Sorry, there\'s no concise way to ask this.
What\'s the earliest specific scene or episode of a game show that you remember watching in its original run and saw again in more recent times, whether on GSN, a tape trade, etc.?
The oldest thing I\'m sure of is the final CBS episode of The Joker\'s Wild. I sat in front of the TV that morning in 1975, and later someone either here or at the GSN board showed me a like to it.
More specific than something like \"the \'1\'s on the Star Wheel were center-justified\" or \"Treasure Hunt existed in 1982\", I remember seeing Alice winning the lot and wondering why she was showered with cash and stuff for reaching the score of 115.
Combs Feud.
The Price is Right\'s 25th Anniversary Special
The other day, I saw an episode of Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego about the Magna Carta that I could have sworn I saw when it originally aired. I feel like I have a vague memory from when I was 3 of the villains and the winning contestant.
One of the earliest things I remember, period, is watching Scrabble with my mom around age 3, then several other shows (Tic Tac 90, LMAD90, PYL, Wipeout, Card Sharks) with my grandma. All I remember from any of these are that LMAD had \"Behind these ever-changing doors\" in the intro; Wipeout came on either before or after Jake and the Fatman; and PYL\'s logo reminded me of Bekins Van Lines, since grandma lived only a block from one of their garages.
But the earliest things I remember seeing, then re-seeing, would be from Wheel in 1992. The earliest days of the Surprise wedge, when it had a different font (I think I once remarked that the pink reminded me of TaB cans). The lady who called C D Z O to thwart the tough bonus puzzle ZOO. A Soap Opera College Challenge episode where the puzzle SQUID\'S SQUIRT took an eternity to solve, and the bonus round was FOG HORN [sic] on the very top row. The episode where the puzzle VANNA\'S PREGNANT was replaced with a three-minute spiel on San Francisco.
Wow. Took four posts to turn \"one specific\" into a laundry list. That\'s impressive even for here.
I\'m going to guess that it was an episode of Concentration with Hugh Downs as host. Not that specific, but it\'s only one item...
The thing is, I have plenty of early memories, but nothing specific enough to where I saw it years later and said \"I remember that moment!\" Off the top of my head, I\'ve mentioned before that the Tune Topics board from Lange\'s Name That Tune is something I remember watching with my great-grandmother, so I guess I could say it was cool to see that in USA reruns a few years later? But then again, I could say the same thing with Press Your Luck or Pyramid...
Fun question, but other than that, I got nothing.
The first specific episode of the original \"Hollywood Squares\" that I can vividly remember was from the nighttime syndie run. It would have been smack dab in the mid-\'70s. I distinctly recalled that when they came back from the first commercial, the male contestant picked Florence Henderson, who was the Secret Square, and that later in the show, the same contestant picked the next Secret Square, who was Elizabeth Montgomery. That was one of the episodes that GSN aired in 2002, and it was great to see it again. I swear that whenever I see it now, I\'m briefly transported back to my parents\' living room and I can see the old couch and the old TV set.
Great question, Mr. Temple!
Several things for me. I have dim memories of seeing Charlie Van Doren sweating it out with his handkerchief in the isolation booth. I remember a creepy Tic Tac Dough contestant who wore an eyepatch (Martin Dowd), and daytime TTD being hosted by guys other than Jack Barry. I remember Play Your Hunch going from Merv to Gene Rayburn and then to Robert Q. Lewis. I remember Say When!! and People Will Talk but have not seen them in decades.
I never got to see much WML? hosted by John Charles Daly at 10:30 pm Sunday nights, and am just now discovering that show decades later on the Tube of You.
The big \"chuck-a-luck\" dice cage from Video Village.
I have a vague memory of the opening to \"Body Language\", and then seeing the show on GSN as an adult, and being shocked that it wasn\'t something I made up in my head. Aside from that, I distinctly remember running scared to my mother from the distinctive Penny Ante sound effect.
I remember watching $25K Pyramid and Wheel of Fortune daytime while being babysat. This would have been sometime in \'84.
Also a memory of visiting my Aunt in upstate PA, and seeing what I now know is TJW. I remember that the host had thick glasses. Hence, 1985 or after. Oddly, I don\'t have any other recollection of watching the 77-86 run of TJW, but the TTD reruns on USA were a staple later in the \'80s.
EDIT: Someone mentioned being scared of the Penny Ante sound effect. Had to throw this in. I was absolutely terrified of the Stinger sfx on $1M CoaL. I would hide behind our recliner. But it was worth it to watch the show simply for the giant keyboard, which I wanted to build in my house.
The first game show that I remember that I was able to see on GSN is a 2-way tie between $20K Pyramid and Match Game, each fascinating me in their own way. $20K Pyramid fascinated me by the solari\'s, and Match Game fascinated me by the Star Wheel. I really wasn\'t interested in any other part of the program but that. I remember being sort of disappointed when $25K Pyramid premiered and they went all-LED.
And in typing the reply to this I got an idea for ANOTHER thread....Stay tuned!
I saw one recently: on an MG/HS episode that was posted online a while back, I distinctly remembered the \"Cheerios grow up to be ______\" question (and Richard Kline\'s response of \"cheerleaders\")
As for less-specific ones...my earliest memories had to come from 1980, as I remembered bits and pieces of: TTD, TJW, Ward TTTT, Woolery WOF, Whew!, Blockbusters, High Rollers, Marshall HS, Kennedy NTT, and PW+ way before I\'d see them again via tape trade and/OR GSN. Odd thing is, at 3 years old, I think I remembered the Allen-to-Tom transition on PW+ and feeling funny about it.
I remember my Mom Watching the Fleming Jeopardy from the mid 60\'s. I thought $10 was big bucks back then!
The Dream House finale in 1984, specifically the final house win but also Bob, Johnny, and the crew in the audience saying their goodbyes.
My earliest game show memory was \"Go\". What stuck out in my mind was the guesser bouncing from seat to seat with Kevin occasionally yelling out \"Go!\". The first few bars of the theme song stuck with me all the way until the mid-\'90s when I was finally able to hear it in its entirety on 80stvthemes.com
There were another show that aired a couple years later that I thought I had dreamed up. All I remembered was some guy pushing a button and repeating \"No bandit! No bandit!\". Fast forward twenty-plus years and, via YouTube, I discovered that it was an actual show called \"Strike It Rich\".
On the topic of \"scary\" SFX, PYL\'s Whammy sound guaranteed to have me running out the room screaming like a banshee as a baby. I swear I couldn\'t watch that show until I was like eight years old. Honorable mentions go to Combs Feud\'s strike cue and Pathfinder\'s wrong number zap. I used to have to watch that game on mute for a while.
The earliest recollection of a specific game show moment that I remember seeing for the second time years later was a specific question on MG\'7x when one of the possible answers was \"Potty\". When it came for Patty Duke Astin to reveal her answer, she said \"Potty\" in some weird voice, exectly the way I remembered it decades earlier. The only GS SFX that scared the crap out of me was when I was a kid was the HSq Tacky Buzzer on the syndicated episodes.
Gotta show my age and say a Fleming episode of Jeopardy! from the late 1960s
On the topic of \"scary\" SFX, PYL\'s Whammy sound guaranteed to have me running out the room screaming like a banshee as a baby. I swear I couldn\'t watch that show until I was like eight years old. Honorable mentions go to Combs Feud\'s strike cue and Pathfinder\'s wrong number zap. I used to have to watch that game on mute for a while.
For me, it was:
TPIR losing horns
Bankrupt
Stopper
TTD dragon (and by proxy I turned the sound down during the TJW bonus game cause I feared the Devil made a noise too...either way, I didn\'t like the Penny Ante SFX, which at the time sounded like a weed whacker starting for some reason...no, really...)
Not really sure of the very first thing I remember. I think it might have been something on the syndicated Beat the Clock in the late \'60s or early \'70s. Can\'t recall if it ever played on GSN.
I destinctly remember a LOT of Tattletales questions from original broadcasts and remember seeing some of those on GSN.
I also remember a fair bit from the CBS Joker\'s Wild, and that probably would have qualified if GSN hadn\'t dropped the show and never brought it back :(
Probably the very earliest memory blurb is a few moments of Warren Hull on Strike It Rich, specifically him leading the audience in a singing jingle for Fab detergent to the tune of \"Hot Time In The Old Town Tonight\". Other three-second blips include the flashing game board on Double Exposure, the giant gift box on Your Surprise Package, the contestant entry door on Tic Tac Dough, and a reveal on Split Personality. Longer term memories include Concentration and Video Village, both Narz and Hall versions. Even remember a couple of more verse lines to this tune..or one closer to the original theme...\"Stroll awhile along the Magic Mile, where dreams are waiting to come true....\". http://www.televisiontunes.com/Video_Village_-_The_Village_Bus.html
On many occasions, I have seen a specific game show episode as an adult through GSN or through a game show trade that I remember as a specific episode I watched at age 5 or so in the mid-1970s. Some specific memories that had stayed in my head all those years and I had my memory confirmed were the last Password All-Stars in which I remembered correctly the celeb players, Allen mentioning there were no qualifying games to be played this day and also that the last password they didn\'t get to was \"rhyme\".
I also had exactly one memory of \"Now You See It\" from age five, and it was a moment during the semifinal \"Letter, letter\" portion of the round where the contestant gave the answer \"foot\" and Jack Narz said, \"Yes, foot or feet!\" When I went through all the NYSI episodes the last time GSN aired the whole cycle, I kept waiting for that one moment and there it finally was in a June 1974 episode which confirmed the date of when I\'d seen that fragmentary memory.
And I remember seeing syndie HSQ episodes with Wally Cox airing at least a year after his death in the markets I lived in, in 1974 and GSN aired one episode with an intro I remember where Mr. X was a bird expert so Peter had Wally Cox do a bird call of some kind and then when Peter asked the contestant what that was, the contestant answered, \"That\'s a Wally Cox.\" It was a freaky moment again to see something specific I remembered from age five again for the first time in my early 30s.
Many Match Game 75-76 moments provided similar experiences too, including the Johnny Olson fills in for Gary Burghoff day.
My oldest game show memory was of a contestant winning the $1000 end game on Joe Garagiola\'s Memory Game.
I\'ve never seen a specific episode and realized that I remembered it. The closest that I probably get is remembering the \"coffee can\" lights around the big doors for the 1986 Price specials that tended to show up in clip montages over the years, and a few details about Super Password that weren\'t confirmed until it showed up on GSN.
I\'ve never been able to confirm this, but when I was about 2 or 3, I remember watching \"Super Password\" and I could\'ve sworn they talked to the guy behind the board, and showed things from his POV, several feet up. Am I making this up?Nope, I remember this too. It wasn\'t a regular thing, for sure, but they did show it at least once.
The first one I can remember that GSN has aired is the first episode of TJW. I even remember the circles around some of the prizes in the end game.
I remember watching one of the 1986 \"Price\" specials on a black and white portable TV. I specifically remember the game Hole in One. My memory bothered me for years because I knew I remembered Bob wearing a tux but, gosh, Bob never wears a tux on the show. And then I got internet access in 1998 and saw screencaps on a website, and I felt weirdly relieved.