The Magic Garden was not syndicated nationally and many on this forum may not be familiar with it. It was locally produced for WPIX-TV, Channel 11, New York, an independent station without a network affiliation. However, WPIX in the 1980's became a "superstation" and was added to a number of cable lineups. As a result, many people outside of New York (like myself) became familiar with The Magic Garden.
There may have been more than one scene involving tickling--I certainly have not seen all the episodes--but here is one:
In most episodes, Paula and Carole would listen for the giggles of the "chuckle" patch, a flowerbed that would giggle collectively when it had produced riddles for Paula and Carole to read aloud to the viewers at home. The jokes were usually quite bad.
Well, in this particular episode, Carole said offhand, "I wonder what would happen if you tickled a chuckle." "I bet I know" was Paula's reply. Paula then attempted to explain what tickling was to the children at home who might never have been tickled. It was something along the lines of "If you have never been tickled, it's a feeling unlike any other."
Carole added that her brother used to tickle her feet when she was a girl and "it was just...just...hard to describe." The tickling discussion was brief and nonspecific and ultimately Carole reached into the chuckle patch and tickled the stem of one of the chuckles with her forefinger.
The chuckles responded with their normal giggles, which I presume was just a stock sound effect, and didn't sound any different to me, but Carole and Paula seemed to react as though these giggles were especially enthusiastic. "The whole patch seemed to enjoy that as much as the chuckle did," referring to the fact that Carole had only tickled one of them but the whole patch had giggled.
Carole and Paula discovered that the chuckle patch had, as usual, disgorged several riddles, which seemed to me to be just as bad as the riddles they produced every week, but Paula and Carole seemed to like them. Paula remarked that "these jokes are better than usual." "Yes," Carole agreed, "I'm going to have to tickle you more often."
I don't know that she ever did, however. What struck me the most about this scene, on a children's program, was the clear message that tickling and being tickled was a fun activity. Most children's programs tend to show tickling as highly unpleasant, a useful tool of interrogators to extract information. The chuckle was said to "enjoy" the experience and neither Paula nor Carole reflected upon being tickled with anything but fondness.
Obviously, considering that this was a kids' show, there were no erotic undertones to the discussion or to the activity. That being said, even as a boy, it seemed to me that being rooted to the spot like a chuckle plant and allowing Carole's fingers to roam over me probably would not be torture at all. Carole Dumas, in particular, was strikingly pretty.
Because The Magic Garden was in-house programming for one specific television station, no exhaustive DVD collection has ever been made. However, Paula and Carole have released a collection of their ten favorite episodes. I have no idea whether that includes this scene.
Hope this helps.