Back in the 90's Game Shows: Legends of the Hidden Temple

Back in the 90's, there was a surge for children's game shows. Nickelodeon gave us different shows like Double Dare, Guts, and Nick Arcade. However, any 90's kid will be far more familiar with the words...Silver Monkey.

The Legend of the Hidden Temple was a game show that aired from 1993 to 1995. It was an archaeologist (think Indiana Jones) based show where teams of kids would compete to discover lost treasures of historical legends. Players had to answer trivia questions, solve puzzles, and deal with obstacle courses just so their team could take the final challenge of going into a maze. If they find the lost treasure in the maze they win large prizes, like trips to different resorts or countries.

The game show was split up into 3 different sections. The 1st section determines who gets to play in the 2nd section, and the 2nd section determines who gets to be in the final section, the final challenge.

The two characters of the show are Olmec, a giant stone head who likes to imitate the Kool-Aid man by constantly saying "oh yeah." Then you have the host Kirk Fogg. I heard that Fogg did not have to audition for the host job, he was just picked at random and it shows. For the first season, this poor guy had a difficult time remembering his lines. He stumbled many times and even had difficulty saying some of the kid's names. He used to wear shorts in the show's beginning, but later he wore pants. Much better I say, men in shorts are too strange for me.

Not Pictured: A happy Iguana.

There are six teams, each containing two players. Each team has a different color and animal representing them. So you got, the Red Jaguars, Blue Barracudas, Green Monkeys, Orange Iguanas, Purple Parrots, and Silver Snakes. Now from what I could remember the Blue Barracudas were seen as the better team. More than one occasion did they get to the final challenge. I think the Orange Iguanas were the worst team because I just can't remember this team ever getting further than round one. I could be wrong but can anybody remember the Iguanas making it to the final challenge?

In the first section round, all teams must cross over a moat without falling into the water. One team player at a time crosses the moat, and if either player falls into the water they have to start all over again. Only the first four teams to cross the moat completely get to go onto the next round. Nothing more to say about this challenge, it's just kids running along some rope or wobbly wooden planks. Kinda boring round.

Part 2 of the first section round, the four teams must compete in the Steps of Knowledge. First Olmec gives a somewhat historical story of the lost treasure, then Kirk quizzes the kids on their knowledge of the story. However, if you really think about it, it's more of a "Were you paying attention to Olmec's story" round cause seriously the kids would just have to remember what Olmec told them only a minute ago! The two teams who did answer all the questions correctly gets to go to the 2nd section game rounds.  Also while there are real historical people in Olmec's stories, don't consider these actual history lessons. For the most part, many of the lost treasures are just made up of fake relics.

 The 2nd section is where the two teams must compete in three different games to win life pendants. Life pendants help the players go into the maze to deflect temple guards. Overall the games are simple. Some are puzzle games where players have to assemble pictures or words to win while other games consist of sports like collecting objects or knocking stuff down.  If the winning team plays the games perfectly, they could earn two life pendants. The games are cool, however, the main final challenge is the one everyone looks forward too, I know I did.

The final challenge is what all 90's kids look forward too! The last team must go through the temple maze, find the lost treasure and return it back to Kirk. And they only have 3 minutes! Wait really? Have you seen the temple maze? Not only does the player have to run into the maze, but they also have to solve puzzles to open lock rooms, and avoid scary temple guards then make it back? In 3 minutes?! Kirk you're cold man! After all the stuff the team had to go through to get to the final level? Oh well, it's what makes this challenge fun. Now the purpose of the Temple guards is to prevent the players from winning the maze game. There are three guards in different rooms. If a player encounters a temple guard they must give their life pendant to move on. If the player has no life pendant, the guard takes them out of the maze, and the second player must continue the maze run. The guards could be anywhere in the maze and it did cause a lot of trouble for players, more ways than you think. According to the crew, some kids became so frightened by the surprise appearance of a guard, puking did happen in the maze.

So Olmec would explain the different rooms and the puzzles you had to solve to open the doors. Some well remember rooms are the Forbidden Dark Forest where a temple guard could be hiding in one of the trees or the Observatory room where I think you use an ancient telescope to open a locked door. There's also the crypt where you had to move mummies around to open a door. There was also Medusa's Lair where you must stick snakes into a Gorgon's head. However the one room everyone, and I mean everyone will remember is The Shrine of the Silver Monkey!!!

Oh, the silver monkey, how much of an enigma you were. Made of only three pieces of silver plastic yet you befuddled so many children in the '90s, even now there's a rehab for past players who were doom by the monkey. Why the hell was this statue so hard to assemble!? Maybe for players, it was the pressure that made assembling hard, after all, you got a studio filled with screaming parents and kids demanding you put that monkey together! Maybe it was also that the pieces were pretty misfitting so putting them together wasn't an easy task especially when you were in a time limit. Whatever the case was, we could all remember shouting at our screens to get that monkey to assemble!

So after all the insanity, where the prizes offer worth it? Weeeellll that depends. One past contestant would later admit that the grand prize she won wasn't that grand. The prize was to Busch Gardens and it was not as amazing as she had hoped it would be. Another contestant's prize was a trip to Vermont....weird. However other of the larger prizes were cruise vacation trips. Other prizes were bikes, skateboards, CD players, and sports gear, showing how old this game show was. What about the teams who didn't make it to the final challenge? Well, usually it was a food prize or a gift certificate. One prize was actually cans of tuna! 

More past crew members have revealed that filming the game show took many hours to complete so contestants had to be in gear for hours at a time and sometimes more than 3 episodes were being filmed at the same time. Also ever notice that rarely do teams complete the temple maze challenge to get the grand prize? Well, that's cause the show crew purposely made the obstacles hard. WHY? That's because the studio didn't have the budget to send lots of contestants to vacation trips. In its 3 season run, only 30 players won the whole show. 

So overall! How did the show fair?

I do remember watching this when I was a kid. I wasn't a huge fan but I really did like the idea of finding lost treasures and this maze made of different passageways and as a kid, I actually did like the idea of being on that show. Re-watching the episodes now, and I could see how the show has aged. And it aged pretty well. it still has that 90's feel to it and looking at how different the clothes kids wore back then, well it does give me that nostalgic feeling. And I wanted to be on the Red Jaguars team. And I would have loved to assemble that Silver monkey!!! If it ever comes out on DVD I would buy it. 

And yes I have heard about the TV movie based on the show, I am going to watch it and see whether it could hold up to the game show, and no I don't need a remake of the game itself. In my opinion, kid-oriented game shows, are well boring, the games could never be that difficult since well its for kids! 

I grew up with Legends of the Hidden Temple so I still have nostalgic goggles for it, but I still know it was a silly kid's game. 

So now I want to hear from you! If you were a 90's kid, did you watch Legend of the Hidden Temple? Did you like it? If so what parts did you like about it? What parts did you didn't like? Are you excited about the TV movie? Do you think you could put together the silver monkey in record time? 

I'll magically come back again my friends! See ya!