My favorite thing to do around christmas was to take the aluminum foil garland strands and place them on the CRT screen.

Static would hold them in place, and when people would go to manually turn on the TV they would suddenly become energized with thousands of volts of static electricity from the ray gun in the tube and leap out like an electric snake to zap the everloving snot out of the unfortunate bastard that turned the tv or monitor on.

Which was usually me, because I liked the challenge, but if you ever have that combo available with kids who didn't grow up around them and know any better, it would be a good prank.

Ah, I can feel it from just reading your comment! That’s a feeling I haven’t felt in a while!

How about the smell?

You gotta give it a few slaps too, when the image isn't very clear.

Pre-Gameboy, when I was a child, my grandfather had a television— the kind that was furniture. Sometimes it would eschew modern trappings like colour and v-sync, and I would employ my Classical Vaudevillian training to set it straight with a wallop.

I always had to rap my knuckle on the screen. It has that nice, thick hollow resonance

Good ol' percussive maintenance.

Put a magnet by the screen as well.