Lab Rats Challenge

Lab Rats Challenge is an Australian children's quiz show screening on the Nine Network. The hosts are Drew Jarvis, better known as Curio from children's television show The Shak, and Nicole Dixon.

The program began broadcasting on the 4th of August, 2008 at 4pm. In contrast to other Australian kids game shows such as Sharky's Friends, A*mazing, and Go Go Stop, the show is not filmed in front of a live studio audience but filmed in Brisbane's Channel 9 studio on Mount Coot-tha, in Queensland, resembling an abandoned science laboratory.

Gameplay

The challenges on the show are born from science experiments, such as guessing how many drops of water will fit on a twenty cent coin. Each episode's final challenge, The Labyrinth, features the children competitors racing through a series of physical and mental challenges. The 1st pair to make it through the labrynth gets cheesed at the end. This is similar in style to the maze on early 1990s Australian kids game show A*mazing and 1990s American show Legends of the Hidden Temple. Famous contestants in Lab Rats include the partnerships of Morgan Cant and Joe Dwyer, Sarah Woods and Monique McInnes-Phelan, and Dan Purcell and Shelley Mowbray.

Rounds

• Nano Challenge - In this round, both teams simultaneously try and complete the challenge and achieve their goal. If they succeed, the team wins 10 points.
• What'll Happen If - In this round, Drew and Nicole will describe the experiment and both teams, in private must make a hypothesis/guess as to what will happen. After both teams guesses are made, Drew and Nicole will perform the experiment. If their guess is right, the team wins 5 points.
• Method Madness - In this round, teams perform the task either simultaneously or one at a time. If the task is to be performed one team at a time, the trailing team will decide whether to go first or second. Whoever goes second will get shrunk by Drew and surrounded by a metal cage with a cat on guard to prevent them from seeing their opposing team in action. Teams will perform a task. The winning team gets 15 points. Another common form of 'shrinking' in Method Madness, is were they 'lose' your heads, through the use of CGI.
• Rat Race - This is a race to completing the game. Whoever wins, gets 30 points. Along the way, status accelerators are on offer with 20, 15, 10 and 5 points. Obstacles include wire traps, cargo nets, dark room (where the exit is on the ground), slide, ball pits, maze and Cheese Dump. Every episode has a major challenge where teams have to do a task such as filling a cylinder to the line, building a skeleton or operating a crane.

If there is a tie after What'll Happen If or the Rat Race, there is a tie breaker known as the Randomizer. Both teams are given a beaker of water along with two similar-looking containers of white powder. Only one would cause a chemical reaction when placed in the water. The team that wins the Rat Race gets to choose their powder first. Both teams pour their powder in the water and the one that has a chemical reaction wins. This tie breaker is completely based on chance.

Only one episode has two tie breakers happened when the scores were 15-15 and 65-65. In both Randomizers, the blue team won.

United Kingdom

In the UK, the series is screened on digital TV channel Kix!, which began airing the series shortly after CBBC began airing a similar UK-produced format, Richard Hammond's Blast Lab.

References