Top 8 Memorable Game Show Moments

I personally witnessed two of these eight memorable game show moments, the first two incidents on the list. They are as follows:

• On a "Match Game" episode, host Gene Rayburn "complimented" a pretty young female contestant, telling her that she had "nice nipples", when he meant "nice dimples."

• On another "Match Game" episode, the Super Match puzzle was "Cuckoo ___." The best possible answers were "Cuckoo Clock", "Cuckoo Bird", and "Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs", but the contestant answered "Cuckoo, Friend, and Ollie." This answer set off a small onstage riot with Rayburn running around the set yelling "Run for your lives!"

• The final episode of the first Richard Dawson version of "Family Feud" was a poignant one. At the end of the show, Dawson gave a final speech, thanking the ABC execs, and addressing some ongoing viewer complaints that criticized him for kissing contestants, particularly non-white contestants. When he signed off, there was no game theme music and announcer Gene Wood had the last word: "Thank you, Richard. Thank you, America."

• In 1998, on an episode of "Pictionary", comedian Bill Maher was accidentally punched in the nose and knocked unconscious by an over-excited actor Erik Estrada.

• Call me insane for appreciating something this tasteless, but I really enjoyed Howard Stern's 1990 cable version of "Hollywood Squares": "Homeless Hollywood Squares." It was played with homeless people, a KKK kleagle, a leather-clad lesbian couple, and Gene Rayburn. The grand prize was a shopping cart filled with tin cans.
• On a 1978 episode of "Price is Right", announcer Johnny Olson shouted, "Yolanda Bowersley! Come on down!" And Yolanda ran down the aisle toward the stage. Unfortunately, her skimpy tube top couldn't take the excitement and her boobs made their national television debut. However, thanks to the quick-thinking CBS standards-and-practices folks, a long blue bar covered Yolanda's embarrassment. In recalling the incident on several occasions, Bob Barker said, "She came on down, and they came on out."

• On a "Newlywed Game" episode, host Bob Eubanks asked a contestant, "What was the one thing that your husband told you not to talk about on the show?" The contestant replied that her brother and cousin were planning to kill her uncle for his insurance money. Amazingly, when the husband came back onstage and was asked the same question, he actually matched his wife's answer.

• In the early fifties, comedian Jackie Gleason hosted the game show "You're in the Picture." The first episode was so bad that Gleason appeared on the following week to apologize for putting the show on the air.