I'm Telling! Spilling Some 80s Kid Game Show Tea
By Michael Jones | January 9, 2021
Decades before housewives would spill tea and gossip on each other in countless Bravo franchises, the glorious world of kids game shows gave us one of the best drama factories on television. And if you ever had a late morning free on a Saturday in 1987-1988, you might have caught it.
It was the game show I’m Telling! (exclamation point part of the title for added dramatic effect), where for the price of a wrong answer, you could see a big sister absolutely wallop her younger brother and call him stupid in front of a national audience.
The show was hosted by Laurie Faso. Those who like deep cartoon cuts perhaps will know his voice as Raphael from the second live-action Ninja Turtles movie, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze. Those who like even deeper cartoon cuts might know his voice as Warden Waddlesworth in an episode of Darkwing Duck. And if you hate cartoons but love musical theater, he was in the original cast of 1976’s Broadway run of Godspell. (If you hate both cartoons and musical theater, maybe go for a walk?)
How the Game Was Played
I’m Telling! had a simple premise. Picture The Newlywed Game but for young teen or pre-teen sets of siblings, almost always one sister and one brother on a team. But where The Newlywed Game always got kind of awkward and even a little gross, I’m Telling! both maintained the innocence of childhood and delivered on juicy family drama. Your little brother thinks you’re a nerd who’s lazy around the house? He’s definitely going to spill that over the airwaves. Your big sister thinks you’ve got big ears that would be better suited on an elephant? She’s going to blab about it.
Avid viewers could purchase a board game based on the show, so you could tease your sibling at home, but without the assistance of laughter from a studio audience.
There would be two rounds of regular play, followed by a bonus round called the “Pick-A-Prize Arcade.” For the regular rounds, one-half of a sibling pair was teleported to a soundproof chamber (oh how 80s game shows loved their soundproof chambers) that was amusingly referred to as “The Iso-Zone.” The remaining siblings would get to choose a category and answer a question about their disappeared sibling. When the questions were done, the teleported sibling would magically reappear via an 80s spaceship swoosh sound, and have to guess what their sibling said about them. Get a right answer? Score 50, 75, or 150 points depending on the category.
The sibling team with the highest points moved on to the “Pick-A-Prize Arcade” where a real Golden Corral-level buffet of prizes awaited them. Each sibling would pick 6 prizes of the bunch that they’d like, and the other sibling would have to run around the stage pushing a giant siren button next to the prize if they thought it was one their sibling selected. And the prizes all belong in a late 80s time capsule.
A VCR? Yes. A day pass to Six Flags Magic Mountain? Yep. Tickets to “up-and-coming” rock band Bon Jovi? Oh yes. Cordless telephones? Amazing. And teams got to keep any matches they made. Simple as that.
But while it was always nice to see teams walk away with prizes, the real juice of this show wasn’t in who won, it’s in who got the most wrong answers. Because that most likely meant a heap of drama from ticked off brothers and sisters, and that… well, that’s worth a bucket of popcorn and going down a YouTube rabbit hole to watch.
Bring on the fights
Head on over to episode 7, and look for the first question that the sisters get about their brothers. “Would your brother be more likely to appear on the cover of: Sports Illustrated, MAD Magazine, or Nerds Weekly?” Contestant Daphne, who might be the best child ever on a game show, answers Sports Illustrated. When her brother comes back from the Iso-Zone, he guesses Nerds Weekly and that sends both of them into a spiral.
“You goofball!” Daphne yells as she looks at her brother with the same incredulity that Steve Harvey looks at a contestant on Family Feud whenever they give a truly awful answer. She then pokes her brother in the arm and says “You play basketball!”
Her brother Eliott screams “UGHHHHHH” and that says “You wait until we get home!” (Don’t worry, later on they bond when Elliott guesses that Daphne’s favorite doll is a Cabbage Patch Kid she’s named Crystal Gayle, so we’re confident there wasn’t any sibling violence whenever they returned home!)
Then there’s episode 8, where Marla and Randy blow up at each other. And oh it’s so good. Sisters are asked “What their brother needs to most improve his looks: build up his muscles, be taller, or are they perfect the way they are?” Marla says ‘muscles’. It doesn’t go well.
Randy: Well I’m not the most muscular person, but I think I’m real short, so I’d have to be taller.
Host: Marla said: “Build up your muscles.”
Marla: YOU DUMMY!
Randy: Look I got muscles!
Marla eventually punches her brother and later on in the show delivers this epic line describing almost every brother and sister that ever existed: “We get in a fight every day, every morning, every night before we go to bed. I mean, our whole communication is fighting.”
And then there’s the episode where Ashlie and her brother Paul Walker try to… wait a minute. Paul Walker? Like, that Paul Walker? Oh yes, THAT Paul Walker! Long before he was fast and furious, Paul Walker appeared on this show with his younger sister Ashlie. I won’t give away whether they win or lose, but you’ll love their first question where Paul is asked “What’s something that you seem to need more of than your sister: food, help with your homework, or sleep?”
Paul: “My mom’s always talking about how I need help with my homework and my sister doesn’t, and she always makes a big issue out of it because my sister is younger than me. So I would say help with my homework.”
Host: “Ashlie said: ‘Food.’”
Ashlie: “Junk food!” *punches her brother*
Paul: “Well yeah but that’s not food food. If you had said junk food!”
So child Paul Walker lived for Little Debbie cakes. Got it. Honestly, same.
I’m Telling! had a few other celebrity moments as well. Want to see Shannen Doherty and her brother, Sean Astin and his brother, and Rags to Riches’ Heidi Zeigler and her brother duke it out on a special celebrity episode? Catch it here. How about Our House’s Chad Allen and his twin sister, ALF’s Benji Gregory and his sister, and Punky Brewster’s Ami Foster and her brother? Yep, we got that too.
Sadly, not even a treasure trove of 80s child celebrities could save I’m Telling! from cancelation after eight months. And though it ran in syndication for 5-6 years after it ended, history hasn’t been as kind to the show. Ranker readers have it well below other kids game shows of the time, with a whopping 800 negative votes.
And sure, it wasn’t Double Dare or GUTS or even Fun House (a severely underrated 80s game show hosted by J.D. Roth), I’m Telling! deserves a bit more love for giving us some pre-reality television drama from real families. Over-produced? Yes. Replete with terrible fashion choices by kids of the time? Absolutely.
But full of hilarious sister and brother zingers? You won’t find any better. Now go watch Scott scream at his sister Natalie, “I do not sleep with my Nintendo!”
An unabashed 80s & 90s pop culture junkie, Michael Jones is a Brooklyn-based writer and co-host of the Pop Trash Podcast.