Double Dare
Smiles all over the place. Stakes that didn’t get any higher than a hundred bucks or so. Physical challenges that often involved pie and the smashing thereof in one another’s hair. Nickelodeon was pretty cool back then, in the days before it realized how much cash it could make by slapping Dora the Explorer’s mug on everything from thermoses to diaphragms.



Name That Tune
Considering the cannon of eloquent pop songs at our disposal these days, this game show is just begging for a remake. Forget watching contestants guess which sugary-sweet Temptations jingle is playing and instead watch people go hog-wild while screaming "Put It In My Mouth" upon hearing poet Akinyele say in three notes, "I'll be like Herbie and hand you a ----."




The Newlywed Game
Newlyweds get together and see how well their answers to the same questions, 97 percent of which include the word “whoopee,” match up. This simple setup provided heaps of comic gold during the '70s, but it might not work during a repressive, sex-is-a-pestilence era like this one. Suffice it to say that modern-day censors and the current FCC regime would blow a gasket over a clip like this.



Hollywood Squares
The problem with the game’s most recent revival is that producers tried to sell us on Whoopi Goldberg as the pivotal center square. Even dim-bulb game-show contestants don’t want their competitive fates hinging on the star of such classics as Jumpin' Jack Flash and Fatal Beauty. Maybe we could reinvent this one with the “stars” of reality shows serving as the square-meisters. Watching Trishelle or Joe Millionaire grind their wits into overdrive would provide all the inadvertent humor that managed to get lost between Bruce Vilanch's ass and mouth.