When being a kid was about dares, double dares, and physical challenges.It was a simple concept for kids to play adapted from the schoolyard. With every friends daring their mates to do ‘this, that and the other’, U.S. TV network Nickelodeon brought a simple daring game to the screen and added more fun to it.
The basis of the game was putting schools against each other in pairs of twos, and being asked general knowledge questions by the host of the show. If they get it right, they’d score points. But if unsure, they can throw it to the rival team as a “dare”. If the other team can’t answer, they could throw it back and say “double dare”. If that team again still couldn’t answer, they would call out “physical challenge!”, which they would compete in a mini fun test in a short amount of time to earn points.
At the end of the show, the team with the most amount of points would be put through an obstacle course on a time limit, collecting tokens for each obstacle completed, which resulted in large prizes rewarded for each token collected.
The show ran from 1989 to 1992, with Gerry Sont, Tom Jennings and Simon Watt as hosts during various seasons. A spin-off in 1989 Family Double Dare was hosted by Larry Emdur.
There was merchandise too coming out the wazoo – from clothing to board games, and video games. Unfortunately Nickelodeon have only put U.S. versions on iTunes so Australian episodes are scarce… but I did find some episodes that someone threw up on Dailymotion of the G’Day USA! editions, in order to promote Australia to the U.S. as a tourist destination.
You can see the rest of this guy’s collection here.
