What Will They Think of Next? (1976–1979) User Reviews

Where's my robot assistant???

[Jason-173 · 10 October 1999]

What a strange little show this was. And a cheap one. Corporate videos (cheap - like free) combined with black velvet pastel paintings (tastelessly cheap), Tiiu Leek (cheap - but only if she's paying) and Joseph Campanella (cheap suit).

Show synopsis: the disembodied heads and shoulders of Leek and Campanella talked about how our lives would be changed by gasoline made from carrots or wristwatches that count how much coffee you drink. Or why we catch cold from licking bus seats.

I would sit there, my Beefaroni getting cold while my jaw dropped to my lap, amazed at the technological wonders and scientific discoveries awaiting us in that far-flung future of 1983. Today, I'm not driving a flying car, I don't have a sassy robot to do my laundry and human life expectancy is still not 195. So I feel a little cheated by the Science International team.

The haunting theme song, similar to Smetana's romantic 'Ma Vlast,' was weird and inappropriate. I find myself humming it over the sink as I marvel at my Gillette Mach 3. "What will they think of next?!" Joseph Campanella would say. Although I can never say it with as much amphetamine-drenched enthusiasm as he could. Did they only tape him saying it once and then splice it in the hundreds of times he said it over the course of the show? And is a gas furnace really that incredible?

This is where I first saw Joseph Campanella

[drewstewartcolumbia · 4/10 · 29 August 2018]

No this show didn't have state of the art special effects, but int terms of teaching basic science this show did a good job. I learned a lot from it. When I was in grade school.

I liked it when I was younger.

[Blueghost · 9 September 2013]

What to add to the previous review? I too feel put out and let down by the fact that I don't have a self aware car, clothes that self clean and change with my age, or that amazing egg shape car from Germany that was supposed to put an end to accidents.

I used to watch this thing on Nickelodeon when Nick was only on in the afternoon, and shared a channel with C-Span that showed boring government stuff. It was usually raining, or overcast, and Campanella's familiar burned into corporate R&D industrial films and videos meant to show the latest thing labs across the western free world (or more specifically the US, Canada, Japan and Germany) were brewing.

There were a lot of promises made, and a lot of them are yet to be kept as Corporate America at the time liked to space out developments for the market to milk the most dollars from the public through new innovations. Thank goodness the net has allowed a freer exchange of information allowing newer ventures to challenge the old guard which was heavily tainted by sociopathic thinking.

"What Will They Think of Next?" showed the world of tomorrow that never manifested. And looking at the proposed future achievements of the mid 70s, some seem quaint, others seem like carrots dangled to keep us working for a better tomorrow that never came.

Still, the show's kind of interesting, if for no other reason than to give a slice of what we in the 70s thought of as "the future". The future is always presented as this nice new gleaming clean environment where things are automated, and all you need to do is press the button. Well, you still need to cook, vacuum the carpets, clean the car, and do yard work. I'd like to think there'd be a robot or two to help me out with that, but so far I'm still doing it the old fashioned way.

If you see it somewhere, give it a glance.