I heard someone on a podcast reference this “Wonderama with Bob McAllister” thing and I looked it up. What I found was oddly fascinating.
If you feel like ingesting an 8 minute sample of children’s programming from another time (at least a decade before me, since one of the questions is “who is the president” and the answer is Nixon and he was prez from 1960-1974), check it out in this Snake-in-a-can game segment. It seems like a lot of time-filler just to occupy groups of kids with working moms. Or something. Every can appears to have a snake, even though it felt like to me that the host was implying its not certain that there are any inside. After you get the snakes, you get a chance to win the prize for that can if you can answer a question on sports, entertainment or government.
No other TV game held quite the thrill and suspense of Snake-In-A-Can. Wonderama aired on weekends in NY on WNEW-TV. It started out as a six-hour show, later shrinking to an equally unreasonable four hours. Two-to-three of these hours were shots of kids waving their arms; the rest of the program had exciting games like this one, where many contestants were too short to be seen. But Bob McAllister was really great with the kids – just watch!
This little girl went on to grow up to be Michelle Obama. or something.