Nickelodeon’s ‘Double Dare,’ filmed at WHYY, made its debut this week in Philly history
The legendary show, which debuted on Oct. 6, 1986, used teams of kids from the Philly region to fill out its lineups.
Paging through the black-and-white pages of daily newspapers, a common descriptor for a then-revolutionary game show featuring neon green slime baths was gooey.
As were goopy, gloppy, yucky, ridiculous, and gross.
Then again, it was a game show for kids.
It was a sticky concept, and to a generation of millennials, can’t-miss-TV.
“If you, like me, are a child of the 1980s or ‘90s, or a parent to one today, no doubt you know Double Dare as the outrageous, bright, loud game show for kids and starring kids that put Nickelodeon on the map and became a phenomenon like few other children’s shows in television history,” superfan Jesse Cute (real name) wrote in The Inquirer in 2019.
This program was also a product of Philadelphia.
The show, which debuted Oct. 6, 1986, was produced at WHYY studios on Independence Mall and used teams of kids from the region to fill out its lineups.
But, why Philly?
“We like Philadelphia, and we wanted to get out of New York,” executive producer Geoffrey Darby told The Inquirer in 1986. “We wanted suburban ‘middle America’ kids, because most of our demographics are in the suburbs, and it’s a lot easier to bring kids in from the suburbs in Philadelphia than it is in Manhattan.”
The format of the half-hour program pitted two teams of kids, ages 10 to 15, against each other.
As described in a September 1986 Inquirer ad, they would “dare and double-dare each other to answer questions and take on the challenge of funny physical feats on the Double-Dare obstacle course.”
It was a game show just for them: a pie-in-the-face aesthetic where kids watched other kids struggle with trivia and then launch waffles, smash eggs with cymbals, and pelt flypaper with ping-pong balls. It culminated with cold, hard cash or the best prizes a kid could find in the annual Sears holiday-toy catalog.
It was emceed by local morning DJ John Harvey and hosted by Marc Summers, whose way of connecting with kids made them feel like he was laughing with them instead of at them.
“I used to dream about the set,” Cute wrote. “It’s a giant playground on steroids. An overload of colors, jagged shapes, and busy marquee lighting made the show magical.”
The show was filmed in Philly from 1986 to 1989, before moving to Orlando to finish out its nearly 500-episode run in 1993.
And when it comes to a game show for kids, talking with them, instead of at them, was the secret sauce.
Well, besides the slime.
There was a revival attempt in 2000, and another in the late 2010s, and a traveling road show took flight before the pandemic, but none could completely recapture the magic of the moment.
