Blockbusters:

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"Blockbusters" was a game show that premiered in 1980. Bill Cullen was the host. The style of the game show matched his humor. This was one of those game shows that made it look ahead of its time. It shared the same style of theme music. Two different theme songs were played, which were jazz genre with heavy bass music. The theme songs were the same with the only differences being that one was slower paced and one was rapidly paced, and each song had a slightly different sound of the same instruments. Other game shows being aired at that time were game shows with sets designed or redesigned by John C. Mula. They used slide projectors shining backwards on the screen that were behind the stages as their display. The game board was for "Blockbusters" is most likely to be CRT television screens, but is interesting that the board is made of hexagons, meaning that the television screens would have to be shaped like hexagons. If this is correct, than that means that this type of technology would later be used for the game board for "Wheel Of Fortune", which requires less maintenance for the letters. The hexagons, whatever they are made of, are capable of displaying any letter or group of letters (similar of what would become of Wheel Of Fortune) and also go to solid colors, which would be red, white, or gold.


The contestants were divided into teams. The amount of members in these teams is not equal. The red team has one contestant, and the white team has two contestants. This was done on purpose to add strategy and possibly suspense to the game show to see if one person could outmatch two people. Since the red team had only one person, this team had the advantage of a shorter distance than the white team. The red team has to go vertically with 4 hexagons, and the white team had to complete horizontally (or as best as possible being horizontal since these are hexagons and going perfectly horizontal with hexagons would be impossible!!) with 5 hexagons. However, the 20 hexagon grid would have red team contestants having 5 rows, and the white team had 4 rows. And the games did not always result in that specific amount. All the contestant(s) had to do was connect one end of the board to the next one, meaning that it could result in interesting patterns because of possibly being blocked by the other team. The answers to the questions would have to be the first letter of whatever letter that was. If the letter was "A", the answer would have to begin with the letter "A". Later in the game, there would be a bonus round called "The Gold Run". The colors for completed hexagons would of course be gold. The game would be completed horizontally, and be timed. The hexagons would display the first letter to each word in phrases. If the white team won, one of the contestants would compete for The Gold Run.


The contestants could return for a while, and then later on. The total winnings have been up to well over $100,000.00 This is one of several game shows to have a logo that has letters flashing individually. "To Tell The Truth" of the early 1990s and early episodes of "Jeopardy!" have the same thing.


Other Versions:

5 years later, Bill Rafferty hosted another version which lasted a few months. The teams had one contestant each. The returning person would be on the white team and the new person would be on the red team. This version did not have the same theme song, and used different set designs.


U.K. Version:

This U.K. version of Blockbusters appears to be related to the U.S. version. It was on from 1983-1995, 1997, and 2000-2001. The U.K. seems to have longer running game shows than U.S. game shows (unless the yearly episode amount is the same amount of their very small episode numbers for other TV shows).