Olmec was just a guy with a microphone operating a big puppet head. The temple guards were sometimes TV writers who wanted to frighten children. And the game was nearly impossible to win because the producers had to stick to a tight budget and could only afford a handful of champions per season. These are among the disillusioning truths delivered by host Kirk Fogg in a Great Big Story video devoted to Legends Of The Hidden Temple. A fixture on Nickelodeon from 1993 to 1995, Legends was an eccentric show even by Nick standards, with its Indiana Jones-inspired set and its frustrating gauntlet of trivia, puzzles, and obstacles. Now that two decades have passed, Fogg is now at liberty to give away the show’s deepest, darkest secrets, the things the producers really kept secret, like the fact that one unfortunate girl puked in the Pit Of Despair. Fogg even admits he pitied the show’s hapless contestants.
Despite all this, Fogg seems to look back on Legends Of The Hidden Temple with a great deal of fondness, referring to the show as “iconic.” He even says he became “an expert” at the show’s single most difficult challenge, the notorious Shrine Of The Silver Monkey. “These three things looked similar together because they’re kind of all silver, so you have to stack them on,” he explains. Vintage clips of the show demonstrate just how obfuscating the Silver Monkey could be. And this was just one part of the remorseless gauntlet that was Legends Of The Hidden Temple. Sorry, kids, but the game was unwinnable by design.