The 5 Most Ridiculously Unfair Kids Game Shows
Who doesn't like to watch children fail at things? It builds character in them and it makes adults laugh, which is why it inspired a whole era of kid-based game shows in the late '80s and early '90s.
But some of these shows seemed less about fun and more about introducing children to the dark, cruel world they were about to grow up in.
#5.
Fun House (1988-1991)
Every good kids' game show challenge involves some type of skill, whether it's knowing the difference between Corey Haim and Corey Feldman, using hand-eye coordination to shoot an arrow plunger at an apple dangling over your mother's head or having the leg strength to push a giant plastic bacteroid on wheels across a finish line.
In the late '80s, the show Fun House said fuck all that and introduced the Slop Machine, a big machine with four booths for the kids to sit in. The host, J.D. Roth, pulled a lever and the giant slot machine spun wheels over each booth until they landed on candy or slop. The three losers got a bunch of sticky shit dumped in their hair while the one lucky winner had packages of hard sugar rain down on their head.
That's right--in order to win this game, you had to do NOTHING. It was like the Wheel of Fortune, if you took away the contestants' ability to solve a puzzle. Or even spin the fucking wheel. It was all luck and you didn't even get to press a buzzer. Your fate was entirely in the hands of pretty boy host J.D. Roth, who was a little too enthusiastic about luring children with the promise of candy and then covering them in goo.
In order to affect whether or not you win this game, you either had to have control over time and space, a special chip you could cash in with God, or a MILF willing to bone the producer to throw the game in your favor.
The Lesson:
You have utterly no control over your own success or failure.
The Only Way It Could Be Worse:
You would have to risk your college savings and all of your parents' future mortgage payments every time J.D. pulls the lever.
#4.
Nick Arcade (1992-1993)
While other Nickelodeon game shows like Double Dare encouraged kids to have fun by staying active, Nick Arcade told kids they could achieve the same thing by sitting on their ever-expanding asses and playing video games.
The show combined a mix of trivia, luck and skill challenges along with a healthy dose of gaming. The whole thing was capped off by an ultra fake looking bonus round where the kids would get to do the one thing all gamers hoped technology would let them do (other than bang Lara Croft): star in their own game.
As you can see, the bonus round turned the winning contestants into the stars of a fictional video game consisting of three levels in which they have to retrieve (wave their hands awkwardly in the general direction of) three objects without running out of power or dignity by the time the clock runs out.
The flaw here was that the "video game" up there was just a giant green screen with monitors on either side, so the contestant ended up looking less like Mario, and more like a really inexperienced weatherman trying to point to a tiny, fast moving storm.
Thus, the kid was forced to flail around as if suffering from several crippling disabilities. Hell, they didn't even get any virtual weapons to defend themselves. Even Pac-Man had weapons to fight off the ghosts and he's just a damn head.
The Lesson:
You will be awkward and incompetent in any universe, real or imaginary.
The Only Way It Could Be Worse:
The contestants could have been asked to complete in the bonus round in "Hot Coffee" mode.
#3.
GUTS (1992-1995)
Let's face it, watching kids play sports is so boring that even the kids who play them wouldn't watch it. GUTS decided to remedy this problem by incorporating bungee cords into just about every competition known to modern man.
The "elastic" challenges let kids dunk a basketball, spike a volleyball and complete a Marion Jones-esque long jump without having to inject a human growth hormone in their legs. However they quickly ran out of good challenges and invented things like this retarded bungee archery contest.
Now attaching kids to cords and letting them jump from high distances seemed like a perfect recipe for a lawsuit against MTV Networks, so it appears they shortened up the cords so the contestants' feet barely touched the ground during their approach. Unfortunately, this gave the contestant little control over where they actually would ended up and robbed them of the torque they needed to make it back up the padded stairs, often leaving them to dangle sadly just out of reach.
It must have been frustrating for the contestants as it was hilarious for the audience. If the producers could have kept moving the stairs back every time they reached for it (like a painful game of "Almost Got It" bullies used to play on kids with their lunch money), it would have been a ratings bonanza.
The Lesson:
Skill and practice mean nothing when adults just want to laugh at your failure.
The Only Way It Could Be Worse:
Put the kids' drunk, failed high school athlete fathers on the sidelines screaming "Pussy!" at them every time they fail to fire a foam arrow at a target.
#2.
Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? (1991-1996)
Picture this: You're a grade-A student who one day hopes to become a geography grand master. You spend every waking minute studying bizarre continental trivia like obscure countries' capitals, the highest regional mountain ranges and countries that produce the most whiskey per capita. You compete in geography bees from the local to the state to the national level winning everything from t-shirts to scholarships for colleges that your future DeVry friends can't even spell.
Finally,it's about to pay off with a trip to anywhere in the continental United States, thanks to the Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? game show on PBS. All you have to do is ace the final map round, by identifying the countries of South America. And then it all goes to shit.
Yes, the entire challenge depends on the child being able to carry around idiotic light poles that are approximately as big as their entire body. The majority of the time limit ticks off while the girl in the above video tries to line up the wobbly things on the exact spot on the floor, knowing that if she knocks one over and breaks it, PBS can use their government sway to get the IRS to take it out of your parents next tax refund.
Thus Angelique up there loses the bonus round, even though she clearly knows her geography and misses out on a trip, possibly to Oregon to see her grandmother one more time before the cancer takes her away.
The Lesson:
Not even superior knowledge can overcome life's completely arbitrary obstacles.
The Only Way It Could Be Worse:
If the light poles were designed with heating elements to quickly heat up to 300 degrees while the child was carrying them.
#1.
I’m Telling! (1987-1988)
If you thought that lie detector show The Moment of Truth crossed the boundaries of good taste by forcing people to air their dirty laundry for large amounts of cash, NBC once stooped even lower by offering the same opportunity to kids in exchange for lesser spoils such as a collection of Hardy Boys novels and a remote controlled robot.
The Saturday morning game show, I'm Telling!, took the concept of The Newlywed Game and made the astonishingly creepy decision to apply it to young siblings by asking them probing questions. Just like The Newlywed Game, the two would have to match their answers for points.
If you're not clear about what's so wrong with it, take a look at this clip of host Laurie Faso asking these girls, who can't be more than 10-years-old, how their parents dish out punishments when their brothers misbehave:
That's right, in order to win this game, you not only have to humiliate your brother or sister on national Saturday morning television, you also had to incriminate your parents and provide Child Protective Services the evidence they need to rip you from your family and stick you in a foster home. Even Laurie Faso seems uncomfortable when the adorable little freckle faced girl specifies that her parents spank her brother "with a belt."
The Lesson:
Your trauma and adults' comedy are one and the same.
The Only Way It Could Be Worse:
Their parents would have to come on stage and reenact the beatings before a panel of judges including Ike Turner, Joshua Jackson and Joan Crawford who would award points based on style, originality and poise.
For more corporation condoned child abuse, check out Danny's look at The 5 Least Surprising Toy Recalls of All-Time or if you're a child yourself, find out how to blow yourself up.
There's some rumor that one of the contestants from GUTS killed his family.
ReplyCan Cracked get a server for the video files instead of linking to YouTube videos that are immediately removed or blocked the moment the article is published? It is pretty easy to copy video files from YouTube while the video is still active.
ReplyHole in the wall, nuff said.
ReplyGuts was tight. So was Legends of the Hidden Temple, Double Dare, and Double Dare 2000!
ReplyI was more than a bit disappointed none of those showed up on this list.
"Your fate was entirely in the hands of pretty boy host J.D. Roth, who was a little too enthusiastic about luring children with the promise of candy and then covering them in goo."
ReplyOh...ohhhhhh....oooooohhhhhhh...I see what you did there. WOW.
Oh, and that Nick Arcade clip was painful.
Who calls child protective services for a spanking with a belt?
Replythis is why teenagers today are self entitled pansies.
I'm actually going to agree with you here, even though you come off as a bit of a dick. If my dad hadn't belted me when I was younger, I would still be eating with my face instead of with a knife and fork- properly, not the fork-clutched-in-one-fist-on-the-wrong-hand-not-bothering-to-use-a-knife method which seems to be popular among my brothers friends at least-twits.
Why stop at using a belt? What about a chain or nun-chuks? It's called child abuse.
What I always thought was so unfair about Carmen Sandiego is that the big map on the floor was UPSIDE DOWN from the kid's perspective.
Replyi was working for kb toys at a mall in california about thirteen years ago. jd roth was there filming some animal planet show and i approached him afterwards to tell him i watched Funhouse as a kid and to thank him for being part of my childhood. you know, heartfelt kinda stuff. he looked at my employee tag, pumped his fist and said sneeringly "kb rules", then turned around and walked off. I've met a few famous type people, and he was easily the most asshole-ish. that guy can go eat a badgers c**k cheese.
ReplyI remember my dad watching LotHT with me once and the daily historical figure they featured was Caligula. He started laughing and wouldn't tell me why until I was much older. It seemed like they glossed over the best parts. Like the fact he probably would have raped and murdered anybody on that show, the host included and probably eaten their corpses. Nickelodeon probably didn't do much historical research before featuring a maniac sexual deviant on a kids gameshow.
ReplyNobody would've expected them to do research, anyway
So there's an abbreviation for Legends of the Hidden Temple now??
I remember all the Nickeloden ones from Nick GAS. They were the best, but I don't think GUTS deserved this list. It was actually pretty fair and awesome.
ReplyLoved GUTS!!!
I used to just sit around and watch Nick GAS all day, and I agree that GUTS shouldn't be on here. I always wanted to be on that show even though it had already ended years before I started watching it.
I'm surprised Double Dare wasn't mentioned. Anyone who saw the obstacle course at the end must've seen that god awful sandwich slathered in what we hope is "peanut butter" hiding one of hte flags. You'd be stuck there for 30 seconds at least scrounging through s**t colored jelly swash trying to find that damn thing. it's even more humiliating if it was hte last obstacle. You can almost hear their hearts breaking when they come up with the flag one second too late and Mark summers has to tell them to f**k off. Not to mention all the other crazy that happened during the show....
ReplyDamn, you're totally right, that should be on here. Also, thanks for the nostalgia boner.
I sooo wanted to be on all of those except the first and last which I think were just a little before my time. In retrospect, I don't think the host of Nick Arcade ever had to worry about getting fat, because he HAD to be doing massive amounts of meth.
ReplyI loved Guts when it was on. I always wished I could be on that, or on the kids version of American Gladiators, and all those other neat shows. The closest I ever got was being in the audience of the Family Double Dare road tour and getting a doll for answering a question. Mark Summers was asking kids in the audience about Nick shows and one of the questions was about new shows at the time. Mom helped me to wave frantically to get his attention, and I answered "Doug" and got a doll. It was absolutely awesome.
ReplyYou forgot "Make The Grade" (Nickelodeon, 90' or 91'). It was a bit like "Jeopardy!" what with the trivia and similar board. However the rules were such that you didn't win based on points or highest cash total. Instead you needed to answer at least one question in each category and difficulty. No big deal, until a contestant landed on "Make The Grade's" proverbial Daily Double. The dreaded "Fire Drill"! This consisted of the 3 contestants competing in a simple physical challenge such as shooting baskets (like the ticket games at Chuck E. Cheese) or a lame-assed ring toss. The winner of the Fire Drill got to do the unforgivable: They got to rip-off the leading player's entire accumulative score!!! Most games ended with a stupid kid with 3 or 4 answers on HIS board, winning the whole f*****g game by shooting the most baskets in 45 seconds and stealing the smart kid's board just before time ran out in round 2.
ReplyLesson to be learned: no matter how smart you are, the jocks can kick your ass and take your s**t anytime they feel fanciful.
Only way it could have been worse: if after losing everything you have to some dick that's more athletic than you, he then got to dump your books, give you a swirly, magic-marker your wiener, and call you a f*g while all the pretty girls from your school get to point and laugh...and also call you a fag.
#1, Well, see, the thing is, you could be punished back than, not like today. Where if you look at your kid wrong he'll threaten to call Child services.
Reply Hide All See All 8 RepliesCan't recall his name, the genius who made spanking illegal. His son hung himself, were taking advice from a man who couldn't be bothered to raise his own child. Good job.
Spanking is illegal? Where? That's ridiculous.
Porshcefan: I think it is where I live (Florida). I think it is now called child abuse.... which is retarded.
1. A person's suicide cannot be blamed on the parent. People commit suicide for a variety of reasons.
2. You'll be pleased to know that spanking is alive and well in America, despite just about everyone with even half a brain knowing by now that it stinks and it doesn't work.
3. If you need to beat a little kid with a belt to get him to "behave", you are doing something very wrong.
I'm no fan of CPS (they tend to break up families for all the wrong reasons, financial difficulties being a favorite), but this "You can't hit your kids anymore waaaaah!" bullshit argument is getting old. If you can't raise 'em without hitting 'em, you suck.
Pft. I remember when getting a belt whoopin' from my grandma straightened my ass up for at least a month. I DID NOT step out of line whatsoever for weeks afterwards.
Beating children does not prevent suicide.
Really? Spanking doesn't work? Because my parents spanked me every time I stepped too far out of line, and I came up better than most kids my age. It was only for the worst things I did as kid (shout at my mom, break a vase, kill a hooker, etc.), the little stuff got me a talking-to.
Spanking isn't illegal everywhere, because it isn't here in NH. I mean, other people can't just spank your kids but you can.
In mississippi we call it parenting
It's a shame most of these videos won't play anymore. But anyway, the only show I don't remember in this list is I'm Telling. But it reminds me of another game us Canadians had called Kidstreet, which looks to have the exact same premise as I'm Telling. The only difference is ours sat in little car replicas as they were asked questions.
ReplyGUTS and Carmen Sandiego were awesome! I don't remember Sandiego being so hard, in fact I remember yelling to the kids where to put the right country. And I remember the Arcade show too. You just happened to the pick the slowest kid ever on the show!
Reply'Sandiego' got a lot harder around the fourth season. They bumped the win condition from seven correct answers to eight, and they made the clues a heckuva lot longer. Contestants would often lose despite hustling and getting every answer right, because it took so long for the host to read the clues.
You have a very poor recollection of Fun House
ReplyJoshua Jackson?? Did you mean Joe Jackson?
ReplyI used to watch most of these as a kid. Nick Arcade was every bit as lame as you paint it, and Fun House wasn't worth an iota of attention, but I firmly defend GUTS and Carmen Sandiego.
ReplyThere wasn't a kid who watched Nick who didn't want to take on the Aggro Crag. That s**t looked like the world's most awesome playground. And GUTS, um, gave us Mike O'Malley... Okay, never mind that.
And Carmen Sandiego? I wanted to go on that show SO much. I was stupendous at the computer game and I did compete in geography bees. And get your facts straight, Danny! The trip was to anywhere in North America. Most of the winners chose trips to Mexico, and plenty of kids did, in fact, win. Plus, best theme song EVER.
How many of those kids lost an organ?