Blockbusters is an American game show, created by Steve Ryan for Mark Goodson-Bill Todman Productions, which had two separate runs in the 1980s. Contestants answer general-knowledge questions to complete a path across or down a game board composed of hexagons. The first series of the show debuted on NBC on October 27, 1980, and aired until April 23, 1982. In the first series, a team of two family members competed against a solo contestant. Blockbusters was revived on NBC from January 5 to May 1, 1987, but featured only two solo contestants competing. Bill Cullen hosted the 1980–82 version, with Bob Hilton as announcer; Bill Rafferty hosted the 1987 version with Rich Jeffries as announcer. The show is the basis of the British game show of the same name, which aired in various incarnations between 1983 and 2019.
Three contestants play in each game, with a solo contestant playing against a team of two contestants who are related to each other (referred to as a "family pair").[1]
The main game is played on a board composed of four interlocking rows of five hexagons each. Within each hexagon is a different letter of the alphabet, which represents the first letter of the correct, one-word answer to a trivia question asked by the host. For example, a question after choosing the letter P would be "What 'P' is a herbivorous North American mammal whose body is covered with thousands of bristles called quills?", in which case the correct answer would be "porcupine". Gameplay starts with one of the letters selected on the board at random. Both the solo contestant and family pair have buzzers with which they may ring in to attempt answering the question. Correctly answering the question covers that letter's hexagon with the corresponding color: red for the solo contestant or white for the solo player. The solo player's goal is to make a complete top-to-bottom connection of red, while the family pair's goal is to make one side-to-side in white. Whoever does so first wins the round. Giving an incorrect answer or failing to answer at all passes the question to the opposition. If neither team correctly gives an answer, another question is played with the same letter. The winner of a round also receives $500, with the higher-scoring after three rounds advancing to the bonus round, the Gold Run.
The Gold Run uses the same board as the main game. As in the main game, the hexagons on the board contain letters that are clues to correct answers, although some may contain more than one letter (e.g., for a hexagon displaying "RTRNR" and a clue of "He pulled Santa's sleigh," the solution would be "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer"). The contestant or family pair has 60 seconds to make a complete connection left-to-right. Failing to answer or passing on a question turns the hexagon black and removes it from play. Completing the connection earns $5,000, while failing to do so earns $100 for each correct response. Contestants originally had a maximum of eight days of consecutive wins before retiring undefeated, later raised to 10 and again to 20.
On the 1987 version, solo contestants compete instead of one contestant against a family pair, with the returning champion representing white and challenger representing red. Additionally, the board rotates to a five-by-four configuration in the second round.[1]
Production
The 1987 theme music was a stock music piece called "Run, Don't Walk" from the KPM music library, composed by British composer Richard Myhill but credited to the Music Design Group.
Home game
The Milton Bradley Company published a single home game edition in 1982. The front game play was the same as the show (with six possible board configurations to play with, although the arrangement of the hexagons was upside-down from what was used on the show). The Gold Run was also played with one of these boards, using only single-letter definitions rather than the multi-letter combinations frequently used on the television show.
Episode status
Both versions of the series are intact, and have aired on Game Show Network at various times. Reruns were first aired on CBN (now Freeform) from October 8, 1984, to August 30, 1985, and was the first Goodson-Todman game show (along with Card Sharks) to be rerun on cable TV, pre-dating the launch of GSN 10 years later. GSN resumed airing the Cullen version on December 2, 2013, but it has since been dropped. The Bill Cullen version began airing on the second day of Buzzr programming on June 2, 2015.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
