SuperShow 8000: Hot Potato

QUICK FACTS

DEBUT DATE:
JANUARY 23, 1984

FINALE DATE:
JUNE 29, 1984

TOTAL EPISODES
RECORDED: 115

NETWORK: NBC

HOST:
BILL CULLEN

ANNOUNCER:
CHARLIE O'DONNELL

QUOTE:
"LET'S MEET OUR PLAYERS. THEY'RE THREE OF A KIND!"

RANDOM NOTE:
"HOT POTATO" WAS BILL CULLEN'S LAST NETWORK GAME SHOW AND HIS SECOND TO LAST HOSTING JOB.

You have discovered the "Hot Potato" section! This short lived game show, which in a sence was a ripoff of ABC's "Family Feud", was one of Bill Cullen's final game show hosting jobs. Like Press Your Luck, this show has had an incredible rerun history to date. The series, lasting only 5 short months, has been rerun over 12 times on the USA Network from 1987-1990! (Not to mention the reruns on GSN, which they are now reruning it for the second!)

Hot Potato was one of those game shows of the eighties that tried to go down the "celebrity route" as it were. However, that didn't help boost the ratings at all. (With other game shows like "Whew!" in 1980 and "Bullseye" in 1982, you would think that Hot Potato wouldn't go down that same road, but they did, and it made the show much worse that it was when they started.

An ironic thing with this show is that the bonus round of this series was actually slated to be a full-length game show in the late seventies. A pilot episode of a show called "Decisions, Decisions", (incidently, also hosted by Bill Cullen), was a celebrity game show that never went past the pilot stages, but was later on used as the bonus round of Hot Potato.

One of the problems that kept this show from being a larger success was the noon time slot. In fact, Hot Potato replacedd another short lived game show, "Go!", which also was very good and had this same dreaded slot. Aside from that, this show was very far from original, but it had it's own unique blend of humour and wits, and with Bill Cullen leading the way, let's just say, he helped a lot in making the show decent. It's certainly at least worth a look!

Here, you can learn the rules, read about GSN's "Faux Pause" that featured Hot Potato, laugh at some of the jokes Bill pulled on the show, read a Celebrity edition essay, and learn the celebrities from the Celebrity edition.