TV: The Bozo Show

I've heard that in times of stress, forgotten memories crawl up from the deep pit of your subconscious. While a lot of the kids' shows that were broadcast in the '90s are immortalized in YouTube form, there's comparatively scant coverage of "The Bozo Show," a production of WGN that was shown nationally.

As I understand it now, the Bozo character was licensed all over the country, but the WGN version starring Joey D'Auria is the one that I remember. It was a circus-themed variety show for kids, with vaudeville sketches, out-of-studio documentary segments, and of course, the Grand Prize Game.

The Grand Prize Game consisted of tossing a ping pong ball into increasingly distant buckets. The first couple of buckets were a gimme for all but the most inept contestants, but getting the ball into the last bucket wasn't easy. If you managed to complete the task, you received a new bike and fifty smackeroos for your trouble.

I'm not sure why I remember that.