"The year 2003 will be most remembered -- as the year
Junkyard Wars ended up as pure video junk!"
While it may be stretching things to call TLC's
Junkyard Wars a "game show" (even though
Scrapheap Challenge, its sister show in the U.K., has managed to get listed on "The U.K. Game Show Site"), they nevertheless failed to learn the lesson of the 2001 version of
Card Sharks that was hosted by Pat Bullard. (In short: Never change a winning game --
always change a losing game!)
For its "Season 11" that started on August 27, 2003, they went to an all new format that was dubbed "Retooled, Re-engineered, Reborn" that ended up being overwhelingly re-
jected by its past legion of loyal fans that admired the show for its engineering brainwork. (Instead, it was the brawn of their permanent team captains, "Bowser" and "Crash," that got all the emphasis, and the only episode from that series I wanted to keep was one on which a Hebron, Kentucky, firefighter appeared, countering the appearances from a couple of area
Survivor alumni.
Thankfully, after that season of
Junkyard Wars came to its merciful end on October 8, 2003 (with, believe it or not, a "balloon busters" challenge!), TLC rushed back to the States some "re-badged" episodes from the latest season of
Scrapheap Challenge in the U.K. (and which had been only minimally changed from its previous seasons), which all of us
Junkyard Wars fans in the U.S. were very happy to see!
Michael Brandenburg
(Memo to Brian Henke: Go to this webpage for ten good reasons why I think
Junkyard Wars is better than
Survivor: http://www.the-nerds.org/Survivor-comparison.htm