Double Dare (A Franchise Retrospective) - Nick Knacks Episode #057

Want to see this show as a book? The Nick Knacks book Kickstarter!

The year was 1986, and Gerry Laybourne had done a lot to clean up Nickelodeon's image, making it a fun place for kids. But Laybourne still lacked a career-defining hit show. So, she locked four people in an office and told them to make the best children's game show ever. This is the story of Double Dare, from it's humble beginnings filming in Philadelphia, to it's star role at Nickelodeon Studios, to its unloved revival, to it's second, much-more-well-loved revival. Over thirty years of questions, physical challenges, and obstacle courses where you pick a giant nose.

Featuring the voices of (in order):

0:00:00 - Prologue
0:06:06 - Part One: Dare
0:22:40 - Part Two: Double Dare
0:41:15 - Part Three: Super Sloppy Double Dare
0:52:51 - Part Four: Family Double Dare
1:08:20 - Part Five: Double Dare 2000
1:20:24 - Part Six: Double Dare 2018

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[poparena]

Youtube took down the Spartakus and the Sun Beneath the Sea episode. If you'd like to watch it, you can catch it on the Internet Archive.

[adamnedeff]

I didn't realize you were going to cover every incarnation in one video, and it's really odd for me to see something I worked on barely over a year ago covered in any kind of retrospective. I was the question researcher for the 2018-2019 show. It was a total love letter to "Double Dare" from the staff. Nearly all of us were fans of the old show, and getting to make your own version of something you loved, that meant a lot to you as a kid, is just an indescribable joy.

[AWM]

That farewell episode with all the staff members was incredibly touching. I almost teared up.

[Rmlohner]

As someone with OCD myself, I'll weigh in here and say I never would have been able to get through a single episode hosting this show. So I'm fully down with praising Marc's gigantic brass balls for it.

[waffledog]

All the rip-offs and grown-up pilots missed the point of what Nick was doing. They were game shows. Double Dare was a PLAY show. The real prize on Double Dare wasn’t the trip to space camp at the end. The prize on Double Dare was you got to play Double Dare. It was legitimately fun to play.

[LikaLaruku]

Fun fact: Marc Summers was the executive producers of both Dinner Impossible & Restaurant Impossible.

[NAJ]

God, how does the Double Dare theme music rock so hard? It's like it contains the power of a thousand hair metal 80s bands within it.

[EmployeeAMillion]

Congratulations! You’ve technically gona through Nick’s first decade (77-86) without cracking under the pressure of missing episodes, outdated jokes, and that 5 second clip of Cy Schneider. Nick Knacks has been amazing and inspiring to see evolve along with Nickelodeon, and I’ll support your kickstarter as best I can.
(As soon as I’m unblocked from you on Twitter, don’t know how that happened. It’s the ultimate “was it something I said?” feeling. :p)

[jbanks]

One could easily make the case THIS was the most important show in Nickelodeon’s history, as it adapted what worked from You can’t do that on television into an original production that far exceeded anything that had come before it in popularity. It was at a crucial time for Nick too as YCDTOT had one more real season left, a five episode 87 season, and then a brief not as fondly remembered season with an all new cast in 89-90. I think they were about to lose the rights to Danger Mouse at this time too.

It’s hard to really overstate just how popular this show was right out of the gate either. Airing at 5pm there really was not much else like it on television. If you had a cable package in 86, you had about 36 channels. For kids you might have a few syndicated cartoons to sell toys, Warner cartoons on early cable packages and PBS offerings. That was it. What Double Dare really nailed more than anything else that was airing was it was made for a child audience and it didn’t try to pander or lecture or sell things. It was just for kids to have fun by a bunch of big kids and really captured the ethos Nick was going for ever since Gerry Layborne took over in 84. It was RIDICULOUSLY popular for a long time. I watched countless episode. I still have nightmares about getting caught like so many did on the sundae slide and completely blowing your physical challenge.

It’s a shame 2018 didn’t fully work out even if it had a MUCH harder road to standing out in the 400+ cable package/Netflix/video game/ YouTube/ social media landscape the modern kid is presented with.

[eggboy]

At this point I’m having trouble not imagining the 4 hour epic that the episode on Spongebob will be.

[KaseyWynne]

I really like the follow ups on the people involved in the show at the end. I'd like to see that continue in future episodes, as we move into the golden age of nick.

[TigerNightmare]

Marc Summers coined the term "gak, " which was eventually branded as the official name of the slime and a version you can get a toy stores.

[CinnamonGrrlErin]

I vividly remember my brother's 6th birthday party (1990): my mom had borrowed several kiddie pools and set up a Double Dare obstacle course in the backyard (I think our Slip N Slide was also involved).

[skeeter]

Wasn't expecting to see eight year old me in a Knick Knacks episode. Your videos are rad, keep up the good work.

[Xenunnaki]

The potential $400 for winning was even more valuable than it might sound, as this was in 1986. That money today is just under $1, 000

[DLZ]

This show changed my life.
When I was in kindergarten, I was pretty shy and tidy to the point where I wouldn't play with finger paint. Somehow, I found out about this show even before I got Nickelodeon. I must have started watching it in syndication before getting cable. From that point, I may have over-corrected, as my anxiety transferred to dread when it came to desk-clearning days. I became obsessed enough with the show to have a beach towel, toys, and the book that was filled with sample game questions, ideas for physical challenges, and even a plan for how to build your own obstacle course. I even thought about playing a version of the game based on the ideas in the book for a birthday party. But somehow, an outdoor messy party didn't seem like a great idea in November. Plus, I was never very successful at hosting parties.
Ironically, I tended to fantasize more about being on Fun House, and even went to an event at Riverside, well before it was a Six Flags, where we could meet the host JD Roth.
I did visit Nickelodeon Studios in October 1995, but that was after we cut cable at our house, and after Double Dare ended, so it was pretty much just a tour, which included sets of some sketch comedy show I hadn't seen, having only gotten as far as Roundhouse.
This is the second time an episode of this series researching the history of Nickelodeon has made a feature-length episode. The previous time was another extremely important show when I was a kid You Can't Do that on Television. It's something of a relief that Double Dare has aged much better and is far less problematic than some of the YCDTOTV's elements, aside from maybe the injury from the kid of that lawyer and definitely the antisemitism against Marc Summers.

[TimothyMischka]

Weird Al did great on FDD, Remote Control and Wheel of Fortune.... but when he appeared on Rock n Roll Jeopardy, he indeed lost. (They even played his own song about it during the credits.)

[nicholaifugate]

Fantastic episode! This show and You Can't Do That on Television were huge for me as a kid born at the beginning of the 1980s. Loved seeing an episode that went so far through the years all the way up to last year! Amazing work on this episode!

[Xepscern]

That "Hey!" Moment is the funniest thing Ive seen in 2020

[Vvardenfell_Outlander]

Fantastic retrospective on a fantastic show. It's impossible to watch almost any episode of Double Dare without noticing just how much FUN the cast and crew had making it. I enjoy watching it even more now as an adult than I did as a kid back in the 90s. Fantastic stuff.