Bumping for a second because I want to carry a point over from another topic.
As previously mentioned the Tic Tac Dough 90 theme was rather disappointing output from Henry Mancini. One thing I couldn’t help but notice listening to it the other night that it resembles a circus theme and not in a good way. Of course the show was a circus in some other ways too, but am I the only one who hears that and gets a vibe like that? Maybe that would’ve been more fitting on The Joker’s Wild instead...
I somehow missed this thread the first time around.
I wouldn't be surprised if Henry Mancini's
Tic Tac Dough '90 theme was repurposed from something else (which wouldn't be the first time; it's not like Quincy Jones wrote "Chump Change" intending it for
Now You See It). If you look at the tail end of Mancini's film score career, it's mostly Blake Edwards movies and a few animated films--it sounds like a kid-oriented song that wound up a game show theme.
There were a lot of lousy 1980s game show themes. Synthesizers were used quite often (probably because it was cheaper than a full orchestra and sounded current); they've dated pretty badly.
MGP themes in the 1980s actually stand out for how good they were in comparison. I admit I don't love
Trivia Trap (which might reflect on my not liking the show at all), but almost everything else from that era was a creative revamp of an older theme (
MG '90,
TTTT '90), or a fun new theme to replace something that had dated (
Card Sharks '86 sounded a little like an instrumental track from a Missing Persons album, but it worked).