Fun House Pilot 

Fun Fact: JD Roth is one of the Executive Producers on the current hit show Bar Rescue.

I remember watching this fun show in the 80s. Not sure if today's kids would appreciate it as much but it deserves another run.

This guy also hosted Masters of the Maze for its first season. And these children's games were all the same, with the wacky stunts.

This show was my childhood, along with many other kid's gameshows.

Wink, I'm glad you met JD Roth, when he was only 20 to film the pilot of the series. When asked by me about working with you, he said: "Love Wink! The Best! And personally, a great human!" You nor I have never seen, such a young, unfamiliar talent, who later grew up to become a producer, who hosted a daily kids game show, to be mentored by you and of course, Marc Summers, whom I thought JD had feuded with, when, they were actually good friends, and he too grew up to be a producer, like JD, only thing was, Marc was a little bit older than JD, and is still awesome like JD!

Loved this show, since I didn't get cable in myy bedroom till much later this show got more viewing time for me than the Nick game shows; plus the prizes offered in the pilot were so nice, even into the series i remember them offereing more than the other Nick games. Another great piece of game show history!

Always found this pilot interesting for a couple reasons: > As others mentioned, the giant budget. Yeah, that wasn't happening on a 5-a-week basis. I don't even think a weekly could've pulled that off. > Some rooms of the fun house never made it to series, but were still depicted on the home game board, which confused me as a kid for YEARS. > The suggestion between the board game pics and the intro of this pilot that more than one was shot, which now makes me want to see those. And for the record, in the first 5 episodes of the series taped (that eventually aired), they did retain some elements of the pilot: > The intro from the pilot (even more confusing to me as a kid cuz now I wanted to see it) > The consolation score for the losing team in each stunt > The "scanning" of the prize tags for their value & the Power Prize, plus there were many more cash tags (up to $300, and a couple you can even fish out of the lake!), the 3-tag rule was now official, and you had to find the right TWO prize tags (not cash ones) to score the Power Prize. Meanwhile, showed this to my daughter today, and she said it was... boring, actually. Said she felt it "empty" beyond the Fun House itself and lacked the "charm" of Double Dare. I still enjoyed it. *shrug*

Thank you for sharing the pilot episode. I use to watch Fun House on WGN when I was a kid, this is probably my favorite kid game show.

Kind of remember watching this as a kid

Yet again, Winker, you never cease to amaze. I've seen _Fun House_ maybe once or twice as a toddler-I definitely recall the colors of the set, as well as the big "FH" on the door.

Thank you for posting this! This is a rare piece of game show history that never got rebooted by discovery

I saw JD Roth when he came to where I'm at when he did a zoo game show and I had his autograph

And through this show, we got Legends of the Hidden Temple

“Fun House” was definitely my show to watch as a kid. It was such a blast. Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t JD Roth the youngest game show host at that time?

This was popular enough that a college version of the show was also created. Same funhouse, different names for the obstacles, college-themed.

I was like 1 years old my cup runneth over nostalgia

Fun house is one of my favorite game shows for crazy contests and messy games

JD Roth was the youngest game show host to do any game show series or pilot

Jacqueline and Samantha Forrest are two very pretty cheerleaders in this 1988 Fun House game show treasured gem and this is a great children's game show as well!!

Several differences from the series: -No Tiny(John Hurley) announcing as Brian Cummings was doing the voiceover. -Different timer than in the series. -Strange scoring format. -The scanner on the podium during the Fun House run was dropped by series of course - they just showed the home audience where the Power Prize was and a siren went off if the contestant picked the tag with the Power Prize. And of course - this show got 2 spinoffs/spiritual successors later with College Mad House for the college audience, and Shop 'Til You Drop for the adults. And as for the prize budget in the pilot - Stone Stanley would've gone bankrupt offering $25,000/show. No surprise the Power Prize was slashed dramatically when they went to series - though its prize budget was still higher than Double Dare being a syndicated show.

I remember fun house when I was a kid

Loved this show as a kid/Pre teen in the Late 80s ❤, watched it Every morning before school The 1980s were an absolutely Awesome era to grow up in! Thank YOU for posting this❤

John I like watching game shows pilot early series this is awesome your the best

Watched this one a lot growing up. It was on syndication, mainly FOX stations, which is why likely the third season ended up being on FOX. It gets flack for being a Double Dare ripoff, and yes, I can see many of the similarities, but I thought adding the Grand Prix and of course the Fun House made it different enough. JD Roth's "fake hip" schtick always irritated me a bit, but he wasn't a bad host. I think he was better behind the camera as a producer later in his career. Some other fun bits of trivia about this show: - A weekly edition, called College Mad House, also aired on syndication. Using college students instead of kids, the stunts were more "risque" and the host was a then unknown Greg Kinnear. - The show had a much longer run in the UK, where it lasted over 10 seasons. - This was the last game show produced by famed game show producer Bob Synes, who also worked on "Split Second", "Dream House," "Let's Make a Deal" and others. - This was the first game show produced by Stone-Stanley.

Oh wow! I loved this game show! I always wanted to be on this game show!!! Thank you Wink!

Though I don't remember this show as well as I remember Double Dare, (of course), I do remember catching it a few times it was on air. What I better remember was owning the NES game. which was _NOTHING_ like the show! It didn't have quizzes, no minigame stunts, just a top-down maze shooter where you had to hit a number of targets in a set time limit. Still kinda fun though even if the controls didn't make the most sense. Like why did your character drift if you let go of the skate button while turning? Considering the fact Fun House on NES would get a pseudo-sequel on Game Boy called "Out Of Gas" which had a space theme, (which makes the drifting physics make more sense), I'll bet that was the original idea before the developers got the Fun House license. Stuff like that happened quite a bit back then... Even more surprising was that there was another developer working on a version that was more accurate to the show before that version got canned.

The only successful imitator of Double Dare.

Interesting that the pilot was announced by Michael Hanks and had a similar end game format to break the bank (code scanning) plus a all cash scoring system plus Ron Greenberg was one of the executive producers

Thanks, wink for uploading this!

What year is this, 1988? I wish someone would pick up the rights to rerun this show, in fact there are a lot of syndicated kids programming from this era that are largely lost media

I felt like it was the unofficial flagship show of the channel it came on! Lol. But I was really little at the time lol!

so the scoring format change when it was premiered. instead of money they play for points. well to me Double Dare was more messy. i grew up with the family version. Thanks for showing this Wink

When I was a kid and LOVED this show! It aired in the morning on Channel 5 WNYW in NYC.

Douglas Emerson would later become a cast member of Beverly Hills 90210 for one season and a half.... until his character shot himself and died.

I loved this game show as a kid I always wanted to be on it

I would love to see they would revive a great series like this one just like how Nickelodeon revived Double Dare back in 2018 a few years back

I think the red team in the second round should have gotten the buzz-in question. The way they phrased it, it was easy for her to assume that they wanted the actress.

Used to watch this after school. It was fun back then.

what are those bikes called in this grand prix race?

The only thing that I didn't understand was the rules. I mean, when it aired. I knew and remembered just about everything else.

J.D. Roth is the native of Lake CHarles,Louisiana!

In a bonus round like what we saw, I believe we would have to see where the power prize was if they didn’t get it. Still, I can see why they changed it to something more familiar.

To me it’s much better than Double Dare because there’s more stunts less question. Also I like enjoyed the spin off, College Mad House. It would be great if you had the pilot episode of College Mad House. We’d love to see it.

Hey, now. C'mon somebody! Yes, Mr. Martindale.

Uk fun house: hold our rerun the fun

One of My Favorite Game Shows Next to Double Dare (Not the 1977-1978 CBS Game Show Hosted by (The Late) Alex Trebek)

Are the cheerleaders identical twins? Seeing the credits, I guess they were, or at least related sisters.

Is that Douglas Emerson who was David Silver's best friend Scott Scanlon on Season 1 of 90210?

This tv game show from the 80's is forgotten,it's the same as Double Dare.

I was wondering if you had any more episodes of fun house game show

I loved that show!

Believe me, this wasn't the first Double Dare ripoff. Remember "Slime Time" with host Marty Cohen?

Always wondered why the video game and board game had a picture of odd dollar amounts on the podiums when the full series showed on tv used points (not dollars) and was always in multiples of fives. Now we know. Although, I have seen this one before, it was a terrible copy. This one is great!

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Much later did an adult game show “Sex Wars”

I always liked this show better than "Double Dare".

She almost missed the tag for the Michael Jackson concert. Today she'd have done that deliberately.

Produced by Stone Stanley Entertainment in association with (Lorimar Television) Telepictures Productions distrbuted by Warner Bros Discovery Television.

The amount that was won would be the equivalent to winning over $75,000 today.

When "Fun House" went to series, I don't think JD had to wear that goofy letter sweater, did he?

Isn't that the announcer from TANLMAD?

9:13 Contestant: Lea Thompson JD: No I guess he needed the character for the answer and not the actress.

I wonder why cheerleaders in a fun house?

First lol anyway I remember this show.