HERE AT NICKELODEON, violence is frowned upon. Violence is not wholesome fare for kids. Violence is bad.
Boogers, though, are encouraged. Boogers are not wholesome, but they are gross. And gross is good.
There are lots of other good things at Nickelodeon, the world’s only television network for kids. There is ear wax, for example. And bubbling brown sludge. To heck with the wholesome Mouseketeers. Give us the Vomiting Lard Brains. Give us slime.
Most of all, give us gak.
That’s the task of the gakmasters. They are busy this afternoon in the gak kitchen, up to their elbows in yellow gak, blue gak and red gak. There also is a tub of dark-green slime sitting on the counter. Hanging on hooks over the sink are two rubber brains.
Things are getting messy as production hits full throttle. There is gak on the floor and slime on the walls.
And lest you get confused between the two, here is gakmaster Doug with an explanation: “There’s a difference between slime and gak. All the items we dump on people are gak. You dump gak. Slime is more like a liquid. You pour slime.”
The gakmasters are preparing all this gak and slime for the game show Family Double Dare, now in production at Nickelodeon, which is located inside the Universal Studios theme park in Orlando. The producers need tar, oil, milk, mustard, salad dressing, ice cream — all to be dumped or poured on the contestants during the show.
Of course, they don’t use the real stuff. Tar is made with chocolate syrup and water. Oil gets its color from red and green food dye. All gak and slime must be edible because more often than not it gets in the kids’ mouths.
“We need Thousand Island dressing!” gakmaster Alan yells.
Doug rushes over to the shelf and pulls down an industrial-size can of green peas. He opens it and dumps the contents into a tub of red slime. Voila! Instant dressing.
On and on the gakmasters go, running around the kitchen, grabbing canisters of apple sauce, cartons of non-dairy creamer, gallon-cans of butterscotch pudding, squeeze bottles of food coloring.
Each concoction is dumped in a 30-gallon rubber trash can, put on a cart and wheeled out to the studio.
NICKELODEON IS A MAGNET FOR KIDS, which is why Universal was so anxious to land the network at its Florida theme park.
Children’s auditions are conducted almost every hour. Out of 30 kids at each audition, only a couple make it onto a show.
Nickelodeon relies heavily on the opinions of its audience. So the mix of youngsters who take the Universal studio tour — city kids, country kids, white kids, black kids, Family Circle-type kids and Calvin and Hobbes-type kids — ensures that all segments of the kid population are represented.
Nickelodeon was launched in 1979 as a bold new venture in television, a network just for kids. It began with high ideals, taking what Nickelodeon president Geraldine Laybourne calls a “schoolmarmish” approach, one designed to “improve” kids.
For example, there was a show called Going Great, which featured youngsters who excelled in various areas such as music or sailing.
What did the kids think? In a word: YUK.
“We thought we should provide kids with excellent role models,” Laybourne says. “What we ended up doing was providing them with a checklist of things they could never be good at. It depressed them.”
So Nickelodeon adopted a new strategy: Let’s not give the kids what we think they want. Let’s give them what they really want. Nickelodeon’s job is not to get kids to eat their vegetables, Laybourne announced. Nor would the network try to teach them good manners.
“Kids look at school like adults look at work,” says Andy Bamberger, Nickelodeon’s vice president of production. “They don’t want to come home from school and then watch school on television. Once kids say a show is like school, that’s the kiss of death.”
In 1982 Nickelodeon came out with a landmark show called You Can’t Do That on Television. It was a child’s version of Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In, packed with kid topics and kid humor. Except that there was no “Sock it to me.” That was violent, and violence is a no-no on Nickelodeon.
“How could we zap them nonviolently?” is how Andy Bamberger explains the dilemma.
Enter slime. Nickelodeon would slime the kids — gross, but not violent. Ghostbusters didn’t invent sliming, Bamberger says; Nickelodeon did.
In 1984 the network took another big step by accepting advertising rather than relying on cable fees. This provided cash for a spate of new shows, including the landmark game show Double Dare. It becameen pea gak, climb up a slide coated with green gak, and then plummet down into a tub filled with blue and red gak. They also crawled through a giant ear filled with ear-wax gak (made with butterscotch pudding).
Double Dare evolved into Super Sloppy Double Dare, and the gak quotient went way up.
Then came other less sloppy game shows, such as Think Fast, featuring action stunts to test kids’ minds and bodies, and a Jeopardy-like game called Make the Grade.
For diversity, Nickelodeon also began producing kid talk shows, dramas, comedies, cartoons, and even its version of People’s Court, called — what else? — Kid’s Court. In one episode, a kid took his brother to court for melting his squirt gun in the oven.
The payoff for Nickelodeon has been substantial. More kids watch the network than the children’s programming on ABC, CBS and NBC combined. Advertisers have taken note too. Kids between the ages of 9 and 14 spend $4 billion a year and influence another $40 billion in purchases by their parents.
Nickelodeon’s advertising sales have doubled to a projected $55 million this year.
“What Nickelodeon did that was clever is make kids feel like this is their channel,” says Peggy Charren, founder of the watchdog group Action for Children’s Television. “It’s like a club.”
THE BOETTINGERS OF MARYLAND have just taken center stage. Mom, obviously the star of the family, whoops lot!
Todd Denkins, sitting in the audience, smiles appreciatively. Denkins, a talent scout for Nickelodeon, is auditioning contestants for Family Double Dare. It is a cross between Super Sloppy Double Dare and Family Feud. The show is a milestone of sorts, the first time that adults will be gakked and slimed.
Finalists in the cheering event, including the Boettingers, then compete in a relay rubber chicken race. Family members run across the stage holding a rubber chicken between their legs. They then grab a balloon out of a tub and pop it by sitting on it.
This tests not only their physical prowess but their willingness to do embarrassing things in public. The Boettingers qualify on both accounts. They will definitely be on the show, Denkins says.
The host of Family Double Dare is Marc Summers, who looks 28, but is actually 38. Summers is a bona-fide celebrity among the 9-14 age group. He can’t walk around Universal without getting an endless stream of autograph requests.
Backstage, piles of fan mail sit in boxes waiting for him. Many kids send in ideas for the show. Some send him silly ties, which he wears on the air.
There are sad letters too. “Kids write that nobody in their class likes them,” he says, “and can I come to their school and help.”
IT’S TIME TO TAPE THE SHOW. THE Boettingers are about to face the Stoops, a clan from Central Florida that consists of Wesnce technician” warms up the crowd by telling jokes and encouraging them to scream and clap loudly at the appropriate times.
Marc Summers arrives, and moments later the Boettingers and the Stoops march onto the stage. They are wearing jumpsuits with balloons hooked to them. The balloons are filled with 80 percent air and 20 percent gak.
Everyone is ready. The show begins. Family members fall to the floor, rolling around in a frenzy, trying to burst their balloons first. The Stoops win.
As technicians furiously mop up the mess with towels, Marc Summers asks the families questions: What do the initials E.T. stand for? What pop singer began his career in the musical Oliver?
When the families don’t know the answer, they are subjected to more physical challenges. In one of them, Kaye Fort- inberry is dressed up in a cloth that resembles a hot dog bun. Toby dumps a vat of mustard on her.
“How do you feel about dumping all that mustard on your mom?” asks Summers.
“Great!” Toby says. He doesn’t bother to point out that Kaye is his aunt.
AT THE END OF THE ALLOTTED time the Stoops have scored the most points, making them eligible for the obstacle course. If they complete it in one minute, they will win a new van. The cameras stop while the course is set up. The gakmasters rush out, coating a giant ear with ear wax, making a giant ice cream sundae that will be dived into, smelll of them in 60 seconds, they win the van.
When everything is set up, the action begins. The Stoops zip through the ear, crash through the brick wall, sort through the garbage in the garbage truck, and run through the snow machine.
With only a few seconds left, Wes Stoops is left with the ultimate challenge — to climb the Sundae Slide, gooped up with gak. He slips on the goo. Slips again.
With two seconds to go, Wes scrambles to the top of the Sundae Slide. He dives head first down a second slide coated with pudding, down toward the giant ice-cream sundae. One second to go! Almost in mid-air, right before he smacks into the vat of blue, white and red gak, Wes reaches up for the last flag that hangs over the tub.
He snares it at the buzzer. Then, splat, into the vat. The van is his.
The cameras stop. Everyone gathers around the family in celebration.
“I am so pumped,” says Wes. “I am so pumped!”
He is covered in goop, a rainbow of gak. About his experience, he says: “It hasn’t been anymore hectic than a normal day at the job.”
Which gives everyone pause for thought — because Wes, dripping from head to toe with globs of gak, is an air-traffic controller.
MIKE THOMAS is a staff writer for the Orlando Sentinel’s Florida magazine.
