>>> The first mistake on this page is very apropos. The goof happened on DD's very first show*. It happened on the first obstacle, which remarkably enough, was titled "Nightmare." Everything was running smoothly until the contestants ran the course. For some oddball reason, unbeknownst to everyone and let alone to the contestants, there was no flag hidden in the feathers in the pillow! For 60 seconds, the kids were stuck on the first obstacle making a mess of the stage with feathers. Marc said after the time ran out, "We know there is a flag in there..." Well, there definitely wasn't. Not only was a flag not buried, but someone forgot to unzip the bag of feathers in the pillowcase! In any case, they thankfully stopped tape and re-ran the course. Marc seemed more confident this time around as he set the players on their way. But, unbelievably, someone had STILL not included a flag in the feathers! In the Double Dare direct to video special, "The Inside Slop" (which includes this never aired footage), Marc says that he thought that the producers had put the flag in, and that the producers thought he put it in! While this explanation doesn't seem plausible, the end result was that they were going to have to run the course a third time. Thankfully, the flag was finally found during this third take (actually 3 flags were found, but only one was picked up), but the nightmare wasn't over. Someone at the control room must've fallen asleep while the stagehands cleaned up all the feathers...because no one started the clock!! Nobody caught this immediately, but to make matters worse, the main cameraman fell down along with the camera while the contestants were on the Monkey Bars! Time for a fourth take. Here Marc seems very exhausted, giving the "On your mark, get set, go" without much confidence. The contestants though were as eager as ever. They finally got to run through the course without anything stopping (or stepping) in their way. Unfortunately for the contestants, they only succeeded in getting 6 out of the 8 obstacles, after all of that. And yes, eventually, the obstacle was revised to It's in the Bag.
Several pics of this blooper can be seen right here!
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* Preventing contradictions, this should be "the very first taped show." The premiere episode shown on Nickelodeon in 1986 differs from this "Nightmare" of a show.

>>> The next blunder isn't as humorous, although it ranks with the one above in terms of severity. When one talks about physical challenges, the last thing you think about is the danger of them, right? Well, this next mistake will try to prove that wrong. Someone on the show wanted to come up with a stunt along the similar lines of "Pie in Your Pants," except with no mess (this occurred in 1987 or so, when about the only thing messy in DD was the obstacle course). The thought of using G.I. Joe action figures seemed to work right with kids as well. Well, these two ideas combined into what would become the most hazardous stunt ever attempted on the show. One player would be catapulting the G.I. Joe's, while the other would be catching them. The stunt was played smoothly apparently, and nothing appeared wrong while they went to a commercial. But as they came back, Marc announced that the player who caught the action figures accidentally caught one in the face, and suffered a broken nose. Strangely enough, the player was replaced by another one (a la American Gladiators) and the show continued, escaping a very ill-conceived idea.

>>> Fortunately, a lot of other physical challenge bloopers were not as dangerous. Case in point, the following funny folly from 1988. The stunt was called the "Weather Balloon," as a contestant with a pin hat attempted to pop 3 balloons while being pushed on a chair by his/her partner. As you can see by the pictures, the pin hat actually gets stuck in the yellow rod above his head! Even the victim laughed at this one, although the faulty prop cost him the 80 dollars.

>>> Another physical challenge quickie --

Nothing looks wrong here...

this one involves the grape stomping stunt, although this version of it quickly was retired, and you can see why. In this one, the player on the right was given a pair of mannequin legs with which to "stomp" the grapes with. The player on the left didn't have to do anything but sit there and collect the liquid. The faulty props though in this stunt allowed him to capture more liquid than was planned. While the clock ran down, the faucet at first wasn't allowing any liquid to pass through, puzzling Dave and Marc. As the girl pounded the grapes harder though, she eventually caused the glass panels to collapse, giving her partner an early bath! Marc said afterward, "I'm going to have to say, yes, it was filled past the line! That wasn't quite the way we wanted you to do it, but you did it in your own fashion!"

>>> Sporadically to kill time, Marc would sometimes call on people from the audience to 'demonstrate' certain obstacles, usually non-messy ones. This planned to be one of those clean demonstrations -- slowly but surely the girl seen here paddled her way across. Upon reaching the other side, the boat started pulling away and as Marc pulled her up, she fell into the water! This was quite unexpected of course but at least the girl took it well. She went home with a full Double Dare outfit including shoes rather than just a T-shirt.

>>> The last (but not least) mistake on this page takes place much later, during the Family Double Dare era, circa 1991. For FDD, as you will recall, they changed the scoreboard prop to include 4 digits. Well, for this one ep., for unknown reasons (nostalgic, perhaps?), the crew decided to re-install the original scoreboards, like the ones you see above. Since only one family prior to this was able to break the $1,000 mark, the idea that the 3-digit scoreboard would be fallable was disregarded. Unbelievably enough, one team appeared on this show and ran the scoreboard up to $1,050! The 3-digit display only read "050" though, and Marc said, "you broke the scoreboard!" The buzzer sounded quickly after this, disallowing the viewer to see this one-time occurrence for very long. As you can guess, the regular 4-digit FDD scoreboard was the standard once again.