GSG Induction - FAM's Interactive Games
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- Опубликовано: 21 авг 2024
- On this edition of Game Show Garbage, Robert Seidelman takes a look at another oft-requested item from the mid-90s, The Family Channel's Interactive Games. Produced by the legendary Wink Martindale, the lineup had four games: Trivial Pursuit, Boggle, Jumble and Shuffle. Robert takes a look at all four of them.
Wait, you never actually talked about the /interactive/ 1-900 call-in part of Jumble, Boggle, and Shuffle. Pay $4.98 to call in and maybe win a dehydrator or a hammock.
I do remember the Family Channel (now Freeform) “Interactive” game shows since I was younger. It has all of the questions and answers were given within a time limit of 10 seconds, and these were just for the cheaters. The “Play Break” segments was just as boring as the other “Interactive” game shows, and it was played during commercial breaks when they showed “Name That Tune” in its edited form where the constellation prizes were removed, that includes the $100,000 tournament specials where the constellation prizes were removed as well, because of “Play Break” segments.
When game shows would resort to gimmicks like this, it means a kiss of death not only for the particular game show, but game shows in general!
The UK Family Channel used Trivial Pursuit (without interactivity) with Tony Slattery as host. I can't think of a less Wink-like person to do it, but it worked.
Trivial Pursuit: The Interactive Game
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Just about every quiz game featured on Buzztime’s restaurant/pub network
Wink made a mint on those four shows, despite the low ratings.
But by 1996, he needed the money, so he signed on to host Debt
Might be me, but I liked the set for those shows. Then again, I do tend to enjoy colorful things a lot.
Seeing the intros to these shows brings to mind the words of the great Dave Rodgers:
Deja Vu!
I've just been in this place before!
Higher off the street, and I know it's my time to go!
1:37 That's is REALLY FUNNY - Contestant upstaging the HOST - LOL
Ya gotta love Terry Ray
Hey I solved the Jumble you posted:
GIANT, AWOKE, PAUNCH, BOTTLE.
TIE THE KNOT
9:33 what I noticed the host did for every game show was repeat the same phase but have the title of the game changed every time for every show he hosted
That was/is the most boring part for me....nothing unique about it. Even Wink seemed to be going through the motions here.
Basically, the scoring is just the same as those NTN/Buzztime trivia games we've played at places like BW3 and Damon's Grill, except without the clues that rule out two possibilities and lead to the correct answer.
In all of these games, except Trivial Pursuit, the contestants never had to speak. I remember once in a while Wink would ask one of the players to say the right answer though. I cracked up at the "exoskelteons" remark! Hilarious!
I remember that there were some early episodes of Trivial Pursuit: The Interactive Game which originally started with 12 contestants instead of 9.
I'm surprised you didn't mention The Joker's Wild Home Bonus Game during Bill Cullen's first season. But then again, I didn't even remember that until I found it on an old tape.
Playing with a numeric keypad on your phone...
That almost reminds me of the Intellivision, the ColecoVision, and the Atari 5200.
Add the Emerson Arcadia 2001 and Atari Jaguar to the list-- they also had controllers with numeric keypads.
Drowning in a sea of bad game shows? Then wait until 1996, cause then, *IT'S TIME TO PLAY DEBT!*
2:12 That guy really reminds me of Johnny from Airplane!- similar voice, mocking of clothes in a sarcastic tone...
You also forgot to mention that Wink Martindale produced another Game Show called 2nd Honeymoon with Wayne Cox and it aired in the USA on Pat Robertson's CBN during the 87/88 Season before it became The Family Channel until 1998
also, Fiedler-Berlin Productions Co-produced all Interactive Game Shows also had their hands @ Co-producing Wordplay with Tom Kennedy, Treasure Mall with Hal Sparks and Trump Card with Jimmy Cefalo and Debi Massi
I do agree with your induction of the interactive games, but I have a bigger gripe with Trivial Pursuit and Shuffle play at home games. If you watch the Friday finals for TP and Shuffle, they will always give the scores of the leaders after each question to build up the tension. After the first question in TP, the player in the lead will have a score of 99-. By the time they have entered their answer, almost none of the question was revealed. What I mean is, basically the person who won the play break was someone who made the correct 1 out of 4 selection five times in a row. This made the game basically a lottery. That was fixed with Boggle and Shuffle because there was actual skill involved. On the Friday Finals of those shows, after the first question the leader had a score of about 700 which means they got the word off the clue and was fast enough to punch it in. The Play Breaks were crap, but TP and Shuffles were essentially lottery games whereas Boggle and Shuffle were skill games. With $4.95 a call (and I bet there were many people with BIG telephone bills because of this), I would rather play a skill game than a lottery.
The "Trivial Pursuit" that run a few years ago tanked!
Actually, Trivial Pursuit and it's interactive counterpart debuted at the same time. I know this because I remember seeing promos for it.
Don’t forget “down you go” and “20 questions” in the 1950s
Is it me or someone notice that the theme music for Boggle, Jumble & Shuffle are close the the same music.
..And I think the stage is the same too.
I liked the three player format of Trivial Pursuit, but the other games are snoozers. I wonder what Wink makes of this critique. He's had his own Facebook and RUclips pages for a while. There was an interesting clip of a show he did called "The Great Getaway Game" which never made it to air, because some of the crew from that game were playing a prank on him. It really is hilarious if you haven't seen it yet.
bluebear1985 I'm curious to know what Randy would think of the critique, too. Considering he also has a FB page...
I’m trying to find that Wink MC rap at 3:14.
I remember watching Trivial Pursuit in real time & thought it was a novel concept. The other shows I vaguely or not at all recall.
Looking back, Wink did kind of seem like he was punching the clock until Debt. How sad then, that a great show such as that was derailed by a network that positioned itself as "women's entertainment" (not so much anymore) when a sizable part of their non-target audience was tuning in?
I kinda wish you'd cut the Card Sharks and Scrabble clips a bit short, seeing how they took up a good 25% of the video... other than that, great job on the induction!
wink martindale is the american equivalent of silvio santos
I enjoyed Trivial Pursuit but aside from that, the others simply failed.
especially shuffle
You know, looking back at these shows, sad to say, they sucked the big one, save for Trivial Pursuit. When I watched the game show block on The Family Channel during summer breaks, there was only a few shows I watched, and that was The $100,000 Name That Tune, Trivial Pursuit, Let's Make a Deal, and Split Second. And all the while, when this block came on, I was saying to myself "Oh my god, when's Rescue 911 gonna come on?!"
Again, I loved Trivial Pursuit the most out of the all the shows in the block.