Fun House

FUN HOUSE
Made by: Scottish Television
Shown on: ITV
Years shown: 1990-99 (really?!)
Theme tune: "Wacky! Wild! Crazy! It's outrageous!/Fun House, it's a whole lot of fun, prizes to be won/It's a real crazy show where anything can go/Fun House, it's a quiz, it's a race, a real wacky place/Use your body and your brain if you wanna play the game/Fun House!"

Fun House was a children’s game show which endured and outstayed its welcome almost as long as its presenter’s mullet (the photo above is obviously of the post-mullet era.) The man with the haircut of the gods was radio DJ, Pat Sharp, who hosted the show with a pair of identical twin cheerleaders, Melanie and Martina, who frankly must have been about thirty by the time the programme ended.

There were two teams of two school children, the reds and the yellows, who were encouraged to enthusiastically cheer themselves at all opportunities, even when they’d got all their questions wrong or were just being declared the losing team. The kids were asked general knowledge questions, and had to slam their buzzer to answer; there were also challenges which usually involved gunge and/or water and lots of ‘mayhem’, where Sharp would try to keep his fine tresses away from it all.

Everyone’s favourite round was the one with the motorised go-karts, where two opposing team members would race around the track in the studio, trying to grab as many of their coloured tags as they could, which were positioned trackside, before swapping with their team-mate, who would hopefully go round and nab the rest. This was much slower than it should have been. At the end of this round, Melanie and Martina would count up the tags and Pat would declare the final score. And then came the part that every child in the UK wished they could get the chance to take part in - the Fun House itself, where the winning duo were allowed to compete for the big prizes.

The prizes were fantastic on Fun House, and they were read out to the kids before they started, and the location of the tag which represented them was pointed out in the giant maze of a jungle-gym, so they could make a bee-line for the ones they wanted. The bounty ranged from skateboards and telescopes, to juggling sets and jigsaw puzzles; there was often something like a flying lesson thrown in there, and then there was the Power Prize - usually an exotic foreign holiday. The kids worked in a relay and, with a time-limit, would dash around the Fun House collecting prize tags, running through rotating car-wash brushes, and sliding down inflatable chutes until the final siren blared. God, I wish I’d been on that show! In fact, some people at my high school had been on it in their younger days, and had won; but the boy turned down the Power Prize trip to Egypt, and got a cash prize instead, which is not at all in the spirit of the game.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 7/10

(Thanks to www.ukgameshows.com for the borrowed pic)

Fraggle Rock

FRAGGLE ROCK
Made by: Jim Henson Productions
Shown on: ITV
Years shown: 1982-4
Theme tune: “Dance your cares away/Worries for another day/Let the music play/Down at Fraggle Rock.”

Fraggle Rock filled the Saturday morning slot, and was a surprise hit for ITV. It was set in a remote lighthouse, where the solitary lighthouse keeper, Fulton MacKay (later, John Gordon Sinclair), thought he was going mad because he kept seeing strange furry creatures on his island. But he wasn’t crazy, and only his dog, Sprocket, actually knew of the creatures’ existence. Their names were Wembley, Gobo, Boober and Travelling Mat, offspring of the Jim Henson Company, and they lived in a hole in the lighthouse, where there was also a large, talking compost heap called Marjorie, complete with rats. The Fraggles were also the prey of three giant Gorgs, who always hoped they might get a tasty Fraggle fry-up one day. That was about it, really. There were cartoons and magazine features in between, but I was never sure why Fraggle Rock was so immensely popular (there was even a rude version of the theme circulating the nation’s schools) - I think perhaps I might have thought the whole set-up was a bit frightening for my delicate disposition.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 3/10

(Thanks to www.cinematical.com for the borrowed pic)

The Flumps

THE FLUMPS
Made by: David Yates
Shown on: BBC
Years shown: 1977 onwards

The Flumps were a nuclear family of what looked like owl-pellets or mothballs, who popped up on the garden wall at the start of each episode. There was Father, with a woolly hat and moustache; Mother, with her matronly head-scarf and rolling-pin; and Grandad, who no-one wanted around, and who wore a knotted hanky and glasses. The children were Posy, with a bow where her hair should have been; Perkin, taking after dad in his choice of head attire; and little Pootle, in his bobble-hat, who was always deemed too small to join in with anything but the most mundane of activities.

The Flumps were how a British family should be: they played together, women knew their place (Mother was reduced to baking, comforting Pootle when the others had excluded him, and singing songs), they tolerated the elderly (although Grandad did ask for it, what with playing his Flumpet all day), men were handy at DIY (Father did very little except for building things), and the children were respectful to their elders. Ah, them were the days. They should have advertised Hovis. This was they heyday of stop-motion animating, and there can be fewer greater triumphs than seeing the Flump family on their Flumpcycle, peddling like maniacs to nowhere in particular.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 6/10

(Thanks to www.80snostalgia.com for the borrowed pic)