Product placement is part and parcel of the Hollywood experience, with brands and companies falling over themselves to try and ensure that the widest possible audience finds their wares being promoted and shilled. However, there are few more egregious examples to have ever existed than 1989’s The Wizard, which is almost galling in its blatant sales pitch.
The family-friendly comedic caper finds Fred Savage’s youngster breaking his little brother out of psychiatric facility, where they head off on the lam to California. Along the way, they meet Jenny Lewis’ Haley, before discovering that escapee Jimmy is a video game savant. Naturally, that leads them to decide entering the Video Armageddon tournament and winning the $50,000 top prize is the correct way to handle their newfound fugitive status.
As frothy as it gets, The Wizard was widely panned by critics and blasted by the general public for one clear and obvious offense; it’s basically a 100-minute commercial for Nintendo and Universal Studios – particularly the Power Glove and Super Mario Bros. 3. It was about as cynical as it gets, but even though the film is indisputably terrible, it’s threatening to become a certifiable cult favorite.
Nostalgia-happy Redditors are torn on the matter, with the comments and replies on a recent thread split somewhere between savaging The Wizard for sucking so hard, or ironically embracing it for being so outright terrible that it’s kind of endearing. It’s entirely down to personal preference, but even Will Smith’s cringeworthy Converse moment from I, Robot can’t hold a candle to the salesmanship on display here.
