Local children’s TV shows are a thing of the past these days, but back in the ‘60’s and ‘70’s Peoria had “Bids For The Kids” every Saturday morning and “The Acri Creature Feature” on Saturday night. But the one children’s show that is universally remembered in Peoria is “The Captain Jinks Show” which featured the hosts Captain Jinks and Salty Sam and a live audience made up of lucky children that had tickets for the show.
A couple of years ago WEEK TV had a special on The Captain Jinks show and I recently acquired a DVD of the program. Today I thought I’d share some still photos from the special that I took and we can all take a little trip back in time. Let’s go mateys!
All we have to do is hit, "play" and we'll go back in time to...
The Captain Jinks show! There's the S.S. Albatross floating on the Illinois River.
Tom McIntyre was the host of the special and gave the introduction before playing a lot of clips from the show.
The show always opened up showing the live audience of children in the galley, excited to see Captain and Salty live in the studio.
And here they are, the hosts of the program and local heroes to children of the past in Central Illinois, Captain Jinks and Salty Sam!
The special also had commentary from Cheryl Corley who directed the Captain Jinks show.
The commentary touched upon the fact that while the show had cartoons, it wasn't driven by these animated shorts.
There was also fun and games with actual people like...
Bosun Joe...
Bosun Joe was a featured player who did artwork on the show.
One of the things he did was start to draw objects...
And contestants from the audience would guess what it was he was drawing. In this case it was a pumpkin.
Here's Bosun Joe today and he's still drawing. Check out his website here.
And of course there was the Joke Barrel where kids could send in jokes for Captain and Salty to read on the air.
Here's Salty dipping into the barrel to get a joke.
The Captain reads one of the jokes from the barrel. What made this segment funny was the interaction between Captain Jinks and Salty Sam as they made their own jokes while reading the ones sent in. Lots of ad libs and off the cuff live humor.
Captain Jinks and Salty Sam made sure the kids that came to the show got plenty of airtime too. Here's the Captain interviewing one of the days guests.
If anybody out there is reading this and recognizes themselves, let us know in the comments section, that would be so cool!
Here's a Girl Scout waving out to TV Land.
They had a lot of games involving the kids from the studio audience as well.
The Bucket Toss game was a popular spot on the show where kids could win prizes like...
This Mork & Mindy bulletin board kit. Today's version comes with a noose. Ouch! Too soon?
The grand prize was a Schwinn bicycle from Brown's Sporting Goods.
She got the ball into four buckets, but missed the fifth. Brown's Sporting Goods heaved a sigh of relief!
The special also showed Captain Jinks and Salty Sam appearing on the St. Jude telethon with MBIP pal, Vic Burnett.
Here's a shot of them speaking with Mayor Maloof.
The feeling that came out from this special was the fun these two had doing the show and that chemistry between Captain and Salty is what made the Captain Jinks Show so magical.
Goodbye Captain and Salty and we'll see you all tomorrow!
Related Posts: Peoria TV Rerun: The Captain Jinks Show, Peoria, I Hardly Knew Ye... and #CaptainsKids—Part II.
I’m your Captain, I’m your Captain...
Surprise link, click on it...I dare you!
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Bonus Video From Danny Sinacori!
Seeing that photo of Captain Jinks and Vic Burnett reminded me of a lunch I had last year with Vic and Danny Sinacori. Danny sent me a video of the song, “Peoria,” that he wrote and sang as a tribute to The River City and I’ve been meaning to post it for a while now. And today seems like the perfect day to do it. So here it is, check it out and thanks for sending this in to us, Danny!