St. Winky Dink and "Interactivity Church"

St. Winky Dink and "Interactivity Church"

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It was the first interactive TV program.
Bill Gates mentions it as breakthrough technology.
Yet I have met not one person..besides my family..who remembers ever watching it.

Do you?


It was "Winky Dink."

I saw that blank stare.

Since the church needs to learn about "interactivity" and "audience participation" ..as well as pioneering technology which flattens hierarchy and midwifes EPIC times....
I have sensed that there was something to learn from this show, which ran in the 1950s, and again in the 60's (the only version I remember, thank you!), when I caught it.

(The highlight was the "magic screen" that allowed us kids to actually "participate" in the program!

It is a miracle anytime kids or other "laypeople" can participate! Very instructive that the official title was "Wink Dink AND YOU")

So I was thrilled to find the following upon praying-googling Winky Dink:

My memories of Winky-Dink over the years had grown understandably vague. All I
remembered was the screen and the rescue premise. I experienced blank stares
from fellow baby boomers when the revered one was mentioned. My husband and I
recently relocated to upper Michigan, and while we were building a house had
occasion to rent a home from a delightful local farmer and his wife.

"One day while chatting about childhood memories, the farmer mentioned a
"show he used to watch as a child, that no one ever acknowledged remembering" to
which I responded without hesitation at all - 'Winky Dink.'

"He was
astounded that of all the possibilities, I would pick the exact one, and an
instant friendship was sealed."
- Greyharein



Winky Dink and You was a favorite of kids everywhere, a show that was first broadcast in the
Fifties but I've met other people who remember it being on in the early Sixties.
With the recent return of the character, suddenly everyone wants to know - who
(or what) was it?

Read it all here.

Excerpt:

"Creating Winky Dink and the participation technique now called 'interactivity'
was pure joy for both of us," Ed Wyckoff writes us. "Making it work was
explosive excitement from which we never recoveredas pure joy for both of us,"
Ed Wyckoff writes us.

May we never recover from the explosive excitement of actually letting all the saints have a part to play...in church!
Later edit: Now on YouTube: