into the Eat That category for Brady, such as chocolate-covered bugs and mayonnaise mouthwash.
• Even the foreign versions played along. The Zonk on the German Geh aufs Ganze was a grey-red, fox-like plushie, also called a Zonk. On the Polish version Idź Na Całość, Zonk was a red plush cat in a black bag (the original "pig in a poke" being a cat you couldn't see passed off as a young pig^note the equivalent Polish expression is in fact literally "buying a cat in a bag"). In Polish slang, "zonk" today means "something unexpected".
• Also in the Brady version, the "Zonk" logo is also used in some games (particularly ones that involve a luck-based challenge, such as "Movin' On Up") in situations where they function more like a Whammy rather than a joke prize.

Other Live-Action Television

• Concentration had some gag prizes, which was part of the reason for the "Forfeit One Gift" cards. One such gag prize was a brick wall. The contestant surely wouldn't want a brick wall, would he? Oh yes, he would, and the producers were forced to build a brick wall around the contestant's house for several thousand 1960s dollars. Since then, such gifts have been described more carefully (usually as something like "[X amount] of brick wall").
• The Chuck Barris versions of Treasure Hunt hosted by Geoff Edwards called these prizes "Klunks", which Edwards named himself. A contestant might be given a Klunk that served as a lead-in to something else, which could be a genuine prize or just another Klunk.
• The Price Is Right:
  • In the pricing game Any Number, the contestant has to guess digits from 0 to 9 to fill in the five-digit price of a car. The other digits show up in a smaller three-digit prize, and the "piggy bank", a literal cash value of dollars and cents formed from the remaining digits (thus having a maximum possible value of $9.87).
  • If the pricing game Check Game is lost, the check gets stamped with the word "VOID" and given to the contestant.
• In the final Auction Round of the Spanish game show Un, dos, tres, the contestants "bought" up to three objects offered by the host. The objects were usually worthless, but they had a card attached with the real prize that could be either something big or a joke item, like the show's mascot — a cartoon pumpkin. About 99% of the time, getting that meant that you just got a toy pumpkin. But sometimes the pumpkin had attached a card of its own...
  • The British version, 3-2-1 similarly used a trash can as its signature Zonk, tying in with its animatronic mascot Dusty Bin. Host Ted Rogers would actually warn, "Remember, all you win is a brand-new dustbin!", so the contestants wouldn't think they were actually getting a state-of-the-art robot worth far more than any other prize on the show.
• The "Win the Ads" game of Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway has prizes of varying value, ranging from holidays and a new car to toilet roll and a tin of baked beans.
• During the final round of Distraction, your legitimate prizes might be turned into Zonks if you get the questions wrong. Same goes with Downfall (2010), except they tell you straight up that the prizes up for destruction are fake.
• If you were bad enough at the bonus round of Winning Lines to get only one question correct, you won a trip to a bed and breakfast overlooking the "Spaghetti Junction" highway interchange in Birmingham. Contrast the grand prize, a trip around the world.
• Tawashi (Japanese kitchen scrubbing brush) are common zonks on many Japanese game shows. One, Shinkon-san Irasshai! (a Concentration-type game between newlywed couples) often ends with a bonus round featuring either a honeymoon in Hawaii or a tawashi.
• Brazilian variety program Domingo no Parque had the "Foguete" ("rocket") game - thoroughly copied throughout the years by other TV shows - where kids entered a rocket-shaped booth with acoustic sealing. Without listening to anything, they had to deafly respond with "yes" or "no" if they wanted to trade a prize for another - leading to things such as "do you trade this new bicycle for a match box?"
• The host of While You Were Out typically asks the relative of the person whose house is secretly being remodeled a few questions in between the remodeling scenes to test just how well they know that person. Answering correctly nets them a nice-looking decorating item for the room; answering incorrectly nets them a gag prize instead (ex: a tiny toy chest instead of a mahogany chest, plastic scrambled eggs instead of an elegant breakfast tray, a bag of coffee beans instead of a new coffee machine...).
• Kid's show Dick & Dom in da Bungalow had a real first and Second Prize, but third prize would be something like a crumpled housing benefit form, or a half-used tube of verruca cream.
• Bidders on Storage Wars can end up being Zonked if they spend a lot of money on a locker that ends up containing nothing but worthless garbage. Occasionally, the auctioneers could end up Zonked themselves if a locker contains very little, with the result that the bids could even go down to $1.
• The Banker on Deal or No Deal occasionally included items in the price he was willing to pay for a contestant's case. Some were worthwhile, but others were clearly meant to insult the player and prompt a "No Deal".
  • Certain international versions, and the U.S. version during theme episodes, sometimes had low money amounts in the main game replaced with Zonk prizes, such as boxing gloves, Thanksgiving turkey, etc.
• Let's Bowl was very fond of this, especially during its initial syndication run, with grand prizes ranging from of fertilizer, a can of pork and beans, or dinner for two at Old Country Buffet. On its Comedy Central run, the prizes included membership in the Herring of the Month club, a used snowmobile, and supposedly mint condition 1970s family sedans.
• Quicksilver, an old Irish gameshow, pretty much had this as its prizes and nothing else. Prizes were in pennies, which, even by the standards of The '60s, was a hilariously small prize.
• The old Japanese game show Trans America Ultra Quiz did this with the grand prize awarded to the champion of the season, which was inevitably something impressive-sounding but worthless like an acre of land in the middle of the desert, or a private island in the Caribbean that's only an island during low tide. The actual prize for the show was that each of the later rounds were played in a different exotic locale, thus the finalists all got an all-expenses-paid international tour that lasted as long as they remained in the game.
• Shop 'Til You Drop:
  • The first season had gag gifts in the titular Bonus Round that only added a few dollars to a team's total. These were removed after the goal to reach was raised from $1,000 to $2,500 worth of merchandise.
  • In the PAX era, a frequent Bonus Round prize was a "bed in a bag" worth $50. On a rare occasion when it was not exchanged, host Pat Finn mentioned that it was one of the cheapest prizes in the rotation.
• Mexican show En Familia Con Chabelo has the final stage known as La Catafixia, in which children are tortured with doubt and anxiety after "what would be behind that door". There were 3 doors, sometimes the 3 had nice prizes, but most of the time one would have something not so great. Here you can see a kid exchanging his prizes for a "high speed vehicle for the Halloween party", also known as "broom".
• On the series I'm Dying Up Here two characters go on Let's Make a Deal and trade away a valuable prize for a year's supply of Rice-a-roni. Inverted because they are starving would-be comics and the year's supply of food is far more useful to them than what they traded.
• British quiz show Bob's Full House pulled the "trojan horse Zonk" with its "Lucky Number" bonus prizes — with the mundane item being a clue towards the actual prize.
• One space on the Sale of the Century Fame Game board was "Mystery Money or Pick/Try Again". The lowest known value of the former option was $1.75.

Fan Works

• Dungeon Keeper Ami: Azzathra intends this when he gives Ami the Reaper's knowledge of magical scythe summoning and techniques, knowing that the techniques would be useless for her body shape and the spell would be outright dangerous. Nonetheless, she turns it around on him and actually finds a devastating use for them: She teaches goblins to use scythes, then makes them the pilots of her remote-controlled "reaperbots".
• The MLP Loops: During the Great Elevator Saga (in which the Mane Six are stuck in an elevator for several hundred floors and can't get off until the top floor... and the door opens on every single floor, taking them all over the multiverse in the process), one floor opens on a game show; the host promptly announces the protagonists as a zonk prize.
  Host: "... six technicolor ponies! Yes, these ponies will clash with every single item in your home! Useful for carrying very small parcels, testing for color blindness, and inducing diabetic shock. This ZONK prize is worth: absolutely nothing!"
  Rarity (to her friends): "I don't know which is more mortifying, darlings," ... "being given away as a prize on a game show... or being a BOOBY PRIZE on a game show."

Film

• "Weird Al" Yankovic's local UHF station in UHF had Wheel of Fish, in which the prizes were all Zonks (namely different kinds of fish). The contestants could also choose the contents of a Mystery Box; the one time we see it chosen, it's chock full of NOTHING! YOU SO STUPID!

Literature

• Clue:
  • In the 1992-1997 book series, Mr. Boddy would periodically arrange various contests for his guests. Sometimes the prizes were genuinely valuable (usually cash or a valuable treasure); other times, they were gag prizes (and at least once the "prize" was a punishment). Examples included:
    • Book #4, chapter 3 ("A Tug-of-War"), featuring a tug-of-war competition in which each member of the winning team would receive a rare Boddy treasure (a big kiss on the nose from Mr. Boddy);
    • Book #10, chapter 4 ("The Halloween Costume Caper"), featuring a game of bobbing for apples in which one of the apples contains a golden nugget (actually a nugget of caramel candy, though in that case everyone had a good laugh when it was revealed);
    • Book #10, chapter 5 ("The Snowball Effect"), featuring a snowball fight (in which the winning team got ice cream cones);
    • Book #15, chapter 5 ("Door Prize"), featuring a competition to paint the most doors in the mansion's downstairs (everyone got a prize — bars of soap to clean the paint off their hands);
    • And book #16, chapter 8 ("A Little Horse"), featuring a horse race where (everyone's "prize" was being forced to muck out the stalls, since Boddy had gotten angry with them for fighting over who was the best rider and demanding a race to prove who was best).
    • Played with in book #12, chapter 3 ("Tennis, Anyone?"), which featured a lottery drawing with a half real, half zonk prize; while the guests weren't too happy about playing for the zonk (a chance to see Mr. Boddy compete in a tennis tournament being held at some point later on), they did want to win the money he was also putting up. After Boddy lost badly in the tournament, the winning guest graciously gave him some of the prize money to spend on private lessons.
  • A couple of their attempted thefts could qualify as Zonks as well. Such as:
    • Book #5, chapter 2 (Midnight Phone Calls) has two guests overhearing Miss Scarlet making a call to have a batch of rubies delivered to the mansion. It turns out they aren't literal rubies — they're her favorite brand of jelly beans.
    • Book #6, chapter 6 ("Caught Blue-Handed") has the case of the priceless records — they're literally priceless, in that they're not worth a dime.
    • Book #15, chapter 4 ("Ham It Up") has the guests fighting over a valuable sculpture of a set of teeth. It turns out to be Boddy's grandfather's old false teeth with a fake signature on it, which he set up to trick the guests into dressing up for a food-themed costume party.
    • Book #17, chapter 3 ("A Flying Saucer Story"), with the theft of the Ersatz Diamond, being sold to Boddy by aliens from the planet Xaoh. Naturally, given the names involved, the diamond is a fake — Boddy was deliberately trolling his guests as a prank.
    • Book #17, chapter 5 ("Truth Serum"), has the culprit break into a large, mysterious crate that's sitting out on the lawn; Boddy's refused to identify the contents, so the guests are sure it's a new treasure. It turns out to be a new bathtub he was having installed.
• Saintess Summons Skeletons: Sofia is puzzled by a gachapon box that opens to reveal nothing inside. However, the box doesn't disappear, and a moment later, a notification appears that she received an F-ranked draw — the empty wooden box itself.

Unscrupulous Radio Station Contests

Some Radio Stations have attempted to pass off Zonks as legit prizes. This kind of thing has resulted in more than one lawsuit — radio stations offering "a hundred grand" (the candy bar named "100 Grand") and "a new Hummer" (a tiny, remote-controlled version) have faced legal challenges to their dickishness.

• While "a new toy Yoda" (virtually indistinguishable from "Toyota" when spoken aloud) wasn't an example of radio-based dickishness, it was a great example of Hooters-based dickishness. The lawsuit hinged on the fact that despite "toy Yoda" and Toyota sounding similar, the restaurant manager had clearly described the prize as a car. It ended up being subverted by the lady who sued, as she eventually reached a settlement that apparently was more than enough to allow her to "pick out whatever type of Toyota she wants".
• One Manitoba radio station offered a contest wherein the prize was "A lovely Winter getaway to Miami!" Not Miami, Florida, but a small rural town in southeastern Manitoba.
• Parodied on an episode of Good Luck Charlie: Teddy enters a radio contest to win a new car after singing the National Anthem at a sporting event. Said car turned out to be a child's toy.

Pinball

• The Special is typically the highest standard award in a pinball machine, earned by either advancing really far or getting really lucky. By default, it's a free game, but it can be set by the operator to be other things, and it falls into this trope if the Special has been set to a low points award or to nothing at all. To add insult to injury, on many machines, you get the Special by draining the ball down an outlane, and the game won't tell you what the Special will be until you get it, so if the operator has set it to be worthless, you'll have likely drained your ball for no reason (unless you find out from someone else ahead of time).
• In Bally's Dr. Dude, one of the random prizes available from the Bag O' Tricks is "a measly 10 points".
• One of the items you can get in Safe Cracker is a blender, which is absolutely worthless.
• In Cyclone, the Mystery Wheel has an award slot for "Zilch", which is worth nothing.
  • One of the Mystery Scores in the sequel, Hurricane, is "Absolutely Nothing".
• Cue Ball Wizard sometimes rewards the player with a worthless "cow pie".
• Super Mario Bros. Mystery award can award a player with nothing, and the DMD will display several words synonymous with "nothing" or "zero".
• During multiball, it's possible to get scores in the tens or hundreds from Twilight Zone's "Odd Change" shot.
• One of the Roller Motion awards in Rollergames is the Penalty Pit, which gives the player zero points.
• Junk Yard's "Window Shopping" may award you with Toxic Waste, which provides no benefits whatsoever (though, contrary to its name, doesn't penalize anything either).
• The Champion Pub alternates each "real" award on the timing-based skill shot with ten points. For perspective, one of the awards that can be gotten on the plunge is a much more substantial million points.

Redemption Games

• On rare occasions, a Key Master machine will sometimes have, locked up, a prize worth far less than the others but as equally difficult to obtain, likely as a joke. The one at The Outlets at Orange in Anaheim, CA, for instance, perpetually has a can of Spam as one of the prizes, whereas the rest of them consist of the likes of Xbox Ones, Beats headphones, and US$200 gift cards.

Tabletop Games

• The infamous Junk Rare definitely qualifies in collectible card games.
• Two of the spaces in the original version of The Game of Life read "Aunt Leaves You 50 Cats" and "Uncle Leaves You a Skunk Farm". In the game's last dollar value adjustment before the 1991 overhaul, both spaces cost the player $20,000 if hit.

Video Games

• Junk Rares have also become a thing in all video games with a random drop system.
• In Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden, giving the F.I.N.A.L.G.U.N. to Mark the Gun's Collector earns you a "special rare item", which turns out to be a worthless sticker that he wrote "1/1" on in crayon to make it look more valuable. It's there purely to prank Wrong Genre Savvy RPG veterans. The correct choice here is to keep the gun for yourself, since it's Hoopz's Infinity +1 Sword.
• In Final Fantasy XIV, you can send retainers out on 'quick ventures', which are basically a roll of the dice. They can return with fabulous prizes: rare armours, glamours, expensive dyes! Or they can bring back a Lominsan Anchovy.
  • Among the many items your retainer can bring back from Quick Exploration at random is any of the six varieties of elemental crystal - crafting materials used for literally every crafting recipe. But instead of giving you a decent number of these crystals as a reward - a hundred, fifty, even twenty! - they give you precisely one crystal. And they can give it to you (alongside any of the numerous other Better Off Sold items on the table) at any level with any gearset.
  • Similarly, Ocean Fishing in the Southern Strait of Merlthor can yield many valuable catches, such as the Sabaton or Spectral Discus... or it can get you the Momora Mora, a frustratingly common junk fish that likes the same expensive bait.
• In MARVEL SNAP, most cards and locations with negative traits can be averted (by not playing the card or avoiding the location) or it doesn't really count as a zonk because it effects both players equally^note like District X (replaces your reserve deck with random cards) or Lamentis-1 (draw three cards from your deck, the rest of your deck is destroyed). The exception is the card "Agatha Harkness": If it appears in your hand, the AI makes all your moves for you from that point forward and you can't change or reset them. And the AI is a particularly poor player so you're probably losing that match.
• In Mary Skelter: Nightmares, fulfililng one of the Jail's three desires gauges activates Jail Roulette, in which you try to stop the wheel on one of several different bonuses. These bonuses include heals, buffs for your team, debuffs for enemies, Blood Crystals, a higher chance to meet the wandering merchant, and...a measly 10 Gold.
• In Miitopia, there are ragged items that can sometimes be won via Roulette, which provide 0 Defense.
• Persona 5: Each Palace ends with the Phantom Thieves stealing a Treasure that represents the source of their distorted desires. In the first palace, it's a gold medal (made of real gold). In the second, it's a valuable painting. In the third, it's a briefcase full of millions of yen... that turns out to be all fake bills. But the briefcase itself is very valuable and sells for a lot of money.
• Strike Force Heroes II has a slot machine minigame to give you random loot. If you lose at it, you get dirty socks, rusty tins of MRE's, and a turd cannon (a grenade launcher that does poison damage and makes a fart sound every time it's fired). It's surprisingly effective, despite not having any Gun Accessories.
• In Super Mario World, a level on Chocolate Island has a swarm of mushrooms in bubbles as obstacles. They pose little threat to the player (though their jankey physics can bounce uncareful players into a Bottomless Pit), but they can replace your stored fire flower or cape feather with the comparably useless mushroom. It's surprisingly infuriating.

Webcomics

• Subverted in this xkcd strip, where Beret Guy welcomes his goat prize.

Western Animation

• Animaniacs: In one episode, Slappy gets into a feud with a neighbor who threw an empty soda can into her yard, and so Slappy gets back at her by returning the can to her in increasingly elaborate ways, which culminates in Slappy setting up an entire gameshow and tricking the neighbor into giving up all the prizes she won for a mystery prize that turns out to be the can.
• The Rocko's Modern Life episode "Dear John" plays with this. Rocko's kitchen gets destroyed and he goes on a game show to win a new one. He wins, but it turns out his prize is a single spoon and he needs to keep winning every day for the rest of the summer to get the whole kitchen.
• The Simpsons:
  • This caused significant problems in "Bart Gets An Elephant", when Bart opted for the gag prize over the cash sum; not only did the radio station not actually have the gag prize available to give away, but when they did eventually get it, the prize caused untold carnage lasting for approximately the duration of the episode.
  • This was parodied in "Homer Goes To College", where Mr. Burns offered two inspectors their choice of a bribe, either the car that his "lovely assistant" (Smithers) was pointing to, or what was in a box. One of them seemed eager to take the box until the more competent one brought him back to reality.
• Subverted in the Looney Tunes cartoon "The Million Hare". Daffy Duck barely beats Bugs Bunny in a race to a television station, but is told that his prize wasn't a million bucks, as he hears, but "The Million Box": a crate containing a million little boxes. Daffy "graciously" gives the prize to Bugs, and is then told that each of the little boxes contained a $1 bill.
• Atomic Betty had an episode where Betty and her crew were trying to safely transport an item referred to as "Project Zonk", which they believe to be important, but ends up just being taco sauce.
• One episode of Garfield and Friends had a US Acres sketch where Roy found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, which turned out to be a game show run by a Leprechaun. Roy is given the choice between an old sock or Door Number 2. Obviously, he takes the second option, which is revealed to be a new car. He's the given the option to keep the car or take the prize behind Door Number 3. After taking Door Number 3, he finds out that it's fame and fortune, which he can keep or take the prize behind Door Number 4. Even though he realizes that he's won everything he ever could have wanted, he can't resist seeing what's behind the fourth door. It's an old sock.

Instant-Win Promotions

• The British potato crisp company Golden Wonder once ran an instant-win promotion where every pack won a prize. Some of the prizes were genuinely good, including CD players and even a car. The majority of packs, however, won their owners something deliberately pathetic, like a bit of sponge, half a postcard, or a paperclip.
• A common tactic used in North America is to pass off a coupon book, what should be a Zonk, as a legitimate prize in a promotion. Often it will be vaguely advertised as "a prize worth $2000", and your total savings if you used every single coupon would be $2000. Canada has even passed legislation to prevent such bad faith prizes, such as making it mandatory to display the odds of winning a prize (if there's a 1 in 5 chance of winning, it's not as good as it seems) and making it mandatory to offer the cash value of the prize at the winner's request.

Other

• The eccentric Roman emperor Elagabalus instituted a lottery where competitors had the chance to win gold, livestock or real estate... and also chances to win far less desirable prizes like dead dogs or swarms of flies.

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