My mom and dad often talked about soupy sales and an episode he did where he told kids to get the 'green' stuff out of their parents purses and wallets and mail it to him.

Apparently even back then parents didn't know what their kids were watching on the boob tube. So a bunch of kids did it . I'm sure there were many a spankings following that. Worst of it, according to the folks, was many of the kids didn't give a return address. So the producers couldn't return the money.

Needless to say, my parents tried to ensure we never watched tv unsupervised. (My grandmother, eh not so much hence the Mr. Wizard and Macgyver). There were a few channels we could watch without the parents as we aged we were allowed a bit more TV freedom. But before we could watch any 'new shows' we had to watch a few episodes with the parents if they weren't on PBS or Disney like channels.

Though it's rather sad, Disney and Nickelodeon were okay channels, but Cartoon Network was banned the second it came out, and I was nearly a teenager then, darn Space Ghost Coast to Coast, kept me from my Garfield and Friends on non-Saturday mornings.