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larryn75
Reviews
Shenanigans (1964)
Great kids active/thinking game; too bad it's forgotten
I LOVED this show (I was 5, nearly 6) and made my own home board version when I couldn't get it soon enough. It aired on ABC. Some of the major stops/spaces were Pie in the Eye, where you tried to cream a pie in between the opening/closing eyelids/lashes of a giant eye; Punchboard, where you punched in a large button to pick your question; and Haunted House, where you had to run inside and get something scary that turned out to be a prize. There were several other major spaces like that. Prizes were also Milton Bradley games, the sponsor (mostly); MB also had a home version of the game, of course. There were lots of spaces to land on along the (I think) squared-U shaped live board; all the events took places on a horizontal wall along the outer edge, something like an old-style midway wall. The theme song (didn't think about it at the time, but I bet Stubby sang it (not live)) began something like: *Shenanigans--Come on along and play Shenanigans--...* (??) For the life of me, tho, I donÔt recall how the players/tokens moved around the board (dice, spinner, etc.)
Fantastic Voyage (1968)
Remember: the CMDF
I cannot for the life of me remember any of the plots now (I was, 9?), but that image dominates of the ship shrinking on that rotating disk of colored lights like a giant wheel-of-fortune, with the three large emitters pointing down, blazing away atop arcing pylons rising up, out and back down toward the wheel. And the shrinking music theme cue with a powerful but languid tone--*da-dum-da deeeeeeeeee dow! da-dum-da deeeeeeeeee DOW!*--sorta a twist on the Perry Mason opening riff. I can still see Buzby Birdwell (what kid knew that takeoff name then?) sitting up in the little bubbled cockpit on top to fly it ... and Ted Knight's announcer voice as the Narrator intoning: *The C-M-D-F ...Combined Miniature Defense Force!* I had a set of Mattels TogÕl blocks and often made the Voyager. Cool ship before I ever knew the Enterprise.