Further to the coverage of the Canadian version by
Karla and
stewacide...
Prior to the start of the show, members of the studio audience would each be given a grocery item (always a product of one of the show's limited number of sponsors). There may be fifty people in the audience for any given taping, but it appears to the untrained eye to be hundreds (a la The Price Is Right). Look for the mirrored walls. If the announcer called the name of your particular product, or that of your friend (as potential contestants were always chosen in pairs), you got to play the game and meet Tino Monte. Usually, the contestant had Sugar Twin or Bounce fabric softener, but there was the one famed instance of... "Who has the Vaseline Petroleum Jelly?!?". (The person jumped up screaming, briefly realized the fact that they're on syndicated television holding an economy size tub of lube, paused, then jumped up and down again. Good times.)
You could tell Tino was just marking time until something better came along. He read the trivia questions with such thinly-veiled contempt that it was hard not to pity him. Hosting a third rate Canadian game show is bad enough (a notch above Talk About! but beneath Definition and The Mad Dash), but to do so while wearing hula dancer novelty ties is inhumane.
The questions and riddles would be answered by the three teams of suburban Toronto chattel to accumulate points. These points would be exchanged for extra time in the "Big Sweep" (or whatever it was called).
Ah, the Big Sweep. This is the crowning moment of any shopping spree-genre program... crowds of overweight people sprinting through narrow aisles pushing barely-controllable carts stuffed with hundreds of pounds of groceries over freshly-waxed floors. How the producers weren't sued into destitution baffles me. The team that amassed the most points got a head start on their opponents and, more importantly, first crack at the Primo ProscuittosTM. Well, it isn't real proscuitto, just plastic props painted to look like a real proscuitto. After stuffing six or seven plastic pig legs into the cart, it was on to the olive oil and laundry detergent. Usually, one of the partners splits off to the discount bin to search out the bonus items, worth an extra $100 or $200. After the time expires, the team with the highest dollar value in groceries moves onto the bonus round. Did I mention the color coordinated sweatshirts?
The bonus round consisted of a solo shopping spree (sans cart this time) much like the one in the American version described by Orange Julius. The team would be given a riddle identifying an product from the show's limited roster of sponsors. The team would hunt for the item (with the big-assed numbered sticker) which would have another riddle pointing to a second product. That product would lead the team to a third and final product. If that can of soup or box of breakfast cereal was in their greasy little fingers before the clock wound down, it'd be "Adios Mississauga, hola Habana!"