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Wow! I got a rug! Um... could I have the Whammy instead? Sometimes on a Game Show, a prize is just so stinkingly bad that the contestants actively try not to get it. It's not a Zonk, or a "prize" that signifies that you've lost — it's an honest-to-goodness real prize made by a legitimate company that the show's producers actually thought someone would want. You don't feel like you've won anything when you win it, and in some cases you wish you would've gotten the Zonk.
Sometimes the prize itself isn't bad, but the circumstances can render it this. For example, a lot of people might like a Jet-Ski or a boat, but if you live in Kansas or Arizona, that can be a little underwhelming. Similarly trips to places such as New York aren't quite as exciting if you actually live there. Because of this kind of thing, most game shows will, behind the scenes, allow you to decline unwanted prizes (and the associated tax hit) without affecting your official win total.
Examples:
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Game Shows
- The former Trope Namer was the Flokati Rug on Press Your Luck, which is probably second to the ceramic Dalmatian as the most recognizable example. It usually appeared only in Round 1, but managed to be won at least twice.
- For those of you who don't know what the heck one of those are, a Flokati rug is an area rug usually used in bathrooms because they're soft, feel nice on your feet, and are sound dampeners...and they are in no way comparable to winning a Jet-Ski.
- The Flokati rug became a Running Gag on the show, which led host Peter Tomarken to wear one on his head in an episode. Amusingly, it resembled a Colonial wig.
- Wheel of Fortune has filled this trope several times:
- During the time when winners spent their winnings on prizes, one of the lower-value items was a nearly 3-foot-tall ceramic Dalmatian statue priced at $154...although strangely, no brand was ever named in relation to it. Its earliest known appearance is March 15, 1978, where original host Chuck Woolery notes that three or four had been purchased up to that point before asking the staff if one of them had puppies.
- Most contestants were very careful not to be stuck with one, but by March 1987 it became so popular (and became the show's mascot) that contestants actually chose it deliberately. Not a bad idea, since they eventually became valuable collector's items worth well into four figures. (Vanna owns one as well, and it's made appearances on the show.)
- By 2009, it was given the name "Sheldon" by the people at Wheel, and at one point it was made into a bobblehead. Also, for each week of Season 30 it appeared somewhere on the set.
- This was referenced in an episode of Rugrats where Didi wins on a game show, and to her husband and father-in-law's dismay chooses the dog statue as her prize (although in the case of Rugrats the dalmatian wasn't ceramic but gold-plated, and since it was 3-feet high, the amount of precious metal in it probably made it worth quite a pretty penny.)
- There's also a Family Guy gag in which a ceramic dalmatian is the first prize Peter buys. Though in this case it's not the most expensive item in the showcase, plus at the end he asks for his unused $50 on a gift certificate.
- Wheel also has the $1,000 Gift Tag, which fit this trope through Season 29 because only cash amounts were multiplied by the number of times the letter called occurs in the puzzle. Thus, if you called a letter that showed up even just twice, most of the time you would've been better off landing on a cash space. In addition, Gift Tags couldn't be used to buy vowels. Beginning in Season 30, though, landing on it also awards $500 per letter.
- Sometimes in the 1990s, the Prize wedges and Bonus Round offered some very weird things. How does an engraving of Florence Nightingale, with an authentic signature of hers, grab you? What about a historic document signed by Abraham Lincoln? A build-your-own log cabin kit?
- An unintentional one came up in one episode where a contestant won the dream prize, an all-expenses-paid trip to Hawaii. No points for guessing where the guy lives. (In fairness, though, he had a sense of humor and was a good sport about it. Besides, even without the "free round trip" part, there's still the "free stay in a nice hotel" part.)
- Over the years, Bullseye UK offered such wonderful prizes as a standard touch-tone telephone, a teasmade
 , a Betamax video player, "his and hers" matching shell suits, and even a remote-control toy cat! Not to mention the "star prizes", which often included items that were unlikely to be used by the contestants (usually a speedboat won by a couple living in landlocked Wolverhampton) or difficult to share among friends, such as a fitted kitchen or a car.
- On an early-1970s episode of Concentration, during a period when home viewers would win prizes based on the first letter of their surname (turning over that trilon on the board), a viewer in Oklahoma won a motorboat and Bob Clayton was less than impressed. Shortly afterwards, the show was flooded with brochures of Oklahoma lakes. In fact, most Okie lakes are man-made in response to the Dust Bowl.
- The Price Is Right producers were rather fond of a large, wheeled, popcorn cart during Bob Barker's tenure as host. Contestants were usually less-than-convincingly enthused when it showed up.
- Price used to be loaded with these, with antique gas pumps and carousel horses also favorite "prizes". The frequency of these has gone down significantly in the Drew Carey era, however, since replaced by outlandish and bizarre prizes (seriously, 365 pairs of shoes?!).
- Many a contestant groaned when they passed a Showcase with a car and a trip and took a gamble, only to find the second Showcase was "Nothing But Furniture" set to the tune of "Splendido".
- Or, even worse, the dreaded "Train Depot", "Port O'Price", or "Department Store" Showcases (well, back when those were in use). Cue visible This Is Gonna Suck looks from less-than-enthused contestants. Several other contestants could be seen scowling at any Showcase that didn't contain a car, and at least one could be seen mouthing "I don't want it!"
- Every time a trip is offered to somewhere that just so happens to be the contestant's hometown or close to it. While they usually throw in a luxury hotel and a few touristy things, winning a trip to something you live an hour away from would be kind of dull, all things considered. Still, it was on the show's dime.
- Trips to other locations in California, including one to Hollywood where the show tapes. (Worth noting that Price doesn't fly in contestants; it calls them down from an audience that got there on their own.)
- Doug Davidson's 1994 syndicated Price offered a Watara Supervision as a prize on the first aired episode. Just like this version of the show, it was long forgotten.
- People who know better would realize that Price actually subverts this trope with many of these same prizes — decent popcorn carts actually produce high-quality popcorn, for example, and gas pumps have a large collector's market. Consequently, these prizes can be worth thousands of dollars, a particularly important fact on Price; however, only the show can offer the item's estimated cash value as a prize instead, and it's definitely in your best interest to take said offers.
- The Switcheroo game has a car as the top prize to win and four lesser prizes the contestant could also win. More often than not, the contestant would miss out on the car and win something disappointing like a blender or a tape dispenser (basically anything $100 more or less).
- Among the numerous problems with the American Temptation: The New $ale of the Century was its fondness for offering designer women's clothing, perfume, women's jewelry, etc. as prizes (in place of the "unisex" vacations, household appliances, furniture, etc. which its predecessors offered), which few male contestants would be interested in. One particularly bad offender was a prize package which included backstage passes to a Chippendales show, although the contestant who won it was female.
- A grand prize of Nick Arcade was a trip to Universal Studios, where the show was recorded. If you enjoyed the place, you got a couple of extra days to stay; otherwise, you might have been let down.
- Nick was notorious for this. All of their game shows usually had prizes which included a year supply of canned ravioli and moon boots.
- Subverted in Season 1 of Figure It Out, where the prizes awarded for clearing Round 1 were old props and set pieces from shows like All That and Legends of the Hidden Temple.
- Whammy! had tons of these, especially in Round 1. Who wanted $300 worth of M&M's when $300 was also the lowest cash amount on the board? Just look at all the prizes on this list worth $300 or less — all 100+ of them.
- High Rollers: On the 1978-80 NBC version, the producers were known to offer off-beat or otherwise unusual prizes such as African musical dolls, an antique Chinese fishbowl (with a stated value of $10,000), gift certificates to Kentucky Fried Chicken (dubbed "Sunday Chicken for a Year", effectively 52 $10 gift certificates), and a trip to the Kentucky Derby with $100 bets on each horse. And those were just a few of the examples.
- Mexican show En Familia Con Chabelo has a memorable show called La Catafixia in which children are tortured with doubt and anxiety after "what would be behind that door". The contestant may unknowingly interchange a Sony stereo for a broom, for example.
- The 1969 game Letters To Laugh-In scored viewer-submitted jokes read by the panelists. The highest-scoring joke each week won a trip to Hawaii, whereas lowest-scoring joke won a trip to "beautiful downtown Burbank". And since this was Fall 1969 as opposed to (for example) May 1975, there wasn't nearly as much to do there.
- In the dreadful children's game show Thousand-Dollar Bee, the prize for the entire season was a $1000 savings bond for college; in this decade, probably enough for a handful of credit hours or a quarter of your required textbooks. No wonder so many of the kids weren't even trying.
- The Bozo Show. Not really a game show, although the "Grand Prize Game" (a skill-based throwing game, the objective being to throw a pingpong ball into six buckets, placed progressively further from the line) had an element fitting this trope ... a dinky consolation prize worth about $2 for anyone who failed to either — depending on the year — get the ball in the first bucket or complete the mission. An urban legend persists that one child was so upset with the consolation prize (tellings vary, the most common gift is a towel with Bozo's likeness on it) that he told Bozo to "Cram it, clown!"
- This would more likely fall under the Zonk category.
- The kids' game show Treasure Mall offered a sewing machine. A kids' show!!! Granted, the grand prize haul, if won, more than made up for it...
- Of all the video game systems available in the early-to-mid 1990s, Legends of the Hidden Temple offered a Philips CD-i. Yes, the same CD-i that is home to such titles as The Legend Of Zelda CD-i Games and Hotel Mario.
- Like Price, they also offered a Supervision as a final prize.
- Take It All is a mixed bag: some of its prizes have included arcade cabinets, maid service plus a new washer and dryer, a Smart Car, a Vespa scooter, and the like. But then you have somewhat outlandish things like a Brew Cave (basically a giant walk-in fridge designed for beer, which some men would dream of having), a giant mechanical bull ride, and 5 years worth of Omaha Steaks.
Radio Contests
- 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".
- 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.
- One Canadian radio station offered an entire house to the lucky winner, but the prize was actually a run-down, badly-in-need of-repair house in the Saskatchewan prairie. The new owners felt decidedly cheated.
- 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.
- Fresh 102.7, a New York-area radio station, plays good music but is often mocked for offering scratch-off lottery tickets as prizes on their morning show.
- The Kiss FM station in Milwaukee once offered a 3rd Rock from the Sun gift pack a few times over the weekend, which only included generic gimmie items like Frisbees and coffee mugs festooned with the Third Rock logo, not even any DVD's of the series. There were times that weekend when the winner wasn't even mentioned, suggesting nobody called to "win" the prize.
Western Animation
- Garfield and Friends: An early episode from 1988, named "The Binky Show", sees Garfield go on a game show to win a gift for Jon. Unfortunately for the cat, the game show is a ridiculous quizzer named "Name That Fish", the host is the obnoxious Binky the Clown, the audience is incredibly bored, and the prizes range from ostrich scrubbers to tomato squeezers and other junk. (Obviously, the cartoon short is a satire poking fun at the unusual and bizarre gifts sometimes offered on game shows.)
- Pretty much par-for-the-course with the prizes on the "May I Have a Word?" Show Within a Show interstitials on WordGirl.
- One episode of Sponge Bob Square Pants had Mr. Krabs set Squidward and SpongeBob on a little contest to see who can offer the best customer service — and to ensure it is a contest and not just SpongeBob making nice to the customers while Squidward exercises his normal disdain, he offers a prize while enticingly brandishing a brochure for a tropical vacation. After Squidward goes to such lengths to beat SpongeBob that he actually gets put in prison, Mr. Krabs declares that prison or not he's most certainly the winner, and hands him the brochure. It was taking up space in his drawer and he needed to get rid of it.
- There was an episode of Rocko's Modern Life that played with this. Rocko's kitchen gets destroyed (don't ask) and he goes on a game show to win a new one. He wins, but it turns out he only won a single spoon and has to keep winning every day for the rest of the Summer to get the whole kitchen...which in fairness is basically Dream House on a much smaller scale with a lot more effort required.
- Played to maximum Black Comedy effect in the South Park episode "Cow Days", where they win a free trip to the titular festival. They try to make the most of it, but unfortunately for them, things go From Bad to Worse when they are falsely convicted of stealing the festival's symbol and thrown in jail. By the end of the episode, when the clock is found along with the actual culprits, the cows, the couple is discovered to have starved to death in jail after being left without supervision.
Other
Live-Action Television
- Late Night With Jimmy Fallon parodies this with "Wheel Of Carpet Samples", whose prize winners get carpet samples while the losers' consolation prizes are $300 Apple Store gift cards. Though after the ruse is revealed, the "winner" won one too.
- Another joke prize have been Led Zeppelin t-shirts with missing L's.
- Conan does it as well - winners on "Basic Cable Name That Tune" are awarded such dubious prizes as a sack of barber hair, a cake that nobody ever picked up from the bakery (with the frosting reading "Hope your operation was a success!"), or a jar full of an unidentified white ooze with a handwritten label reading "NUZZ".
Video Games
- Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance and Mortal Kombat: Deception include koffins with koins. Sometimes more koins, sometimes a different kolor. (They're not interchangeable.) Sometimes you get fewer koins of the same kolor. You get zonked by picking the same koffin twice; you get nothing.
- The Toad Houses in Super Mario Bros 3 offered the choice of three powerups; mixed in with the cool stuff like a Super Leaf, Hammer Suit, or Tanooki Suit was often something relatively useless and common like a Mushroom.
- The inclusion of a Frog Suit in the boxes after the water levels, where it would have been useful, may also qualify.
- Super Mario World also has Mushrooms as an item that most players try to avoid. If you're already in super form (big Mario) and need an extra item to use later, a Mushroom would be fine. However, if you already have an item in reserve, picking up a new item replaces the old one, which means your stored Feather (spin attack + flight) or Fire Flower (fireballs) would be replaced by a Mushroom.
- Many video games let you trade casino winnings for items. These items are usually rare. Sometimes, however, items you can get can be gotten for cheaper in a store than you can buying coins to use on them. Pokemon lets you trade coins for an Abra; if you like Abra, fine, but you can catch one pretty easily too (though they're notorious for running away, so buying them can actually be easier) — the real prize in the Game Corner is Porygon.
- Square One TV had game show bits that were either genuine unscripted games or fictional games that were obviously skits. The genuine games usually had the prizes of Square One sweaters and sweatshirts, which the contestants often responded to with less than enthusiasm. In one of the fictional ones, a contestant was awarded a trip to Cleveland, Ohio...but she lived in Cleveland, Ohio. To be fair, this has actually happened on game shows.
- This type of occurrence was also parodied by National Lampoon's Funny Money (a real game show filmed in Las Vegas) where one Zonk was a trip to Las Vegas — down the street from the studio.
- Since the point is to have fun playing the games, the "prizes" in arcades usually stink, especially those low-valued "use your last few tickets prizes" like pencils and Chinese finger traps. Even the expensive prizes aren't better when you realize that you've sank $30 in tickets for a $5 teddy bear.
- You're a Good Sport, Charlie Brown features a motocross race where the prize was originally two tickets to the Pro Bowl...but they couldn't get them, so they got a gift certificate good for five free haircuts at the last minute. Of course, this is the one thing that Charlie Brown actually wins...and gets a gift certificate that's worthless to him because his dad is a barber, and of course, his unique baldness.
- The Eurovision Song Contest winner has to host the next year's contest. While this entitles the winner to show huge amounts of tourism ads, getting them made and hosting a contest is basically a huge, expensive hassle and financially impossible for most smaller countries. Often, countries that can't afford to host Eurovision will send in limp squib songs or odd novelty acts in order to avoid winning (resulting in occasional Springtime for Hitler moments when the novelty ends up being more interesting than anything else in the contest).
- Contrary to what the writers of Father Ted may think, this isn't actually the case — the winning country gets first call on hosting it the following year and they can turn it down. Granted, there would be a certain loss of face associated with this, but there's no obligation on them to host, as long as they announce their intention not to host it within a certain time.
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