Over the past couple of years, it has been rerun on the retro channel, and I am loving every minute of it.
It has kitsch appeal, no question, but it also shows a real and sizeable middle glob of New Zealand, the sort of people who rarely get on TV, the ones who confound the clever-dick analysts on election night wondering incredulously why New Zealanders have voted the way they have: had they watched It's in the Bag while growing up, like Muldoon did, they would know.
It's in the Bag started in the 1950s on radio with the irrepressible Selwyn Toogood.
It was a howling success, but when television came along, the chiefs were adamant it would never transfer successfully to the small box.
Maybe they thought Selwyn wouldn't transfer successfully.
After all, when he was finally given a run, he proved to be a classic bumbler, mixing up his cards, forgetting the contestants' names, and always choosing the wrong camera moment to pull out a voluminous white silk handkerchief to wipe down his perspiring face.
But he was such a great performer, fearlessly booming out to a different New Zealand small town every Saturday night, larger than life, the funniest fat man New Zealand had seen until David Lange.
The numbered bag prizes were offered against cash after the contestant had answered three often ridiculously simple questions.
Some of the bag prizes were boobies, so the audience, who clapped like they had to - to stay alive - were kept in a high state of tension.
There's a 1974 Dunedin show on Google where local arts luminary Les Cleveland, then a dashing young blade, wins a tumble clothes dryer.
In the same show, Olwyn has no idea what narcotic is found in a poppy and Selwyn tells her she is lucky she is not a junkie, and a woman computer programmer - in 1974! - is so smart with her three questions the screen crackles.
She wins a vegetable peeler.
They generally don't have smart people on It's in the Bag.
I am sure university students were weeded out in the elimination rounds.
TVNZ6 is currently showing shows from the late 1980s, the John Hawkesby era, and as simple as Selwyn's questions once seemed, Hawkesby has many that are even simpler.
Where was the Boston Tea Party held?, What does a rev' counter count?.
One night in Queenstown someone got two of the three questions wrong and still went for a bag.
It helps if you look hapless.
A man with a bewildered face said Coruba was the main ingredient in rum and was waved through, a woman said The English Channel joined England and Wales, and then when given another shot, said Scotland.
Twice.
Somebody in Invercargill in 1989 couldn't complete A Stitch In Time Saves ... - "We'll come back to that one", said Hawkesby.
So he did after she got another one wrong.
The well was still dry, even with rhyming clues.
Super Bag is the big one, though viewers in 2011 might crinkle their nose at a prize which, when won, induces shrieking and hysteria when it is only linen, curtains and a flash sewing machine.
Goods to the value of $4500, roars Hawkesby, and three people in the audience promptly faint.
Mind you, this was a time when a VCR was $850 and a 26-inch telly was two and a-half grand.
Back then, they didn't know how lucky they weren't.
On a show in Temuka in 1988, Max earns the right to go for the world trip at the end.
Ten questions.
He gets the first four wrong.
"You people at home are saying, I got all those," says Hawkesby.
"But let me tell you, when you are up here, your brain turns to Swiss cheese."
Precisely.
• Roy Colbert is a Dunedin writer.
