• by Steven Rosenbaum , Featured Contributor, February 1, 2021

Long before the advent of reality TV or TikTok, there was a TV show for kids that was live in New York City on Sunday mornings. It was called “Wonderama.” Last week, the show’s iconic host, Sonny Fox, passed away, which took me back to a powerful childhood memory.

I don’t know how it happened, who I begged, or how hard it was to score tickets, but at some point in my childhood, I was a guest on “Wonderama.” It was my first exposure to TV,  and I’m pretty sure it’s what hooked me on making television for a significant portion of my career. 

Here’s what I remember. I arrived in a studio that had seats for maybe 75 kids. Our parents, or whoever we had convinced to drive us into the city, were left to sit in the lobby or go grab a coffee. The show was three hours long, and no parents were allowed during the broadcast.

 I vaguely remember the shoot was long. Some on the web report it to be nine hours, but that seems impossible. Who knows?

The WNEW studio was a cavernous TV soundstage, with bright hot lights and big pedestal cameras. What the audience saw was polished and glossy, but if you were in the audience, you got to see the whole thing: stage manager whipping the kids up into a frenzy, the weird silence during the commercial breaks, and the prodigious flow of pure junk food to keep the kids on a sugar high. Good for TV, not so good for the kids. But heck, that’s show business.

I remember the risers, and the cheering, and some stern warning about how far the bathrooms were from the studio, and to “hold it” if you could.

Back then, I took adult rules seriously. So seriously, in fact, that the flow of jelly donuts and orange soda proved more than my 10-year-old bladder could bear. But I’m pretty sure I was one of many -- and strangely, it didn’t seem that embarrassing. because  being on the show was so fantastic.

This was after Sonny Fox’s time on the show, and Bob McAllister was the host. I remember “Snake Cans” Bob would pick kids from the audience one by one to open one of 10 cans, nine of which were filled with spring-loaded "snakes." I think I remember playing this game and winning a collection of hardcover joke books.

There was the gift bag, which I remember like a bag of secret Halloween candy. It was full of swag: Hostess Twinkies, Good Humor ice cream, RC Cola, Fruit Stripe Gum, a pack of Lender's Bagelettes, and a gift certificate for Burger King.

The show’s theme song was a lighthearted anthem that somehow spoke to the kids who were in the studio: a group of privileged NYC and Long Island preteens. 

The song, sung by McAllister, was called "Kids are People Too." “Wakadoo, Wakadoo, Wakadoo!” 

While never proven, the rumor was that the show was canceled abruptly after host McAllister protested the placement of a commercial for Charles Bronson’s “The Mechanic” in one of the spot breaks. But there was also discussion about the costs of residuals for the often-famous musicians who played on the program. 

Back then, there was a good deal of debate about the relative dangers of childrens' television, sugared cereal, and the decadent and permissive media that children were exposed to.

Today, kids face different challenges and a different kind of "permissive" media. The number of deaths by suicide continues to rise, and  the impact of soda and sugared cereal seems inconsequential in comparison.

With social media, anonymous and dangerous voices that cross barriers to belittle and humiliate can influence kids.

Unlike television, which played on a public screen in the living room, the voices of strangers are in the ears of our children, and parental oversight is almost impossible.

According to the Center for Human Technology, "Children who have been cyberbullied are 3x more likely to contemplate suicide compared to their peers. The experience of being bullied online is significantly more harrowing than 'traditional bullying,' potentially due to the victim’s awareness that this is taking place in front of a much larger public audience."

And "Children who experienced cyberbullying during their adolescence were significantly more likely to engage in risk-taking health behavior as adults."

So, back to “Wonderama.” It was a sugar-filled, cartoon-enhanced, toy-selling mess. But in hindsight, the producers and hosts tried to balance the commercial nature of the broadcast with messages that provided a positive environment.

Today, kids live in a web world, with long-term damage that may be well known, but seemingly of little concern to the companies profiting from the Internet’s addictive nature.

Looking back, “Wonderama” seems kind of wonderful. I wish we could have it back.