‘Tic Tac Dough’ Is Back After 35 Years — How Has the Game Show Changed?

O, how X-citing! Tic Tac Dough is back on our screens, 35 years after the last iteration ended. Brooke Burns is hosting the revival, which premieres on Monday, April 14, at 7/6, on Game Show Network.

According to a GSN press release, the new Tic Tac Dough will once again have two contestants answering trivia questions to place their X’s or O’s on a giant tic-tac-toe board. And once again, a dragon character is hiding in the grid, waiting to block the contestants’ progress. The contestant who wins after three rounds moves on to the grand prize round, where they’ll try to defeat the dragon and make three in a row for a $10,000 prize.

“It’s the same game but with an amazing new look,” Burns says in a GSN promo for the reboot. “And me!”

Except it’s not quite the same game, as fans have pointed out online. For one, the set appears to be virtual — with CGI cubes popping out from the game board to reveal the questions — with no studio audience.

Also, the questions are now multiple-choice, leading one YouTube commenter to complain, “Oh, great, a dumbed down version of Tic Tac Dough.”

And it appears that the jackpot doesn’t roll over and that contestants won’t have a chance to go on streaks like Tom McGhee, who famously won $312,700 — $200,000 in cash, three sailboats, eight cars, and 16 vacations — on the show in 1980, per The Atlantic.

“Winner gets the typical GSN $1,000 and goes to the bonus round, which will also be significantly different, for the typical GSN $10,000,” one Reddit user observed. “So basically, it’s Tic Tac D’OH.”

GSN/YouTube

Another Reddit user, meanwhile, complained about the green screen use. “It’s the most bare-bones production ever,” they wrote. “As a former contestant, nothing is cooler than being on a set of a game show. This cheapens the experience for the contestants and, by proxy, the viewers at home.”

Reddit users on that thread did, however, praise the hosting talents of Burns, though. “She could save [the show] if the game is good enough.”

The original Tic Tac Dough premiered on NBC daytime in 1956 — with co-creator Jack Barry hosting, followed at the podium by Gene Rayburn and Bill Wendell — and aired until 1959. A nighttime version aired in on NBC in 1957 and 1958 — and was caught up in the 1950s game-show rigging scandal. In 1959, as part of a congressional investigation, Tic Tac Dough producer Howard Felsher admitted to feeding answers to contestants and estimated that about 75 percent of the quizzes on the nighttime version had been rigged, per The New York Times. (“I was trying to put together an entertaining and exciting show,” Felsher told a congressional subcommittee.)

The New Tic Tac Dough, hosted by Wink Martindale and then Jim Caldwell, aired on CBS daytime in the summer of 1978 and in syndication from 1978 to 1986. And a syndicated version of the game show, also called Tic Tac Dough, had a brief run in 1990, with Patrick Wayne as host.

Along the way, the gameplay evolved. The New Tic Tac Dough increased the prize amounts of the tic-tac-toe boxes and added a bonus game in which the dragon made its debut, according to The Encyclopedia of TV Game Shows. The 1990 syndicated version upped the box prize amounts again, rotated the trivia categories after every question, and added a dragon-slaying knight that would save the final contestant’s winnings.

Related

15 Best Game Shows, Ranked

Now, decades later, the 3-by-3 grid is open again, and Burns is elated to be bringing the show back to TV. “It’s wonderful,” she said in a behind-the-scenes Q&A. “I love the history of game shows and watching game shows together as a family, and knowing that Tic Tac Dough goes all the way back to the 1950s, beginning out with Jack Barry and then of course with Wink Martindale, it’s such an honor to be a part of that kind of legacy. I’m very honored.”

Tic Tac Dough, Series Premiere, Monday, April 14, 7/6c, GSN