YMMV / Hot Potato

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• Awesome Music: The closing theme is a favorite among Game Show fans.
• Memetic Mutation: In 2000, the show became something of an Internet Meme on the former game show Google Group alt.tv.game-shows (ATGS for short), when trolls began flooding the pages with nonsensical posts like "how wuz hat putato played? did bil kulin toss a putato at thuh kontestants? tat wuld be a funi".
• Suspiciously Similar Song: The opening theme uses a very similar melody to the beginning of Donna Summers' "Stop, Look, & Listen", while the closing theme begins with guitar riffs that sound similar to those used in Sylvester's "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)". The series pilot used the real songs.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • Instead of moving the show from its Noon timeslot, on April 23, 1984 the format went from using teams of three people with the same occupation to teams of two celebrities and a single contestant. The infusion of celebs worked about as well as it did on Bullseye in late 1981 — i.e., not very well at all.
  • A lot of celebs took their wisecracks and shenanigans far more seriously than they did the game (giving bad answers just to be funny should not be happening, generally speaking, unless you've been challenged and legitimately have zero clue). The producers probably sensed this would be an issue, as the Seven-Straight Jackpot was removed upon the format change...which bit them on the butt immediately, as a contestant on the first Celebrity episode managed to give seven straight right answers all by herself, after her wisecracking celeb teammates got benched.

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