I'm Telling!: Off to the Isozone

I'm Telling was arguably one of the more poorly executed half hour of children's programming to ever actually make the air waves. It was like The Newlywed Game, except it featured siblings attempting to match answers to multiple choice questions instead. The show was short lived and originally aired from 1987 to 1988, but I came to it because it used to be on The Family Channel's daily afternoon line-up in the early 1990s, before Punky Brewster. I'm fairly certain I actually watched just about every episode of I'm Telling ever made, so I thought I'd share a few of my memories, in hopes that some other TWOPers might remember this show and add some snark.

--The host of the show, Laurie Faso, stood behind a cheap podium and pantomimed playing the keyboards of the show's theme music, even though he was clearly pouding away at nothing more than colored cardboard.
--During the game segment of the show, one half of each sibling pair was ceremoniously sent off to the "isozone" through a cheesy graphic light beam. Even this obviously easy "special effect" would sometimes malfunction. Additionally, in a few episodes of the show, a contestant would attempt to hit their buzzer to select a category, and the graphic of the spinning category block wouldn't stop and poor Laurie would be reduced to saying, "Hit it again! Hit it again!"
--The final round of the show (which had a rotating set...ooooooo!!!) was played in "The Pick-a-Prize Arcade" that featured ten prizes for girls (pink) and ten prizes for boys (yellow). Each sibling had to guess six prizes that they thought their brother or sister picked, and they had to match on a total of ten to win all the prizes on stage. Popular prizes included things like a "home salon kit," a "set of Hardy Boy's Mysteries," and "a globe." Fun stuff, huh?

And now for my personal favorite memory of I'm Telling: the celebrity episodes! Yep, stars of NBC shows appeared with their real life siblings to play the game for charities, including Shannen Doherty (then on Our House), Sean and Mackenzie Astin (during his stint on Facts of Life), Ami Foster (Punky Brewster), Chad Allen (probably then on My Two Dads), Giovanni Ribisi (also My Two Dads), Heidi Ziegler (Rags to Riches), and Benji Gregory (ALF). Somehow, I ended up with one of the celebrity episodes of I'm Telling on tape, and it makes for some surreal viewing, especially given that most of the celebrities were really a bit too old to be on the show in the first place. Shannen Doherty's brother was particularly creepy, but I suppose that's no real surprise.