Forgotten Facts

TV Fact #1: Air schedules.
The programming season used to be this way: each show had 26 episodes, and they would be shown straight through. At the end of the 26th episode, usually a cliffhanger for next season, episodes 1 through 26 would be repeated. For shows the networks weren't as confident about, 13 episodes would be ordered.

TV Fact #2: Barney Miller and toilet paper
In one episode of the TV show Barney Miller, a person from a toilet paper company came in to file a report. Detective Harris asked him, "How come you always have to claw and scratch to get a roll started?" Not long after this episode aired, "easy start" rolls of toilet paper became available.

TV Fact #3: Real People and McDonald's cherry pies
Real People was a late 1970's TV show that featured segments on "real people" around the United States. On one show, the hosts dissected McDonald's cherry pies, because the picture on the box they came in was covered with cherries. (This might have been at the suggestion of a viewer's letter.) They then counted the number of cherries in each pie. One host got 3 or 4, one got a half of a cherry. When that host complained about it, another host quipped, "Well, it doesn't say cherries pies."
     Shortly thereafter, McDonald's changed the packaging of both the cherry and apple pies to something without pictures on them.

TV Fact #4: Real People and the Susan B. Anthony dollar coin
After the new Susan B. Anthony dollar coin was introduced in 1979, Real People took a camera crew out on the street and video-taped people's reaction to the new coins. (They actually gave the $1 coins to each person.) One man looked at the coin, swore at it, threw it on the ground and stormed away.
     The coins were minted in 1979, 1980 and 1981, but after about 1980, public opinion had turned against the coin, and the Treasury department began storing the coins in warehouses. They have mostly been out of circulation until the Post Office installed the new postage stamp vending machines that accept anything from a penny up to a $20 bill. The Susan B's are given out when a dollar has to be given as change.

Movie Fact #1: Gremlins and the PG-13 Rating.
Gremlins is considered now to be a "family" and/or "Christmas" movie. However, when it was released, it was so violent that the PG-13 rating had to be created; its PG rating didn't accurately fit its content.
(Note: the A&E channel Biography of Steven Spielberg says that it was "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" that was responsible for the new PG-13 rating. Perhaps it was both movies together.)

Movie Fact #2: The Goonies water slide scene.
At the end of the scene where the Goonies have slid down the water slide, they get up out of the water, look up and see the pirate ship. The reaction on the Goonies' faces is really the reaction of the child actors to seeing the pirate ship. Steven Spielberg had deliberately kept those actors away from the pirate ship set, in the hopes of capturing just such a reaction. It worked.

Movie Fact #3: The James Bond movie License to Kill.
This movie was originally named License Revoked. The name was changed because it was thought that the moviegoers wouldn't know what the word "revoked" means.


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Last Update: January 1, 2002.




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