Trashed

The short-lived MTV game show where contestants try to protect their personal items and eventually themselves from being "trashed" in any way.

Premise
Two teams of two answered pop culture/music video questions in order to score points and protect their six prized possessions they brought from home from getting trashed by the trasher.

Main Game
To start, a toss-up question was asked to both teams and the first team to buzz-in with a correct answer won the right to choose which of their opponents items they would like to see trashed.

Rounds 1 & 2
In the first two rounds, the team in control would which choose which of their opponents items they would like to see trashed. After that, a category was given and three questions from that category were asked. All questions were toss-ups and the first team to buzz-in with a correct answer scored points. For the team trying to defend their object from being trashed, they must answer two of the questions correctly to save their item; otherwise, the selected item was "trashed" in many ways by Mark the Trasher. When a category was finished regardless if the item was trashed or not, the team that answered the most out of three got to choose the next item of their opponents to trash.

Each team played three items each round, and they can only be played once whether they were trashed or not.

Scoring
In round one, each correct answer was worth 50 points, and in round one, each correct answer was worth double or 100 points.

Trashing
The demolition of prized possessions was carried out by Mark Fite, AKA "Mark the Trasher", with occasional help from Andrea Wagner, the model/announcer. Depending on the item being destroyed, this could be carried out in many ways:


 * Blowing the item up inside a blast chamber


 * Shooting the item with a paintball gun


 * Stuffed animals, shoes, and the like were run over with a lawn mower.


 * The possession was placed against a brick wall, then a wrecking ball would be sent crashing into the object.


 * Electronics, such as VCR's and boomboxes, were crushed in a device that looked like a vertical vise with spikes. An autographed basketball was also destroyed with this machine.


 * Mark would appear to be working out on a leg press machine; he would extend a full rep and the item was placed underneath the suspended weight stack. He would then remove his legs, allowing the weights to freefall and crush the object.


 * Shoes and boots were destroyed by placing them on a mannequin sitting in a shoe shine booth; the boots were then "shined" using a sander, destroying them.


 * Clothes were destroyed by cutting them up with scissors or a knife, or swinging them around on a chainsaw; on one occasion, a shirt was placed on a giant doll of Beavis or Butt-Head (clearly to promote that show, which was just starting out and becoming popular.) Mark then proceeded to pour bleach on both Beavis and Butt-Head, ruining the shirt; it was then sliced apart with a knife. Another episode featured Mark soaking a prom dress in "rancid" bean dip before hacking it with a katana sword.


 * Baseball cards and CD's were destroyed by placing them in a box filled with sand, then running over them with a belt sander, ruining both sides.


 * Televisions and cassette tape collections were often destroyed by throwing heavy objects onto them from a balcony constructed on stage.


 * Surfboards were sawn into pieces with a chainsaw.


 * If at any time the "trashing" did not work as planned, Mark the Trasher would simply finish the job himself using a sledgehammer.


 * On one occasion, the item at stake was an autographed baseball; they brought out a paint can full of hot tar in which to submerge it. However, Mark decided that the baseball was too expensive and instead threw it into the audience.


 * On another occasion, a male contestant with long blonde hair put his hair on the line as one of his "prized possessions"; upon getting these questions wrong, staff members began cutting his hair and continued to do so for the remainder of the main game.

Survival Round (Lightning Round)
In the final round of the main game, instead of trashing contestant's items, they were trashing the contestants themselves. For one member from each team was "imprisoned", while their partners stood back at their podiums and answered questions. Each correct answer in this round was worth 150 points. The round lasted for an obscure time of 39 seconds and the team in the lead when time ran out won the game. The imprisoned contestant of the losing team ended up getting "trashed" in all sorts of ways. Examples included:


 * Getting doused with slime, gravy, milk, eggs, chocolate syrup, etc.


 * Getting his/her head shaved.


 * Male contestants wearing dresses.


 * Mark and his fellow cast members would have a party in which they would each too much junk food and vomit on the contestant.


 * Mark and several others spitting tobacco on the contestant.


 * A very bad singer serenades the contestant while the contestant is being humiliated.

Bonus Round
This bonus round was a cross between the Remote Control bonus round and the Winner's Circle round on Pyramid. The winning contestants sat face to face with three TV monitors behind each of them. Each one consisted of a music video. One player would describe the artist in the video while the other tried to guess who the artist is. The time limit for this round depended on how many possessions they saved in the game. They started at 30 seconds, and they add five more for each item they saved. So if they saved all six of their personal items, they played the bonus round for a full minute (60 seconds). If the team can get all six artists correctly in the time that they earned, they won a grand prize vacation.

Music
1st Close Theme - "What Is Love" by Haddaway

2nd Close Theme - "Mr. Vain" by Culture Beat

Inventors
Juliette Blake & Trevor Hopkins

Links
One contestant's experience

A Full Episode of Trashed

YouTube Video
Full Episode - 4/12/94