The club's elders have always tried to make contestants comfortable and have scrupulously avoided attention-grabbing gestures.
Other prizes that whizzed past – the "dinner service" and "fondue set" – would hardly make contestants think Christmas had come early.
The changes follow the last-minute decision of the series creator, Simon Cowell, to make contestants audition in front of an audience of 3,000 at arenas across the country – a far more pressurised environment than the previous format of auditioning in front of the show's four judges.
These hurdles variously include making contestants believe they're pirates, or are walking on ice, or are amorously attracted to Phillip Schofield, all of which come into play while they're answering trivia questions or moving balls from one container to another container.
Host Wayne Brady makes contestants' dreams come true.
In February the "Idol" producers partnered with iTunes to make contestant performances available on the online store for $1.99 each.
Click here to watch Back in the relatively halcyon days of 2013, The X Factor was so bereft of ideas that it made the contestants cover songs by previous contestants (oddly missing out 2004 alumnus Tabby Callaghan's presumptuously named single, Number One, or any songs from his subsequent album, Bread vs Art).
"The comments made by contestants weren't as incisive as before," said Guo Wei, 34, a longtime fan.
Back in the "golden age" of TV, inane game shows like "Beat the Clock" made human contestants do stupid pet tricks for prizes, long before David Letterman applied the idea to poodles and parakeets.
He then made the contestants line up in alphabetical order and parade together from the wings onto the stage and off it down the long ramp — the same ramp each would eventually be required to walk alone.
