Growing up in a modest single family house in the late 1980's and early 90's, my sister and I were limited in our television viewing capacity moreso than the normal 8:30 PM bedtime curfew that was imposed. There was an additional physical limitation in the form of one television for us to share. It might have also been the only TV in the house for a while, or if there was another one (in my parent's room) I doubt it too was enabled with extremely basic cable. But basic cable was a treat, having mostly only been exposed to the antenna-equipped set in our younger years. Cable brought Disney, Nickelodeon, and, unfortunately, Lifetime. But back then Lifetime wasn't just sappy "Rob Lowe as a a murderous, seductive, cop killer" films. It also included game shows. And back then, one thing a family could definitely rally around was mindless competition in a supermarket. Everyone goes to a supermarket, everyone knows what's there and generally how much stuff costs, but nobody ever gets a chance to race buggies around and throw turkeys 20 ft into them. Supermarket Sweep gave everybody a chance to live that fantasy as well as watch the ridiculous people who occasionally lacked both commons sense and physical prowess. So a chance to feel good about yourself in a sort of pre-reality show sort of way.
I often wondered if anything in the show was real. Were real turkeys actually being tossed into carts? Was real coffee really being ground for no good reason except only to race? If so, did anybody feel a little bit bad about wasting 40 carts of groceries per show (estimated average) for the sake of entertainment? It's one thing to say we can part ways with the dollar value of the food, but to throw away nourishment "when kids in Africa are starving" is tougher to accept. It's almost like how animals are not allowed to be killed for the sake of entertainment, or when only fake flounder can be displayed in fictional shows/films depicting Pike's Place Market. Perhaps only a small amount of perishable foods was being wasted? Maybe the dented cans of soup were restocked for the next tournament. Or maybe they made the winners take it all home, beaten, spoiled, worthless produce and all.
Everyone who watched had their own strategy. That was part of the intrigue. Knowing what items cost the most and then collecting your maximum 5 as quickly as possible without breaking your back or wrecking the cart into Pepsi cubes. I always thought I would head straight to the medicine aisle. I could load up a cart with Benadryl and condoms and still have room for pistachios one aisle over. But I don't think medicine was available in their fictionalized market, an omission that calls into question the self-described "super" aspect. I would also run straight to the spice aisle. The weak yet time-efficient stud that I was, loading on 5 of every ginger, tumeric, and thyme offering would spare me the pain of earning the per pound value of every meat product stuffed into my basket. But yet, that seemed to be where every contestant wound up. Almost as is the things most valued now in a supermarket were not so much back then. Back then, it was all about meat. And perhaps that is just one argument for the intellectual dominance of Mr. Bob Evans and Jimmy Dean. Not to mention Uncle Charlie. Those guys had business sense, along with great taste.
I miss those days. I miss those shows. I'm sure I can pull one or two up on YouTube and then quickly realize that I didn't miss it that much after all. But like any fantasy, the fun is in reliving it, not in actually living it.
