Arguably there has been no more famous conveyor belt installation than the one that was the centrepiece of the long-running game show The Generation Game.
Throughout its many incarnations from 1971 until 2002, as well as attempted revivals in 2005 and 2018 the show had seen many stages, format alterations and hosts, including Bruce Forsyth, Larry Grayson and Jim Davidson.
However, the true star of the show was the conveyor belt itself, which hosted the show’s central memory game and its trademark cuddly toy rolling along it.
Interestingly, a conveyor belt was the inspiration for the original Dutch game show that the Generation Game was based on, Een Van De Aacht.
A mix of a talk show and a game show, host Mies Bouwman saw a conveyor belt on a German TV show in 1969 and wanted to incorporate it into Theo Uittenbogaard’s new show.
This part of the show would endure as a popular memory game, where couples needed to remember at least 15 of the 20 items that would pass in front of them, one of which always being a cuddly toy in the later BBC show.
Bill Cotton, BBC’s Head of Light Entertainment, found out about the show and decided to adapt it for the BBC, only to throw out nearly every non-conveyor element to it and replaced it with an adaptation of Beat The Clock, a game from the ATV show Sunday Night at the London Palladium.
According to Mr Cotton, the first episode was a disaster, with almost no element of the format working, so instead of showing it, they edited the pilot down to the allotted time slot and showed that as the first episode, which proved so popular that the show was adapted around the pilot’s format.
The show would endure for decades along with its conveyor belt until 2002 when the show was finally cancelled after failing to compete with Pop Idol.
