Lowly Bantha Cleaner
03-18-2006, 05:50 PM
It was kinda sad hearing the news on Wednesday, but one of the greatest all-time cult television game shows, Press Your Luck, lost its emcee. Peter Tomarken, a native of the area where I live (Western New York State) died en route to picking up a patient in need of an airlift to a hospital. Tomarken was piloting the plane when it crashed into Santa Monica Bay. You can read more about it by clicking on the link below: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060314/ap_on_re_us/small_plane_crash_16
Even though I was only 6 when this show went off the air, I have fond memories of sitting on the couch in the house that I grew up in, just waiting for the whammy to make its next appearance in unsettling some poor, hopeless contestant. The many different whammies were a treat to watch as they lampooned stars like Michael Jackson, Boy George, Tina Turner and other starts of the time with their own personal whammies. I religiously followed the reruns of the show when the ran on U.S.A. in the early 90's and on the Game Show Network years later. The show has been reincarnated on GSN, but with a different host, a different game board and a slightly different format, making it less exciting to watch then the classic original.
Tomarken had a wonderful sense of humor and brought excitement to the show. He later went on to host some less memorable game shows, one of the Wipeout, a show I was hooked on when it aired in the late 1980's. The fact that he died while being a good samaritan, shows you the character of this man.
Even though I was only 6 when this show went off the air, I have fond memories of sitting on the couch in the house that I grew up in, just waiting for the whammy to make its next appearance in unsettling some poor, hopeless contestant. The many different whammies were a treat to watch as they lampooned stars like Michael Jackson, Boy George, Tina Turner and other starts of the time with their own personal whammies. I religiously followed the reruns of the show when the ran on U.S.A. in the early 90's and on the Game Show Network years later. The show has been reincarnated on GSN, but with a different host, a different game board and a slightly different format, making it less exciting to watch then the classic original.
Tomarken had a wonderful sense of humor and brought excitement to the show. He later went on to host some less memorable game shows, one of the Wipeout, a show I was hooked on when it aired in the late 1980's. The fact that he died while being a good samaritan, shows you the character of this man.