A so-so whammy

With not much to write about today, I once again tried the random page button on U.S. Game Shows Wiki.

The result led me on a tour of some interesting and long forgotten parts of the game show Interwebs. The random page was "Lightning Bolt," which had nothing to do with the weather. Instead, it was a one-sentence article: The Lightning Bolt is the bad element from the 1975 unsold pilot of Beat the Odds.

The sentence linked to the wiki's article on Beat the Odds, but I started hunting for the actual pilot. Which does exist in a couple different forms on YouTube. (Video quality is quite poor, as you can see from the screenshot.)

Sure enough, the lightning bolt showed up as a blah whammy - much less entertaining than the later Press Your Luck critter - to penalize an unlucky contestant. The attempted 1975 reboot of an old '60s format wasn't a terrible effort overall. Beat the Odds was an okay word game, and I'm a sucker for word games. But the lightning bolt was pretty humdrum, even with a goofy sound effect.

Game Show Pilot Light gives the unsold pilot a tepid review. Like moi, the site is not enthusiastic about the whammy.

Tweet

Subscribe to receive free email updates: