Most of '88

TOP TRUMP TAMER Switching from gabbing to grabbing, former talk-show host Merv Griffin outmaneuvered developer Donald Trump for control of Resorts International, the Atlantic City hotel-and-gambling company. The megarich Merv paid $364 million.

COSTLIEST TYPO When Prudential took out a lien against eight ships owned by United States Lines, someone wrote down $92,885 instead of $92,885,000. So when the shipping firm went bankrupt and sold the liners for $67 million, it + technically owed Prudential only $92,885. The shipping company eventually agreed to give Prudential the proceeds, but deducted $11 million as the price of the errant decimal point.

MST $$$, BLDG W VU The world's tallest skyscraper, Chicago's 110-story Sears Tower, went on the block for an asking price of at least $1 billion. Fearing corporate raiders, the giant retailer decided to sell the building to raise cash (its original cost in 1972: $200 million).

MOST FRILLS ON A GOLDEN PARACHUTE Gerald Tsai, head of the Primerica financial-services firm, grabbed $40 million in severance when he sold the company, whose holdings include the brokerage firm Smith Barney, to Commercial Credit Group. Part of Tsai's deal: 120 hours free use of the corporate jet and a consulting contract that will pay him additional income for time he spends working in the office on his yacht.

CHEAPEST ROUTE TO BANKRUPTCY Texas tycoons William Herbert and Nelson Bunker Hunt paid $1 each to ride the New York City subway when they came to town to face a civil suit in U.S. District Court. A federal jury found that the former billionaires, along with their brother Lamar, had tried to rig the silver market in 1980 and assessed them damages of $130 million.

MOST ENDANGERED SPECIES The last Playboy Bunnies in the U.S. folded their ears when their warren in Lansing, Mich., closed for lack of business.

WEAKEST TAKEOVER DEFENSE Pillsbury's "just say no" strategy failed to fend off British consumer-products giant Grand Metropolitan. The Dough Boys also tried a "poison pill" strategy that would have awarded current stockholders a larger share of the company, making it far more expensive to purchase. But a Delaware chancery court ruled against Pillsbury's tactic, and it was gobbled up last week for $5.C5 billion.

BEST CAPITALIST GIFT TO SOVIET WOMEN Tambrands, the New York-based makers of Tampax, agreed to manufacture the product as part of a joint venture with the Soviet Union in what will be that country's first tampon factory. The plant, near Kiev, is expected to produce as many as 150 million tampons a year.

MOST BODACIOUS BIDDER RJR Nabisco chief Ross Johnson and some colleagues offered to buy out the company for $17.6 billion in a deal that could have netted Johnson $100 million. The bidding eventually hit $25 billion, but RJR directors rebuked Johnson and awarded the company to the Manhattan buyout firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts. Last week the House Energy and Commerce Committee announced a probe of the deal.

FASTEST-GROWING REPAIR BILL The official estimated price tag to bail out the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation, which guarantees the deposits of the troubled thrift industry, jumped from $20 billion at the start of 1988 to as much as $50 billion by year's end.