Fun House

The kids game show where child contestants get messy and run or ride a race for the right to run through an amazing fun house for thousands of dollars in cash & prizes.

Format
Two teams ( Red Team and Gold Team ) of two children (a boy and a girl) played messy games and answered questions to win a chance to run through an obstacle-strewn Fun House at the end of the show. The Red Team was on the viewer's left and the Gold Team was on the viewer's right at the contestant podium.

Round 1 (Stunts)
Both teams play three stunts (usually one for the boys, one for the girls and one for all players). Some stunts resembled those on another children's game show, Double Dare (in fact, Double Dare often mocked Fun House many times due to its similarities when the former was still taped in Philadelphia). While most stunts were matches of skill, others relied on luck, such as having teams alternating picking up pies with their teeth until finding two that said "WIN". Several games, such as "Pinhead" and "Dump-O", were races to answer a certain number of questions first, with the losing player being slimed by an unusual contraption. The winner(s) of each stunt won 25 points. If the stunt ended in a tie, both teams received the points. After each stunt, the teams returned to their podiums to answer a toss-up question (that somehow tied in with the stunt) for an additional 25 points. In the FOX run, a contestant who got the question right not only earned the 25 points, but also pied his/her opponent in the face.

Round 2 (Fun House Grand Prix)
This was a high-stakes point earning round that decided the winning team. Team players had to race two laps around the studio; one pushing the Grand Prix "car" and the other steering. While racing, teams collected white and blue point tokens worth 10 and 25 points, respectively; they could collect as many tokens as they wanted but only tokens that remained with them at the end of the race counted (dropped tokens were taken out of play). Starting later in the syndicated version, a token bank was placed near the track on the second lap, at which teams could make a pit stop to grab as many tokens as they could. After one lap, the contestants switched places in the car (the pushing contestant now steered and vice versa). Usually small challenges were set up around the track that each team had to complete (such as gathering each of several food items or hitting targets with a seltzer bottle).

The first team to cross the finish line earned an additional 25 points (50 in earlier episodes). At the end of the race, the teams returned to their podiums and the host counted up the tokens, starting with the trailing team. The team with the most points after all the tokens were counted up won the game and advanced to the Fun House. If the game ended in a tie, one last tie-breaker question was played. A correct answer sent the team to the Fun House, but an incorrect answer meant their opponents could answer the question as they cannot win by default.

Round 3 (The Fun House)
Contestants on the winning team took turns entering the Fun House and tried to grab a series of tags (three tags per player per turn) in each room in the Fun House. The green tags represented cash, and the red tags were prize tags. One randomly selected tag also included the "Power Prize", which if found awarded the team with a big trip. This continued for two minutes, after which the cash and prizes were added up, and the team was told if they had won the Power Prize. Any cash earned was awarded to each player.

In the FOX version of the show, a "Glop Clock" was also hidden in the house; finding this specially marked alarm clock earned the team an additional 15 seconds (at the end of the main two minutes) to collect tags. In addition, time was started when the contestant hit the water after the water slide was added.

For the first two seasons, the audience was invited to come down to the stage to watch today's champions run through the Fun House. In the third season, the audience sat in their regular seats.

Pilot
The pilot was pretty much the same as the series except for these differences:
 * There were four stunts instead of three (two for the boys & two for the girls).
 * Teams played for dollars instead of points with the stunts worth $25 to the winner & $1 for the loser for each portion of the stunt completed. Questions again were worth the same value. Any cash won was theirs to keep win or lose.
 * Winning the Grand Prix Race was worth $50 to the team that won. Plus instead of just blue & white tokens, there were also red tokens. Reds - $10, White - $25, Blues - $50
 * In the Fun House, contestants on the winning team grabbed just two prize tags each turn though they can grab as many cash tags as they wished. Also there was a cash prize "Button Banger" room, where one member of the winning team would press a button and whatever cash amount lit up was what the team won. The values range from $100-$2,000. After the Fun House run, each prize tag was checked one at a time, for as before, one prize tag was a "Power Prize" tag, and if that was found & checked, the winning team won every prize in the Fun House, for a total of over $25,000 in prizes.

British Version
The British version of Fun House aired on CITV from 1989 until 1999. Hosted by Pat Sharp along with the twin cheerleaders Melanie and Martina Grant and Gary King as the announcer.

Theme song lyrics to the UK version of Fun House

It's Wacky!

It's Fun!

It's Cr-a-a-a-zy!

It's outrageous!

Fun House,

It's a whole lot of fun,

Prizes to be won!

It's a real crazy show where anything can go!

Fun House,

It's a quiz,

It's a race,

It's a real wacky place!

Use your body and your brain!

If you wanna play the game!

Merchandise
Games for the DOS and Commodore 64 were released in 1989 while the NES version was released in 1991 by Hi-Tech Expressions, Inc. (NOTE: While the DOS and Commodore 64 version stays very faithful to the show, the NES version makes you shoot targets throughout the rooms before time expires.)

Music
Score Productions

Inventor
Bob Synes

Spin-Off
College Mad House which also ran weekly with college students participating.

Additional Pages
Fun House/Quotes & Catchphrases

Fun House/Video Gallery

Links
The Fun House Factory

The Fun House Headquarters

YouTube Videos
The Pilot Episode

Messy Twister