Romper Room

I was the last Romper Room Teacher in Northern California, Miss Sharon. I taped the shows from 1987-1992. I am also the only African American host of the show. I was a teacher at the time and I was the first real classroom teacher to host the show. When I was hired, I taught fourth grade. I also taught preschool and kindergarten. The shows were taped on weekends and later, on Monday evenings. I was trained by Sally Claster Bell in Pacific Palisades, California. My shows were filmed at KTVU in the San Francisco Bay Area. Since this was the last show in the last Romper Room version in the US, many of the tapes were archived at KTVU and I have copies of most of them as well. I always ended my shows with a wink after the magic mirror. I hope that these shows will be released for future generations to enjoy.

Romper Bomper!

When Romper Room debuted on a Baltimore TV station in 1953, it came at a time when there were very few shows aimed at preschool children. Nancy Claster, the wife of the show's creator Bert Claster stepped in when the original teacher Jean Moseley backed out and it became a daytime hit with parents and preschoolers.

The Clasters got an offer from CBS to go national but they rejected it in favor of franchising the show, which meant that stations who paid for the format could used their own teacher and children. Nancy would train all the prospective teachers and they had to adhere to the format.

Many stations that aired the show fulfilled a need since it taught and educated the preschool audience it was targeted to. Good behavior was stressed on Romper Room, thanks to the show's Do Bee mascot. The teachers were always referred to as "Miss", regardless of marital status. The best known feature was the Magic Mirror, where the teacher would open with "Romper bomper stomper boo..." and then she would read the names of children who sent in postcards to the show.

By the 1960s, Romper Room romped in a local station's ratings, though Nancy Claster turned her teaching duties over to her daughter Sally in Baltimore. Local station's waiting lists for children to be on the show were pretty long in many markets. But later in the decade, the show was under fire from Action for Children's Television for its constant promotion of the toys used on the show and a new show would debut in 1969 that would cut into Romper room's dominance, Sesame Street.

The 1970s would also continue a decline for Romper Room when many local productions shut down to a rise in public school kindergarten and a ban on children's TV hosts delivering on camera commercials. But there were still some locally produced Romper Rooms as well as the national version hosted by Miss Sally that was also seen mornings in Minneapolis.

As many local Romper Rooms declined, the show was overhauled in 1981 and retitled Romper Room and Friends. New characters were added but the show continued to declined and by 1994, Romper Room ceased production.

For many preschoolers in the 50s, 60s and 70s, Romper Room was the video destination that educated and taught them to be good Do Bees.

This TV preschool of sorts was created by Bert & Nancy Claster and begin on WBAL in Baltimore, MD. In 1953 this was only station that Romper Room was seen. This show however got the attention from the folks at CBS who wanted to bring Romper Room on a national level. The Clasters turned down the offer from CBS, but still wanted to bring Romper Room to all of America, but in their own unique way.

They gave local TV stations the option broadcasting the main version out of Baltimore (Chicago in the 70's and back to Baltimore in 1981) via syndication or producing their "own" local version of Romper Room ie Franchising which many TV stations that brought the rights to Romper Room did.

Nancy Claster trained the local hostess herself, and they all had a college education. The training was one week but intensive. Nancy also did the Baltimore version of the show, and was replaced by her daughter Sally Claster in order to focus on training more Romper Room teachers.

Bert and Nancy also provided the much of the props and set design for the local version as well. It may be local, but was their baby.

Regardless of any version, Romper Room was a show in which children could play games, read stories, and learned about those things that children needed to know about. The "Magic Mirror" at the end of the show was a way that the Romper Room teacher could reach out to the kids that were watching from home, and who could forget the show's popular mascot Do-Bee.

This show held it's ground for three decades, by 1981 due to an increasing demand from TV stations that wanted a syndicated version of Romper Room. To remedy this Romper Room was retitled "Romper Room & Friends" in 1981. The main show was hosted by Molly McCloskey(who did a local version in New York before and after taping the syndicated), and three new characters were introduced; Kimble (think of him as an oversized lost cousin of Cookie Monster), Granny Cat, and a clown puppet named Up-Up. The stations that still wanted to produce Romper Room on a local level still had that option, and cut ins with the new characters were produced so that the local stations were able to insert those characters in their local versions.

Sadly during the 1980's many stations began to drop the show and move on to other things. The show officially ended in 1994. This show had it's minor faults and could be pain to local editors and even local hostess, but this show was a hit with the late Boomers and Generation X'ers. It's truly a gem in the world of Children's television. It will be missed.

I was born in 1981, so I'm a Gen-Y-er. I grew up watching "Romper Room" with Miss Molly on Channel 9 in New York. It was probably my favorite show as a child...I always wanted to be one of the kids on it, but when my mom called to get me in there was a two year waiting list. Oh well.

Anyway, it really was a great show, and I'm angry that my children will never get a chance to watch it. There were lots of great songs like "Do Bee Dancin'" and some very cool puppets like UpUp, Kimball, and Granny Cat.

Very cool stuff...if you can get some videos from eBay or anything, I'd recommend it. And Miss Molly, if you read this -- I was one of your biggest fans ;-)

i was a Romper Room kid, we filmed in the Channel 20 studios, just over the Maryland line, and Miss Ann was our teacher. i was in a group of 5 or 6 kids that also included Brad Oscar, who has gone on to a Broadway career. as i recall our sponsors were Kinny Shoes and Baskin Robbins ice cream. we had to eat the flavor of the month on camera. one time the October flavor of the month was pumpkin ice cream -- a horrible dark orange. the kids wouldn't eat it so tech crew had to go get some grocery store vanilla and food coloring so we could fake it. would love to find out if anything from the show survived. it would be great if somebody had some old pictures in their basement.