It's the first one of these I've seen on eBay in a while. Surprisingly reasonable price too, for a brand new game:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...s=tab%3DSelling

Did anybody own one of these back in the day? Anybody know why they go for so much today?

Doug

Just going to guess why they go for so much today: the thing was darned expensive back in the day, resulting in few people buying it. The one I found at a thrift store (still complete mind you) had an old price tag on it from Woolworth's - $100+. In the late 80s, or even now, that's a lot of money for what this thing does. Keep in mind too that the box is roughly 2-feet tall. It's no small puppy.

-Jason

I had one back in the day, I loved it. Two major drawbacks, 4 d cells and 4 aa cells (correct me if I'm wrong) and no volume control. My parents refused to buy new batteries for it because it was so loud. Then about 3 years ago I first started going to ebay and my first purchase was a Mr. Gameshow... YAY! Now my wife gets mad at me when I replace the batteries because it's so damned loud. Oh well..... LOL.

Oh, my family and I had so much fun with that thing back in the day. To this day my mom will sometimes quote "Dig a hole and crawl in, J.R.!"
Part of the expensiveness now could also be the fact that I don't think they were incredibly durable. At least mine wasn't. I seem to recall mine making it just months before the mouth stopped moving, followed by several other problems.

Why is it that when I think of Mr. Game Show I think of Mr. Randy West?

Oh, that's right. Ben Stein.

They weren't durable at all. I begged for Mr. Game Show for Christmas 1987, and once we got it, his arms didn't move! My dad ended up calling Galoob and getting a replacement.

I haven't played the thing in years, and now Mr. Game Show occupies a spot on top of my stereo. It makes for an interesting conversation piece.

Incidentally, since I was given Mr. Game Show as a kid, every time we see him on TV, that's what my mom calls Wink Martindale!

That's the price of genius.

Thanks for the mention!

And there may a career comeback for Mr. Game Show. I was approached a month or two ago to reprise my role as the voice for Mr. Game Show for new Burger King spots. Apparently the idea is/was that the old King Burger character was to meet up with other wacky non-human icons. As I've not heard anything further in recent weeks the idea may be dead.

Randy
tvrandywest.com

ISTR to this day when I got Mr. Game Show back in 1987 for Christmas. It was a hoot. Man, those were the days. It may have been a lot of money, but it was well worth it. I played it almost every day for at least 2 straight months. Eventually, boredom settled in with him & I moved on to something more practical. Not sure if it's still around collecting dust somewhere, but the only thing that bugged me about it was during the Trivia Tracks gane after stopping the tape, Mr. Game Show wouldn't shut up before we started the tape again. Oh well. It was fun while it lasted.

Does anyone know who was the original voice of Mr. Game Show? I too owned a Mr. Game Show. It was on sale for $40, but batteries were $10! IMO, still not worth the price. I couldn't believe how LOUD that thing was! Mr. Game Show was promoted on Davidson's Hollywood Squares. Alf demonstrated him. Oddly enough, when Alf turned it on, it was John Davidson's voice coming out, explaining the rules of HS. John commented something like "turn that off, he's annoying!"

Could he be in our midst? Hmmm, Mr. West?

The dang thing's out of date anyway if it can't say "a new CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR!!!" and "Drooooooooooooooooooooooooooo Carey!!!".

I know Randy was the voice of Mr. Game Show for the special hosted by Ben Stein, but was he also the ORIGINAL voice of the toy? If that's true, then that's awesome. I know Randy is very much capable of doing other voices (he did impressions of Jerry Lewis, Johnny Gilbert and most notably Johnny Olsen when Chris Jaunsen and I saw him a few years ago. When he belted COME ON DOWN it felt like Johnny was being raised from the dead.)

Wow... thanks... wanna be my agent!

No, I was not the original voice for Mr. Game Show. Sorry if anyone inferred that from my post.

Randy
tvrandywest.com