The general store where Tracy and Spencer received their weekly, self-destructing assignments from the mysterious “Zero” was a real location: Lechler’s Grocery and Hardware Store in Piru, California. According to Lou Scheimer, 13 of these exterior scenes were filmed in a single day during a hot summer in 1975, maximizing efficiency for the production. The tape-recorded message from Zero was always hidden in an everyday object, and the gag would culminate in the message—and sometimes the object itself—exploding in Tracy’s face, a running joke that paid homage to Mission: Impossible.
Lechler’s and the bustling (if you count tumbleweeds) Piru main street was also used as a location in an episode of Cannon (Perfect Alibi, aired Oct 31, 1973), Barnaby Jones (.