YMMV / Concentration

• Adaptation Displacement: Those who fondly recall the original see the Narz/Trebek versions as altered aberrations, while those who grew up on the Narz/Trebek shows see the original as dull and stodgy.
• Awesome Music: The music package from Classic is among the classiest of any American game show.
  • The Narz version used a tune chock-full of 1970s Moog goodness.
• Common Knowledge: From GSN's 1994 launch until Buzzr's 2018 rescue, game show fans lamented that NBC had vehemently refused to allow reruns of any existing version of Concentration for seemingly no acceptable reason. Fortunately, the aforementioned rescue revealed the truth-the reason NBC didn't license reruns for all that time is that they never had the rights to do so!! NBC owns only the rights to license the format for new editions-the actual episodes once produced are the exclusive property of the producing company or its successor; Fremantle in the case of the Narz/Trebek versions.^note This is most likely due to fin-syn laws preventing networks from participating in syndication. How do we know this? Because Buzzr's reruns of Classic carry a Fremantle logo at the end (the only reference to NBC is production manager Forest Ludwig) and the Narz version is copyrighted to "G-T Programs, Inc." with no reference to NBC at all. It seems the only reason this legendary game show got trapped in rerun limbo for 25 years is that Mark Goodson's surviving family didn't bother checking their paperwork before granting GSN's original license-nor did Pearson Television when GSN re-acquired the library following the "Dark Period"-and blindly assumed NBC owned the shows due to owning the format rights.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: In Classic's bonus round, almost every contestant would start by calling the following number pairings: 1-2, 4-5, 7-8, 10-11, 13-14, 3-6, 9-12, stopping to make matches along the way.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Whenever a contestant solved the puzzle after making a match on the game's first turn. When this happened on the original NBC series, and then again early in Classic's run, it was woe unto the unfortunate contestant, who was immediately herded offstage with parting gifts and nary an opportunity to play. A few months into Classic, this was averted with a best-of-three format and the first game's loser going first in the second game.
  • Much like on Press Your Luck, the car game on Classic appeared to have random configurations each time. However, a video discovered that the staff actually used the same 14 or so sheets of matches with the pairs spread as far away from each other as possible. At least one contestant won a car by memorizing the set of matches on the board.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Classic Concentration has many moments of Alex Trebek playing the straight man against contestants engaging in oddball antics, which are even funnier in light of Will Ferrell's portrayal of Trebek as an exasperated straight man on Saturday Night Live's Celebrity Jeopardy!
• Memetic Mutation: "Not a match, the board goes back."
  • David Letterman liked to say the line in response to a joke bombing.
• Most Wonderful Sound: Both the opening fanfare and the solve music from Classic.
• No Problem with Licensed Games: Aside from the home versions of Password, probably the most faithful home-game adaptation of a game show. Milton Bradley kept true to the rules of the show. Perhaps the only irritation was, if only two players played the game, the possibility existed of accidentally exposing too much of the answer (when opening the answer slide) when one player offered a guess ... this even though the rules of the game clearly stated that the contestant's opponent was to open the slide very carefully and only to the point where it was clear that the answer was right or wrong (e.g., in the rules' example, "Abraham Lincoln" as the guess, but a "C" is the first letter of the answer).
• Replacement Scrappy: Ed McMahon, who replaced Bob Clayton in March 1969 at NBC's insistence, was ousted after six months because he apparently couldn't grasp the format. Norm Blumenthal said the real reason for McMahon's removal was ratings, which took a nosedive when Clayton was replaced and rose again when he was reinstated.
  • That said, as a photo here demonstrates, McMahon seemed to have good memories of the show — he posed with fellow Concentration hosts Jack Narz and Alex Trebek (plus a Steve Ryan rebus) to help celebrate 50 years of game shows.
• Retroactive Recognition: Actor/stand-up comedian Brian Haley appeared on a few episodes of Classic about two years before his big break on The Tonight Show. After that, he appeared in a number of movies and TV shows, perhaps most notably becoming the Suspiciously Similar Substitute of Thomas Haden Church's "Lowell" on NBC's Wings.
• The Scrappy: Unbeatable players who constantly fall on their face in the bonus round. See "Stop Having Fun" Guys below.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Forfeit One Gift, of which there were three pairs on the original version. While some contestants were lucky enough to have gag prizes when matching them, others weren't so lucky when they were forced to part with the cars or trips they matched. Thankfully, they were reduced to one pair when the Narz era began before being removed altogether in 1975.
  • For the week of January 22-February 9, 1990, Classic tried a "show the folks at home" approach, similar to the Double Play round of the Narz version.
• She Really Can Act: Majorie Goodson-Cutt, despite the fact that Classic is her only credited role.
• "Stop Having Fun" Guys:
  • Players who are unbeatable in the main game but fall flat on their face in the bonus round. For example, there were contestants who made multiple trips to the Winner's Circle on Classic but still couldn't win a car even with 60 seconds on the clock. They're frustrating not only because they make the show tedious to watch - it's common to see viewers begin to root against them as they wish to see someone who is capable of winning the car get a turn - but also to their defeated opponents, as all the time accrued on the clock from the champion's repeated failures means that whoever finally defeats him is effectively guaranteed a new car on her first attempt. They eventually implemented a rule that retired champions after five consecutive victories, but that only did so much as depending on how much time they're given, these players can begin testing the audience's patience after only their second or third failure to win a car.
  • Players who solve the puzzle after only removing a couple of tiles. This especially goes for the early episodes that didn't give defeated contestants a second chance. Quite a few contestants were retired without even having a turn on the board.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: The 1985 pilot and Classic Concentration used a computer-generated board with 25 panels, which was not prone to the same mechanical failure as the old board...although a glitch was eventually discovered in 1991; see Throw It In! on the Trivia page for details.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • The Narz era added "Extra Number", which when matched allowed the contestant to pick three numbers on the next turn (for the final season, picking three numbers became regular gameplay), and "Free Look" automatically exposed that part of the puzzle. In addition, the main-game prizes were formerly the parting gifts given during the tail end of the original series.
  • The 1985 pilots with Orson Bean (there were five taped that day) had contestants matching related words in the main game, worth $100 per match. Considering how words can connect in myriad (and sometimes obscure) ways, using predetermined "connections" was a Standards & Practices nightmare waiting to happen.^note Imagine a contestant, after being told the two chosen words were not related, giving a sound, logical connection between said words right on camera; what do you do?
  • Classic returned to prize matching, but could never quite decide how to retire contestants. The third way they did it, forcing contestants to retire after winning a car, led to a contestant throwing the Bonus Round near the end of the run in the hope of winning more prizes. It didn't work. ^note (It's odd that they called it "Classic", though, when it only resembles the 1958-73 original in its basic objective. It may be that Classic was added for Trebek's pilot to clarify that they returned to prize-matching, and the name just stuck.)
• Unintentional Period Piece:
  • The abundance of neon lights and palm trees on the set and the presence of a younger, mustachioed Alex Trebek unquestionably date Classic Concentration to the late 1980s.
  • This trope is even stronger for a viewer that's a car enthusiast, because Classic Concentration had a tendency to give away obscure cars that had short production runs, such as the Merkur XR4Ti, Eagle Premier and the Subaru Justy (though the Premier is known among car fans for being the basis of Chrysler's "cab forward" platform of the 1990s). Similarly, Classic Concentration was seemingly always giving away a Hyundai Excel, a car that's now infamous for his poor quality, which led to it being withdrawn from the American market after only a few years as Hyundai wanted to push it into obscurity so they could rehabilitate their reputation. This trope goes up to eleven for the Daihatsu Charade they offered as a prize car often in 1988, as Daihatsu sold cars in the United States for only four years before hastily leaving in 1992, and most Americans today have no memory of them.

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