new game show idea: contestants go to Costco and have like an hour to fill the basket of a shopping cart with the most expensive items they can. they can’t get more than 1 of any item, can’t fill the cart above the walls of the basket, and can’t get anything that’s like one of those cardboard things you have to exchange for the actual item after the checkout. whoever has the most expensive cart gets to keep everything from everyone’s carts for free. every episode is in a different Costco. oh and you have to use the main checkouts, like you can’t just go to the pharmacy and stock up on everything behind the counter.
alternate game mode: zero‐rated (untaxed) items only
this is supermarket sweep Sponsored By Costco™️ but instead of the grocery shopping being secondary to getting to the bonus round where you solve grocery-based riddles for money you just keep the groceries and you have to do the checkout yourself, and i guess it's not timed? anyway it's already a solved game because meats are overpowered (which is a very fun thing to say)
Of the American Supermarket Sweep, and I have discovered that people have neglected the superior by-volume strat of flu medicine and feminine hygiene products which are 1) small so you can put a ridiculous amount in the cart, and 2) absurdly expensive.
this “American Supermarket Sweep” show looks great of course, but it’s also much more frantic than what i would want to go for. the initial ballpark figure of 1 hour is a ton of time compared to these people just hucking whole turkeys into their basket as fast as their mortal arms permit, and that’s by design. the Costco Cart Cram (pat. pend.) ought to be more methodical and calculating.
i mean it can’t be too careful, that’s why there’s a time limit at all, but like. i want people trying to fit everything in the basket like puzzle pieces, evaluating whether an item’s a good idea because it has a better shape even if its price is low, pulling wild stunts like trying to compress a pack of hamburger buns under some heavy items, trying to see if they can get away with fitting in something that they want specifically without losing the game because of the space inefficiency, and lamenting that one brand is on sale rn so they can only get the other one. plus you need some extra time because Costco is bloody enormous and walking anywhere takes quite a while.
Costco feels uniquely well‐suited to this specific challenge because there’s such a wide variety of products with wildly differing cost‐to‐volume ratios, but there also aren’t a lot of distinct brands of those products. like, they have huge palettes full of nothing but ketchup, but across all of those there are only 2 brands of ketchup at most. so you’d only be able to stock up on 2 units of ketchup before having to come up with other ideas for the rest of the cart space.
upon pitching this concept, my friends immediately responded with a variety of takes on how they’d game this game. one just said “Get. The. Cheese. Wheels.” and i’m like. what?
this is in a Costco Business Centre, but uh, if this image is any indication those would be a great place to run this too. (perhaps those locations are better‐suited to using those big flat orange carts instead.) @namelessWrench above of course suggested medicines and menstrual products, electronics are also a good bet (though perhaps it’s best for at least some game modes to exclude anything subject to Costco’s more restrictive electronics returns policy), and one friend pointed out that spices like saffron in bulk quantities would have astronomical prices.
i specified “zero‐rated items only” as an alternate game mode to force the focus onto groceries (since they’d be more neglected in the any% game mode as they’re less expensive by volume than a lot of other items), but one of my international friends was confused by this very concept. is it less common than i thought for groceries to be untaxed, or…?
i’m realizing it might be best to stipulate that all optical discs and all books are considered equivalent even if they have different data on them. that’d be a bit silly otherwise. also the jewelry in the locked cases i assume are gonna be off‐limits since you can’t physically bring that item through a checkout either?? honestly i’ve never know anyone who’s tried to buy jewelry at Costco so i don’t know how that works exactly. but like the box is locked, you can’t just grab it off the shelf, and every contestant trying to get employees to open the jewelry case for them would be madness.
i’m torn on whether the store should be empty or not. seeing a Costco without crowds of people forming lines for free samples and blocking walkways with their carts just feels so inauthentic. but running the show during public operating hours would present so many uncool problems, and hiring extras to fill the store would feel “off” in its own way. plus there would inevitably be contestants who just knock over anyone in their way in pursuit of a win and that’s just not fun for anyone.
i’m also torn on whether or not it should be like, individuals or couples or family feuds or what. maybe it would just be changed up per‐episode. letting more people have more carts seems like a given too.