In my younger years, I was convinced that:
-Mark Goodson was more than just the overall boss of his shows, but that he literally did everything, that he was in the director's chair offstage personally running each show from start to finish mostly by himself (same with the other big producing names for other shows)
-the Dragon in fact lived inside the TTD board, and that in between tapings, Wink would have to risk life and limb feeding him
-chroma key screens were actual physical sets; thus, for example, I believed that once a Scrabble Sprint round commenced, the contestant(s) had a large blue and pink frame with the word bar, clock, and letter generator moved into place around them; same with the Golden Medley clock around the head of the Lange NTT finalists
For Price specifically:
-the Safe Crackers safe was an actual safe, and if they ever misplaced the combination before it was reset for the next playing, they'd be in big trouble, possibly having to resort to a drill or dynamite
-Bob's warning that they couldn't start the Range Finder again for 37 hours after the Stop button was pressed was dead serious, that the board completely shut down and depower at that moment and would need a mechanic to recharge it in order for it to work again
-they were affiliated with some big California bank who gave them the checks for Check Game, and that they would cash the checks there whether they'd been voided or not
-3 Strikes numbers and strikes were gone forever once they were inserted into the slot to put them out of play
-Poker Game's display was manually controlled by a stagehand sitting in a hydraulic chair behind the set that he raised or lowered to each level of the board as needed; he would shove playing cards into slots for the player's hand and the house's hand to generate the numbers, and had a large lever to throw to switch the hand to one side or the other
-Gallery Game's artwork had been contracted out to a professional--in my mind he'd come over from France, since 8 year old me believed that was where all the great painters lived--who was on the payroll for that season, with a deal to sell them once they'd been played
And speaking of the Super Match, anyone know how Earl the slider's doing today by any chance? I have wondered for some time now.