Epic Win: 3-2-1 Contact
Submitted by Mountain Girl
3-2-1 Contact was another one of the glorious brain-candy shows of the 80’s and 90’s. Children watched it because it was interesting and exciting and it stimulated their imagination while teaching them things that would be useful and fun later in life. Gone are the days when we watched television purely because it was entertaining, exciting and informative, like this. Now, if you want to teach a kid something you have to include a segment where something gets blown up in order to demonstrate scientific approach.
I thought that this was part of Seamestreet… o_0 Must have been on after it or something.
Square 1 tv was on about the same time too.
ftw!!! I *loved* Square 1 (what was actually several years later, btw); Mathnet, the magician Gladstone (I think that was his name) and all the goofy segments.
Another one is Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego, with the chief from Law and Order as the bureau chief…
Ah, those were the days of decent kids TV…
Lynn Thigpen as Chief. She was great.
3 2 1 Contact and Square 1 TV were my television bread and butter as a kid. I don’t remember a lot of what I saw, but I like to think I got a lot out of them both. (And the stuff I do remember is still pretty interesting.)
321 Contact was cool, but Epic Win should do a special just on The Bloodhound Gang segment of the show. Epic in and of itself!!!
The Bloodhound Gang *rocked*.
Whenever there’s trouble
We’re there on the double
We’re The Bloodhound Gang
If you’ve got the crime
We’ve got the time
We’re The Bloodhound Gang!
I didn’t realize it was it’s own show either. I always thought it was part of OWL TV
one of the hosts of this show was my brother’s high school english teacher. mr. quinn, he hosted the one with ryan white. i had forgotten all about this show!
wut
Wow, I must have watched this as a very young child. I always remembered the last part of the song but I never knew why or what it went to. What happened to children’s educational programming, anyway?
Not only did I watch the show, I had the magazine subscription too!
So did I. (Thanks mom!) I love the song… CONTACT it is the reason everything happens! and I would have to say that is true…except for when i was waving my finger an inch from my sisters nose saying ‘IMNOTTOUCHINGYOU!!!!’ …… then there was a reason for contact (owe).
“oweeee!”
I loved!! the show and watched it religiously. I got the magazine too. I still hold a little bit of a grudge (30 years later…) against LeVar Burton because Reading Rainbow took over 3-2-1 Contact’s time slot in the Philly area.
I loved science then and still love it now. I’m a Science teacher today and would love to show some of these old episodes to my students. Are they available anywhere? As much as I love Bill Nye and Schoolhouse Rock – you gotta mix it up a bit.
The weirdest thing is that there’s episodes of this called “3.2.1 Contact: Special Edition” that were never aired on television, but instead used in classrooms. I still remember horrifying moments of watching the sex ed. one. (I’m not kidding, cartoons doing it. Very. very. odd.)
I SAW THAT!!!!
The intro played and I was all.. oh, this will be neat! And.. then things… started happening… o_0
I think I must have repressed the memory or something. ><
Sorry, but I’ve got to vote this as only a half-win. The first 3-2-1 Contact was a true win. The second version added the ‘young kid’ factor, which just wasn’t as cool good.
I do miss the Bloodhound gang, though.
It’s strange. I watched the original (1980) and it’s Bloodhound segment, and I never thought “White girl, Hispanic Girl, Black guy” for them, or “White guy, whitish kid, and Black girl” for Bloodhound. It was planned racial diversity, but it wasn’t ‘in your face’ and it really just seemed perfectly natural.
I miss TV like that.
Whenever there’s trouble, we’re there on the double!
Yeah, it’s also like how a person in a wheel chair has to be in every textbook picture. You’d think that half the population can’t walk.
My science teacher showed us 3-2-1 Contact episodes all the time!
I’m singing the theme song now…thanks a lot!
My Teacher did the same thing. We would all get excited when she rolled that big TV in !
i only got to watch it when i stayed home sick from school …. or it was summer
Wow, this was a blast that, like, blasted me. Lots of memories came flooding back, like remembering if there was trouble, the bloodhound gang would be there on the double. The case with the clock in the well they brought up with the salt. The one with the ghost that ended up being moths attracted by pheromones back lit by a spotlight.
But I also remember Trini with the sound engineer at a Kiss concert, and my Mom flipping out because… Well, it was Kiss, and it was 1980.
At the end of 3-2-1 Contact, was there a grasshopper that had a show called “The Club?” I know that was at the end of one of those shows… Conflarnit, I’m so old!!!!
Yeah, the Reading Club or something. There “secret password” was palabra jot!
yes yes! that drives me crazy! my friend and i have been looing for years to find the name of the show with the grass hopper, palarbajhat,palabrajhat…now watch! haha! he would fix the news cast for a black lady named red green!
I loved this show. Seriously got me interested in mysteries!
“… is the reason that everything happens!” I can still sing it!
I still sing the theme song to this day. I’ll usually start humming it and then one of my friends or my mother will start singing it. Is voting something a win purely based on the theme song lame?
Oh man! My friends totally all thought I was crazy because I remembered the 3! 2! 1! CON-tact! bit from the intro theme, and none of them could ever remember having watched the show.
HAHA, I am legit. <3
Yes, Brainiac was an awesome show that used this.
Man, I loved this show. And blame it for watching way too much history/discovery channel now (about all I *do* watch on TV – wait, is that really a bad thing?)
Actually, I remember watching this in 7th grade which was in 1979-so it’s an even older blast from the past than the original poster thought.
For a time I would replace “Blast Off!” with “CONTACT!” after a 3-2-1 countdown.
80’s & 90’s? I used to watch the ORIGINAL show as a kid in the 70’s. (Get off my lawn! Uphill both ways!) with the original Bloodhound Gang.
Man, I loved that show as a kid.
I thought it was neat that they brought it back sometime in the 80’s, but I only saw one or two episodes of that version. Never saw the 90’s version.
watched it as a kids the 1980s version epic entertainment and educational value to boot!
Woot, you just brought me back to 1978! Man I loved this show when I was a kid. Now where is Electric Company?
They say this cat Shaft is a bad mother
SHUT YOUR MOUTH!
I’m talkin’ ’bout…
what are we talking about?
The freaky thing is that almost all the cast of 3-2-1 was in the film ‘The Warriors.’
Come out and play-eee-yayyyyyyy!
Definitely not – just ask Adam and Jamie from Mythbusters!
oh, man. this was on after sesame street when i was tiny – i never watched the show (i was a little too young) but i LOVED the intro and wouldn’t let my mom change the channel til it was over!
I loved the first season, and felt betrayed when later episodes brought in a new cast. Hey, I was young.
I remember when they did a segment on computers (or was it the one on artificial speech?) A technician held up a spool of magnetic tape that must have weighed ten pounds and proudly stated that it could hold a dictionary’s worth of information. Ah, technology. How far you have come.
Ricardo from the Bloodhound Gang was played by Marcelino Sanchez. Prior to 3-2-1 Contact, he was in “The Warriors”, a cult film about New York gangs. Trini also had a bit part in the film. It was really weird to watch The Warriors as a teenager and recognize the actors.
I went to preschool w/the baby in that vid. Her name is Lydia. I should find the old class pic.
Wow. I haven’t thought about that show in years. Just watching the intro again transported me back to a point in time where I’m sitting on the floor in front of the entertainment center, watching channel 13 on the Sears 19″ color with the knob tuners.
The only images I have burned into my brain from that show was when they had on the people in spandex with the toilet paper roll eyes and mouths, and something about a stream of water from a leaky pipe hitting a desk fan and making the blade turn. I think it was for a transition to a segment on water power, but all I can remember thinking “I hope that’s unplugged”.
Holy crap, I remember the toilet paper people, but didn’t remember that they were from this show. Thank goodness this memory isn’t something I made up!
That would be “mummenschanz”
I think this was Square 1, but regardless, I can still sing most of the number nine song and the probability song. I remember the Fibonacci version episode of Mathnet had a talking parrot in it. Great times!
Nine, nine, nine, fantastic number nine! Times any number you can find… it all comes back to nine!
I loved 3-2-1 Contact and blame it as part of the reason I am a Science Nerd today. The only thing I can say I do not thank the show for in my unnatrual fear of Praying Mantises. I remember watching the episode and them explaining the electron microscope, and thinking “COOLLLLL!!!” And watching the Salt Crystal, and Pollen particles, and then the music suddenly changed to Toccatta and Fuge in D Minor……and BAM! Huge close up of Mantis head with intact mouth parts…..Freaked me out….I still beef with any Praying Mantis I see about it, and the last time, the frak little thing looked at me like “dude that was my cousin, and I am gonna f you up about it”
Sigh I wish that little kids today would be able to see the old greatness I was born in the early 90s so I was born just in time to see the death of great tv and stuff but luckily I got about 6 years of it
OH MY GOD YESS!! I am so old I soooo remember this show
This was shown on Saturday mornings in Australia in the mid 80s, followed directly by Square 1 TV. I want to raise a glass to Mathnet in particular, for teaching me about Pi and the Golden Ratio.
Way to dumb down generation Y, Saturday Disney.
I credit 321 Contact and Square One with the fact that I graduated from college. They were the ONLY reason I passed gradeschool science and math.