Match Game PM: Heartbreak of....psoriasis??

Cafe Society
#1

I was watching Match Game PM the other night, and they were playing the round where the contestant picks three celebs to guess the phrase, and then they go with the answer that will probably be the most popular (ala Family Feud).

The phrase was “Heartbreak <blank>”:
[ul]
[li] Brett Somers chimes in with “Hotel”. Good one.[/li][li] Charles Nelson Reilly comes up with “Ridge”. So far so good.[/li]then
[li] Richard Dawson says “of psoriasis.” And is greeted with much applause!![/li][/ul]
So the contestant goes with Hotel, which is number one, but “of psoriasis” was number two!!

Excuse me, but what in the wild wild world of sports does “heartbreak of psoriasis” mean?? Why use “heartbreak” - what is so heartbreaking about a skin rash? Was there some psoriasis epidemic in the 70s? Why has everyone but me heard of that phrase before? I was a TV watching kid in the 70s’, but I sure as hell don’t remember this.

Not helping matters is that the Web has tons of references to “heartbreak of psoriasis” but no explanation of where that phrase came from, or why it makes any sense to use it.

:confused:

#2

It was an ad campaign for some skin product. I don’t know which one. It promised to help alleve the “heartbreak of psoriasis.”

#3

I’d guess it was a phrase that was very common in the 70’s (possibly from a popular commercial?) but is completely forgotten today. I saw another phrase in the match round (which, alas, I can’t remember) that I had never heard of, but it ranked #1.

And speaking of outdated ideas…the other day I was watching the Match Game where the question was, “Arnie thinks his wife is a mattress, every week he ‘blanks’ her.” The contestant answered “beat” – and got a round of applause! Not only that, TWO of the celebs matched him!! What a different world the 70’s were…

#4

[slight hijack]
I watched the daytime version of that show for years and as I remember it the contestant only got to ask one celebrity for help with the final bonus round (and they almost always picked Dawson because he was the best at it). Was it just the PM version that used 3?

#5

It’s not a mere rash, it’s a disease in which the skin sheds its dead cells at an accelerated rate. The result is patches of sore scaly skin that some times bleed and rarely go away once a certain point of severity is reached; doctors once thought that it’d respond to anti-cancer drugs, but that doesn’t seem to be a real solution, either. My Mom has it all over her and she can’t wear shorts or short sleeves without rude people making ruder comments. It * is* pretty heartbreaking, if you ask me.

#6

The commercial claiming to deal with “The Heartbreak of Psoriasis” was for the medicated shampoo, Tegrin. It was indeed all over the airwaves in the early '70s, and much made fun off for years after it went off the air. Not because the disease is funny, just for the melodramatic phrasing of the ad copy.

#7

I apologize, elfkin477. I would have never belittled the condition itself had I been aware of the severity of it.

#8

Gods, I feel old now. I remember either the tail end of that campaign or the tail end of the major wave of jokes about it (I know I heard the phrase often in my childhood, probably about 81-83), clearly enough to occasionally quote that line, semi-randomly.

#9

You are just a bit confused. In the very final big money round, they did just get to choose one celebrity, who they had to match. They almost always chose Richard Dawson until they instituted the random pick by spin of a wheel.

What is being referred to in this thread, though, is the “Audience Match” which was the preliminary for the big money final round. They would have polled a previous audience for answers and the contestant would try to match the top answer (though matching the second or third still allowed them to continue). They were allowed to ask three celebrities for help with this segment, but did not have to use their suggestions.