November 3, 2024

reading rainbowPopular 80’s Children Show Featured A Nintendo Power Episode

Reading Rainbow, the children’s show that promoted reading as being “fun” and “entertainment” taped an episode that featured Nintendo Power issue #2.  But sadly the episode never aired.

LeVar Burton, the shows host, would guide viewers through some mundane aspect of his life.  The show would transition to a children’s book often read by a celebrity before returning to reality and LeVar telling the audience to “not take his word for it” as him and random children would talk about various books.

“The show was a platform to sell children’s books, period,” explains whistle blower Geordi La Forge (not his real name).  La Forge reached out to the Gaming Free Press and shared a variety of secrets about the show including Bill Cosby allegedly wanting to read a dirty story from a Penthouse magazine.  But the most interesting piece of information shared with us was about a taped episode about Nintendo Power Episode #2:

“Nintendo was huge at the time.  They were looking to cross promote anywhere they could, and well viewership was dying on Reading Rainbow, and so one of our last ditch efforts to revive the show was to find a corporate sponsor – our first being Nintendo.  The episode was complete, it was out of post production.”

It isn’t entirely clear why the episode didn’t air.  Its speculated that the Simon’s Quest cover featuring a decapitated head of Dracula could have been a motivating factor however.  But until we know we can only hope the lost episode will one day surface on YouTube.