Monopoly RARE Game Show Pilot|With Special Guest Marc Summers
Wink Martindale
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You’ve seen the Monopoly game show pilot with Peter Tomarken? But did you know there was ANOTHER PILOT? This time with Double Dare host Marc Summers? Well here it is. And it’s introduced by the one and only Marc Summers himself.
Go behind the scenes with TV and radio legend Wink Martindale!
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16.05.2025
Whatever happened to Isie?
I love watching these videos. That was an amazing pilot.
This was impossible to follow
Marc and I are alike when it comes to the board game: played so much we can memorize the board and the rents.
This is better than the actual series but there are still flaws besides the long rule explanation. One token would have been better, but I would stick to each person having a “turn”, with doubles of course extending it. This would keep the Luxury Tax (and I’m also assuming Income Tax), Chance and Community Chest features.
The rents are different than the actual game, meaning unless you watch enough you don’t know what they are. I would hope the rent card would be displayed when a space is landed on as in the series.
I would dump the free houses. If you land on an unbuilt Monopoly, it’s double the normal rent as in the board game. Let the player spend their bank to build up.
Railroads are a very strategic monopoly to own in the board game, it’s sad what they’ve been reduced to in the show. I would have made them an actual acquirable monopoly.
What happens if you land on a utility?
Not a fan of Free Parking as I’ve always played by the traditional rules, but you have to include it or something similar to draw in eyeballs so I get why it’s there. Same for jail (in the real game you do collect rent in Jail, it’s actually strategic to stay in there as long as possible later in the game)
Monopoly is just not a good game to put on TV, but Marc does a great job and had this format and him gone to series it would have at least been watchable.
This sounds more complicated than the board game. The show they eventually had was far simpler than this. I would’ve changed the channel before the game started.
Holy crap the wall of text to start this game, how did they ever think this would work?
This is almost the opposite of Double Dare, which started a skit 5 seconds into the show.
Years ago I mentioned to Marc on Twitter about this pilot when Wink originally posted this years ago, to which Marc's response was "Why?". Glad to see years later you were able to get him to do a bit of a prologue for it.
Some of the rules here are insane, complicated, or both.
what a bizarre pilot, seems more like a playtest
"How do you turn a game that takes 14 hours to play into a 30-minute game show?" Easy, you don't.
Marc was the only thing that actually worked here, because he's Marc and he's amazing, even back then.
Compared to the Peter Tomarken pilot, this concept is actually not too bad. Mark Summers would've been great candidate as a host considering his love for the game. Very interesting on how Kingworld really wanted to push the Monopoly game into a game show.
I thought this pilot was too complicated in the main game. The once around the block bonus game is mostly intact. I loved the Tomarken Griffin pilot much better.
Marc Summers of Double Dare fame
I Think this show should've mashed up with Trivial Pursuit so we could have the following categories assigned to the following Color Groups of the Game Monopoly
Light Blue: Geography
Violet: Entertainment
Orange: History
Red: Arts & Literature
Yellow: Science & Nature
Green: Sports & Leisure
However for Brown and Blue, Well I Don't Know.
How you can you have a returning champion on a pilot show?
I think I like this one better than what we got in the 90s. Hey Wink, can you try to dig up the 90s pilot of Monopoly with Peter Tomarken? The one that was rumored to be sabotaged.
I really hope that Monopoly has became the biggest board game, and for the reboot of the game show on primetime television, it must be a high tech studio, and we need a celebrity host like Marc Summers. For the CW version, I'm thinking it is hosted by Liza Koshy.
Do you have the rehearsals with Mario Lopez, George Hamilton, Todd Newton and Mike Richards before they did their test shows at The Price Is Right in 2007? I was there rehearsing with them as were 3 other CBS Pages. I believe they filmed it as the cameras were running and we saw ourselves on the TV screens. We were creating some fun characters!
That game was kind of a mess… but any attempt to adapt Monopoly to short form would be.
IF YOU LAND ON FREE PARKING YOU COULD WIN A CORVETTE STINGRAY??? WHY DIDN'T THIS SHOW GET PICKED UP!!!
Not bad
Although I do like the format that actually aired better than this format, Marc was still an excellent host. Merv Griffin did have a history of handpicking the hosts himself, and choosing unknowns, but Pat Sajak was one rare case of being absolutely successful. The actual host, Mike Reilly? I don't know what became of him after Monopoly was cancelled.
🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿
This may be the perfect example of why not all board games translate well into a game show. This was an incredibly boring game to watch. Nothing else can even be blamed but the game itself.
How clunky of an adaptation. Although, who was that young guy hosting the show? 🤣
No attempt has been succesful. Monopoly doesn't lend itself to a game show.
A “pilot” with a returning champion?
if this is the pilot, im so curious why they said there was a returning champion
They should bring it back
I think the contestants said about 10 words all combined. Most of the show was Marc explaining and the two assistants moving pieces. 1987 me would have enjoyed this show since that's around the period in my life when I played Monopoly the most.
How is there a returning champion if its the pilot??
I know there was another version of Monopoly that aired on ABC a few years after this pilot was made, but the rules were vastly different.
Marc was the best host they could have chosen for this version of the game. He's so good at explaining complex rules in a simple way while making everyone feel invested. And the editing was tight (even if the audio balancing was all over)
But the ruleset sunk this game. The rules were about as complex and frequently changing as Krypton Factor, and the rules they made didn't play into the clever question-writing. And that budget – $1000 corners! $30000 car spaces, dozens of prizes, $50000 final games! Not what you have in mind for a early-afternoon half-hour popcorn gameshow in the 80s.
Interesting how "roll 5 times to pass Go" has stayed the endgame all the way until Monopoly Millionaires' Club.
Interesting concept, but my goodness. Marc must have needed a gallon of water to drink during commercial breaks for all of his talking. WOW!
Extremely rare, however, it is a great 1987 Monopoly game show pilot!
I think this is the first game show I've ever seen where the host had to explain a new rule at every turn.
This one was actually much better than I expected. It was a fun twist on Monopoly
Marc, I love you, but this show sucks!
A corvette stingray in the 80's, that had to be a fake prize as well as fake actors just to show how the game works. I wouldn't say they would have gone bankrupt actually running this show at the time, but way too much prize money going around to be sustainable.
Far too complica5ed and hard to follow..
I can see why this didn't get picked up. It's so damn confusing for a game show. Even if you know monopoly pretty well, it's just so random.
Way too many random and overly complicated rules.
Even in 87, we Americans are stunned at the very thought of 25 days off work 🤣
I always wanted to know what would happen if the player land on the utilities.
I'm not going to lie to you. I'm actually glad that contestant won.
holly cow monopoly is the number 1 game show as well
The game show explanation at the beginning reminded me of that episode of Friends where Joey was auditioning to host a game show.
“Let’s play Bamboozled!” 😂
Marc did a great job, loved the jazz music theme package. Hard to ignore the rigged insert shots of dice rolls during the bonus game but that's how (in theory) you sell an "exciting" pilot.
I like the presentation and the small set they used as I feel other board games could use that same approach when adapting for TV. And honestly, I would LOVE to live in a world where this got picked up with Marc Summers BUT the rules would definitely need some simplification…..
Interesting pilot. Thank you, Wink.