T.V. Trivia - Triple Play!

WEIRD TV MERCHANDISE

Laverne & Shirley secretary play set

This toy was for little girls and boys who wanted to play “office”—it included miniature plastic imitations of a calculator, stapler, bookshelf, notepad, and adding machine. While that doesn’t sound terribly exciting, it also didn’t make any sense—neither Laverne nor Shirley ever worked as a secretary. (It’s also not historically accurate: Laverne & Shirley took place in the late 1950s and early 1960s, about a decade before calculators became commercially available.)

TV’s Davy Crockett (Fess Parker) wore a coonskin cap; the real one never did.

THANKS, TELEVISION!

In 2006, Hungary’s Ministry of Economic Affairs and Transport hosted a contest to name a new cable bridge in Budapest. Voting took place online, so Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report pleaded with his viewers to get Hungary to name the bridge after him. In the end, Colbert garnered 17 million votes—14 million more than the 3 million votes for second-place finisher Miklós Zrínyi, a 17th-century Hungarian folk hero (and around 7 million more than the entire population of Hungary). Hungarian officials decided to ignore the results of the contest altogether and call it the Megyeri Bridge (combining the names of the districts the bridge connects).

Tax on one of the “free” cars Oprah gave away to her audience in 2004: $7,000.

ALL IN THE FAMILY

Actress Whitney Blake (best known for playing Mrs. Baxter on the 1950s sitcom Hazel) became a TV writer in the 1970s. Her biggest success: cocreating the CBS sitcom One Day at a Time. She based it on her own experiences as a divorced single mother raising a teenage daughter. (Blake’s daughter: future Family Ties star Meredith Baxter.)

Conan O’Brien’s mother helped found and develop the Peace Corps.

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