The stick toss ( with only 2 ) was in the 1983 version as well, but the 3rd stick was added to 1984 and lasted twice as long, hoping that people would notice it. Too bad it didn't make the video.
I think Tony made up 3 stick toss, he was always great at that kind of stuff.
We started out with 3 white sticks but about half way through the season a judge suggested that we make it interesting with a different color and we picked yellow.
We had concerns that any drop of the white stick would doom one of us to play the rest of the show with one yellow and one white, but at Finals when David dropped, it was the yellow stick that flew.