Blockbusters

Blockbusters was a game of skill and strategy, where the game board was a honeycomb filled with letters, each of them the beginning letter of an answer to a question. This show originally pitted a solo player against a family pair to see if two heads really are better than one.

Front Game
A 4x5 board of 20 hexagons is presented with a letter in each hexagon. A letter is chosen at random to start a game. The answer of the question would begin with the letter chosen. For example, if the letter B were chosen, a sample question might be, "What 'B' is a long silver rod twirled by a majorette or cheerleader?", in which case the correct answer would be "Baton". The player who buzzes in first gets a chance to answer the question. If correct, the space is marked with their color. If they are incorrect, the second player/pair gets a chance to answer (should the solo player miss, only one half of the family pair could answer, without conference). If nobody answers correctly, another question is asked whose answer began with that same letter.

The solo player would have to connect from top to bottom ( red to red ), which can be done in as little as 4 correct answers. The family pair would have to connect from side to side (white to white) in as little as 5 moves. Completing a path earned the player/pair $500, with two games needed to win the match, $1,000 and advance to the bonus round called "Gold Rush/Run". Originally, each win was worth a trip to the "Gold Rush/Run", with no money awarded for the front game.

Due to the interlocking patterns of the hexagons, it was impossible for a game to end in a tie.

Gold Rush/Gold Run
The player has to connect from side to side ( gold to gold ) in 60 seconds or less. The difference here was that many of the hexagons had multiple letters on them (1 to 5 letters), and naturally, they represented an answer of more than one word (eg: "BS", What people kiss in Ireland: Blarney Stone). Correct answers mark the chosen hexagons gold, but wrong answers or passes put up blocks and the player must work around them. If the contestant makes the connection, he/she wins $2,500 (on the first time) or $5,000 (on the second time). If time expires, the player gets $100 for every captured hexagon. If he/she gets blocked out, the contestant could still continue and try to build up the consolation prize of $100 for every correct answer until time ran out. After the show began awarding money in the match, Gold Rush was always played after each match for $5,000. Either way, win or lose, Bill would go over any missed and/or passed questions, and another match would begin. If the family pair advanced to the bonus round, only one of them could play. Either way, whoever played the Gold Run would play at a small podium with microphone that was attached to Bill's main podium. It would slide open at the push of a button his podium.

1980 Pilot
In the pilot, it took $500 to win the match. A regular game of Blockbusters was played, with the first side to make the connection winning $250. That player/team then played a game called "Shortcut to Victory". Bill asked three Gold Run-style questions. If the contestant could answer all three questions correctly, it paid $250, ending the match immediately. If the contestant stumbled along the way, the opposing side received the $250, and a second game of Blockbusters was played to determine the winner of the match. For the Gold Run, the four gold bars on the right-hand side of the board concealed money amounts ($1,000/$2,000/$5,000/$10,000). If the contestant connected gold to gold, the payout was the amount hidden behind the bar adjacent to the last correct answer.

1987 revival
The show was revived in 1987 with two solo players. The champion represented white while the challenger represented red. On questions in which somebody would win the game on the hexagon that would cause either side to make the connection, Bill Rafferty referred to this situation as a "dual implication". Again, the game was best two-out-of-three, with the advantage alternating between players in the first two games. If a tie is achieved, a 4x4 tiebreaker board is used and either player could win in as few as four moves (white still went from left to right, and red still went top to bottom). Each game was worth $100 instead of $500.

Championship Formats
From the beginning until the change in the front game format, the longest that champions could stay on the original Blockbusters was eight matches. If they won all 16 bonus rounds that they played, they would retire with $60,000.

After that, each champion was permitted to stay up to 10 matches, with the top possible payout again being $60,000. Later in the show's run, the match limit was doubled to 20, making the potential payout $120,000. Also, retired 10-time champions started to return to the show in an attempt to add more to their winnings.

The revival's revived the second 1980 format. So again, champions could stay until they won ten matches or were defeated. Theoretically, contestants winning their last Gold Run in this version would retire with at least $52,000 (including Gold Run consolation prize winnings).

Solo players

 * John Hatton: The show’s biggest champion solo player who was a psychologist from California. His first day was on a day when the board went loopy. Other than that, he was one of several contestants who was invited back after the limit rose. His first time playing netted him the full $60,000. At one point during his first run, his house burned to the ground after a single taping; during that time, he was asked to leave the show to straighten things out and then come back on a future show, but he declined just to continue his run. During his second run, he appeared to lose his 19th Gold Run when he supposedly answered a question incorrectly; however, the answer that he gave for that question, "John Audubon", was ruled correct after the staff did their research and realized their mistake. John was awarded the $5,000 because he would have made the connection. He played his 20th and final Gold Run with no problems, retiring with the full $120,000. He was also a champion from the 1970s version of Split Second.

Family Pairs

 * Joe & Tom Hendricks: These twins were the first championship family pair on the show, winning $26,800. Tom also appeared on Match Game and later Trivia Trap in 1984.

Finale Shows
1982 - In the 1982 series finale, the second & final match of the day (and the final match of the series) was just a single game in which the winning side receives $5,000 (no Gold Run was played afterwards); if time had run out, the side which captured more hexagons was declared the winning side; this was all so that the show can close up shop as evenly as they can. Gene Vissich (female), a returning retired champion, won that game to give her a final total of $51,700. In the final segment after showing the audience filled with future contestants who would never get a chance (including previous champion Marge Moore with a total of $1,400), Bill Cullen read statistics regarding both the solo players & family pairs, all in answer to the questions about the handicap and the design of the board (at least five correct answers for family pairs, and at least four correct answers for solo players). 37 solo players played 175 Gold Runs and won $806,000, while 45 pairs also played 175 Gold Runs but won $767,000; the family pair side won for winning the most matches by eight while the solo players won for winning the most money by $39,000, though both sides played the same number of Gold Runs; so all in all, the format worked out great. As Bill said, "If everything else worked as well as the handicap, I would've said at a time like this, 'Goodbye, we'll see you tomorrow.'"

1987 - In the 1987 series finale, one full match was played in which returning champion Patti Perrin won with two straight (with & without the advantage), but she got blocked in playing the Gold Run and only picked up $400 since she put up four gold hexagons. Patti supposedly would've been playing for $10,000 but instead was playing for $15,000 since this was the show's finale (by that time, the show started adding $5,000 additional for each failure of winning the Gold Run but by that contestant only; new champions always started at $5,000). Prior to the Gold Run and as the show had been doing over the final weeks, Bill Rafferty & Rich Jeffries promoted Classic Concentration by doing a contestant plug for that show; Classic Concentration would be the show that replaced Blockbusters the following Monday. In the final segment in his goodbye speech and since Patti wasn't able to win the final Gold Run, Bill Rafferty gave Patti an additional $1,000 for a final total of $2,200, and the rest is history.

The Board
In the 1980-1982 run, the game board was run by slide projectors (ala shows like Press Your Luck, The Joker's Wild, and Bullseye). It was a nearly 20-foot-high piece of machinery, made up of 20 hexagonal rear-projection screens, which concealed 20 separate Vismo projectors. Each projector contained slides for the hexagon’s appropriate letter, the red and white colors, the multiple-letter Gold Run slide, and a yellow color for the Gold Run markers. The entire board was flanked by two white fins that would swing in to provide the team of two with the proper connecting color for each side of the board. The fins would also swing out to reveal the gold sidebars that needed to be connected in the Gold Run; as shown in one episode, the white hexagons turned gold when the transition occurs.. During the show, stagehands were stationed inside the board with the task of shuffling the letters for each main game, as well as replacing the used Gold Run slides and attending to any technical malfunctions. Absent from earlier weeks, at the top of the board was a flip sign reading "$5,000" which was obviously used for the Gold Rush/Run only. At one time at the start of a show before a playing of the Gold Rush/Run, Tom Kennedy (who hosted Password Plus at the time) was inside the board and stuck his head out a top hexagon to promote the time change for Password Plus. Also, late in the run, the background of the set changed from gold to blue. On two shows during Christmas time, several of the hexagons make up a Christmas tree with red & white hexagons flashing back & forth.

In the short-lived four-month 1987 run, the board was completely computer-generated, provided by Entec Systems. The green hexagons which house the letters were bevel-typed, and in the back, the hexagons were blue with diamonds inside, similar to the ones on the set. The advantage of having a computer-generated board was that it is now animated; in the opening of the show, the hexagons fly from all directions to form the game board, flips over & back (at the time of the show's logo showing), then comes apart prior to host Bill Rafferty's introduction (a shot of the animation was used in the ticket & contestant plugs); at the start of a game, after the sides come in, the hexagons fly in from the sides to form the board after which the letters pop in one by one; later shows starting in March (excluding the Gold Run) had them flip zoom in; starting in February, they flip zoom out (minus the captured hexagons) when the game was over. While the home viewers saw the board on their TV sets, the contestants saw the board on a small Sony TV monitor housed inside a giant neon blue hexagon which during the closing credits did a light show; it spun around and later wiped in (both two triangles at a time). On certain shows after the credits, while it is still wiping in light-wise, the neon hexagon zoomed out to re-reveal the set which by that point went dark save for a few spotlights and the set logo which continuously lights up a letter at a time just like the 1980 series logo during the closing. On one episode, when the game quickly went from a Gold Run to a new match with no commercial interruption, viewers could see the small monitor reveal itself as the Game 1 board flew in.

Merchandise
A home game by Milton Bradley was made during the later years of the 1980-82 version. It was commonly given out as a parting gift for defeated contestants.

Trivia

 * For the 1980 version, the contestant would play the Gold Run from a section of Bill Cullen's podium, which would rotate outwards and to the right (or left from Bill's point of view), with a smaller microphone for this purpose. The 1987 set, meanwhile, instead had a gold-colored railing/handhold flip up from the floor for the contestant to stand at.
 * The 1987 version of this show was the only series Bill Rafferty ever hosted on network television as all his others aired in syndication [Every Second Counts (1984-85) & Card Sharks (1986-87)].

Music
1980 - by Bob Cobert

1987 (Original) - Music Design Group

1987 (Vamps) - KPM Music

"Run Don't Walk (A)" by Richard Myhill

"Run Don't Walk (B)" by Richard Myhill

The 1987 theme and variants would later be reused on Know Your Heritage as well as numerous commercials and network promos for various products.

Inventors
Steve Ryan & Mark Goodson

International versions
Countries that have previously aired their versions of Blockbusters includes:


 * Australia
 * France
 * Germany
 * Indonesia
 * Israel
 * Italy
 * The Netherlands
 * Paraguay
 * Saudi Arabia
 * Sweden
 * Switzerland
 * Turkey
 * A UK version of the show was broadcast at various times. Blockbusters aired on ITV from 1983 to 1994 and on Sky One from 1994 to 1995 (with presenter Bob Holness); in the show's original 12-season run, the contestants were high school students. The show was revived by the BBC for one season in 1997; Michael Aspel presented the show. In 2000, Liza Tarbuck presented a new series of Blockbusters on Sky One; that series ran until 2001. In 2012, months after Bob Holness died, Simon Mayo hosted a new edition of Blockbusters (called All New Blockbusters) on Challenge. From 1997 to 2012, all of the show's contestants were adults.

A spinoff series called Champion Blockbusters (also presented by Bob Holness) aired on ITV from 1987 until 1990 where it invited former winners back to play again but only this time for their favorite charities (along with the "mystery letter" boosting their funds considerably when answering a question correctly) In addition, they still win their gold run prizes (all of which were relevant in some way to whatever they were doing).

A one-off revival of Blockbusters (presented by Vernon Kay) as part of Vernon Kay's Game Show Marathon aired on ITV in 2007.

Additional Pages
Blockbusters/Gallery

Blockbusters/Video Gallery

Blockbusters/Quotes & Catchphrases

Links
Blockbusters at Classic Game Shows

Blockbusters at Game Show Utopia

Blockbusters at Game Show Galaxy (archived)

Blockbusters with Bill Cullen at tv-gameshows.com (archived)

Blockbusters with Bill Rafferty

Josh Rebich's Blockbusters Rule Sheets

A blog about the Blockbusters board game from 1982

Official Pearson website for Blockbusters (via Internet Archive)

YouTube Videos
Bill Cullen's worst pun ever

The biggest Dual Implication of 1981

Tom Kennedy visits Blockbusters plus Gold Run

Second Blockbusters Christmas Tree

Two Game Show Questions

Jeanne's Last Gold Run