One of my favorite shows growing up was That’s Incredible!. My parents were total ABC homers, so whatever was on that network was what we were watching. I don’t think the dial turned until 1985 when my parents got wind of The Golden Girls, and I know for a fact that my dad didn’t even know FOX existed until 1987 when Married With Children premiered.
That’s Incredible! was appointment television. While the show’s legacy was given a boost by a five year-old Tiger Woods appearing on set as an “Incredible Kid!” (and growing up to become the greatest golfer in the world), there were plenty of other awe-inspiring and cringeworthy features.
In 1980 Time Magazine named That’s Incredible “The Most Sadistic” show on television, perhaps due to stories like the one below. In this excerpt from Retroist’s Top freakiest That’s Incredible! episodes that kept us awake at night, the re-creation of a haunted Toys R Us was a bit intense for younger viewers (or at least that’s how we remember it).
Talk about hitting things too close to home for a kid! After this episode most of us never looked a Toys R Us the same way again! I always thought being in a toy store after hours would be a dream-come-true until I saw this “haunting” episode.
Never before had toys sitting on a toy store shelf looked so ominous! Adding insult to injury they showed toys that you owned jumping out at you in one of their sadistic “Re-Enactments”! It wasn’t until later in life that I learned that “Re-Enactment” didn’t really mean “Actual scary footage”!
Interesting side note, a younger-ish Sylvia Brown [Most known for being a regular on The Montel Williams Show] was featured in the segment. They were probably pulling one over on us but that photo they supposedly caught of a dark figure standing in the toy isle was enough to make any rational kid toss and turn throughout the night! Feel good about yourself there Kathy Lee Crosby?!
To read the rest of the list (including The Man with Two Faces, the Children with Aging Disease and much more) head over to Retroist.
If you’re in the mood for multiple Memorygasms, click here.
Loved this show! The creepy re-enactment stuff freaked me out as a kid just enough to be scary but not enough to scar me for life.
Sylvia Browne. Lol. Same lady that said one of the girls from the Cleveland thing, was dead and told her family to give up. Ya, I trust her.
I could watch these for hours.
The man who went to hell! I remember that! Whoa.