Computers as prizes on game shows

[TMD2003]

For better or worse, I've been spending some recent evenings (usually over dinner) watching the first series of Bob's Full House from 1984, which has helpfully been thrown all over YouTube, and the powers that be haven't taken it down yet. Along the course of the series - and it looks to have been in the very early days of the BBC being allowed to give prizes away, given how they were paid for in the first place - there were four computer models of the day. First, an Atari 800XL (on offer twice, if I remember correctly), then a VIC-20 (yes, a VIC-20 in 1984), then an Acorn Electron, and for the Christmas edition... a Spectrum +! Clearly someone behind the scenes had good taste in computers and saved the best for the festive special.

I have an idea (from somewhere) that there's an episode of Bullseye with an Amstrad CPC hiding in one of the sectors of Bully's Prize Board, and given that it ran from 1981-1995 there was plenty of scope for them to have done so in the middle-period series. I hope I'm not imagining this one.

Does anyone know of other game shows giving away computers as prizes - mostly I'd be interested to know about game shows from the 80s, now that good old Bob had given me a baseline to compare with, but there must have been some in the early 90s that gave away an Amiga, Atari ST, or similar, before the consoles took over.

This isn't just limited to the UK, either. Did, for instance, Spanish game shows have an Investrónica 128K Spectrum or an Amstrad CPC472 on offer?

[PeterJ]

This is a good thread [mention]TMD2003[/mention]

viewtopic.php?f=24&t=2873&p=39540&hilit=Bullseye#p39540

[PeterJ]

Look at 26 Seconds...



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6uKzm4RnKk

[TMD2003]

I was right! You can't beat a bit o' Bully. And that's a fantastic selection of machines that collectively spanned even more time than Bullseye's entire 14-year run on't telly... that is, if we discount Challenge's 2006 revival with Dave Spikey. And there was probably a console or two on offer in there, probably a Playstation or an XBox of... whatever generation was current (or just about to be obsolete) in 2006.

Bullseye aficionados can track the march of time by the announcer for Bully's Prize Board, with the announcer who wasn't Tony Green at the start (which, along with it being Bully's Special Prize, dates the Trash-80 as being from the 1981 series), followed by Tony Green taking over and steadily increasing the length and volume of "IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIN (number!)". I reckon they were taking computers that were about to be obsolete as prizes - say, the CPC464 was from a series where the CPC6128 had just been launched, the +2 was from when the +3 and +2A were already around - a bit like the way that game shows that offer a car as the Mucho Generoso Prize were either a pov-spec Escort/Astra/Maestro or a better-equipped model from a less prestigious manufacturer (Family Fortunes seemed to be welded to Daewoo in the late 90s). Further evidence lies in that Blankety Blank thread - it's good to see they valued the Speccy at 150 blanks, though MatGubbins does point out it's an episode from 1984 and the Spectrum + had been released by then, so of course the BBC had to get a run-out rubber-key model. If they were really stingy, who knows, it might have been... gasp... 16K!

Dig out any more of these if you know of them. There must be a goldmine.

[MatGubbins]

Family Fortunes, 1983 presented by Max 'sing-a-long' Bygraves.
A Sharp MZ-700 computer! Eh? A what?
One of these....

[toot_toot]

I was watching Bullseye a few months ago and a Spectrum +2 was one of the prizes.

[TMD2003]

We interrupt the regular scheduling on this part of SC with an episode of Raise The Roof from 1995 (or 1996, allegedly), in which the prize was... a house in Spain. Investrónica's headquarters, maybe? Or a flat above where Topo Soft wrote their first game? Or a shed next to Dinamic's choice of tape duplicators? Where's the Sinclair connection in this one?

[media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_r4VfKjht3s[/media]

It wasn't a prize. But barely had Bob Holness stepped out onto a set that's much more grandiose than what he dealt with on Blockbusters for all those years, than he asked the first question...

...and I'm sure he's just repeated an urban legend. Am I right in thinking that?