The latest episode of the Video Game History Hour (the Video Game History Foundation's podcast) has just been released, and it's a good one, featuring an interview with the "marketing mastermind" Gail Tilden (who you may also know as the founding editor of Nintendo Power).
The interview was originally recorded in front of an audience at the Long Island Retro Gaming Expo back in August 2024, and is described by the VGHF as a "fireside chat".
It covers a lot of fascinating Nintendo history, from the Nintendo of America's abandoned attempt to market the Famicom in the US as the Nintendo Advanced Video System (AVS) to the origins of the Nintendo Seal of Approval, and Tilden's thoughts on Earthbound's Nintendo's disastrous Western advertising campaign.
For us, though — being huge Zelda fans — one of the standout stories that we found the most interesting and hilarious was Tilden's memories of witnessing the filming of Zelda's first North American TV commercial. This is the commercial that bafflingly saw the standup comedian John Kassir (the voice of the Cryptkeeper from Tales from the Crypt) in a dark, prison cell-style room screaming out the name of a bunch of Zelda-themed enemies in between game footage, with a bunch of bonkers editing thrown in for good measure).
The ad in question has often appeared on lists of the most bizarre Nintendo commercials, usually accompanied by questions about what Nintendo of America was thinking at the time. And it appears, Nintendo of America wasn't all that fond of it either, judging by Tilden's comments, with the marketing person laying the blame on an agency it was working with.
Speaking to the Video Game History Foundation's Frank Cifaldi, Tilden said,
"We did a TV commercial that’s kind of crazy. So if you get a chance to look at it, it’s the first Zelda commercial, and it’s a crazy comedian in a padded cell."
"He’s screaming. He says, Ahh, peahats! And so at the time, since I was still working in the advertising department, I think at that time, maybe– again, we were once again, only with three or four people. And when the agency pitched that there would be a stand-up comedian doing something about all the fun things in this game we all said yes.
"So then I go to this shoot in Los Angeles, and it’s this crazy guy in a padded cell, and I’m like, This, I can’t go through this, because this is not what we agreed to. This is not what we were expecting. We thought a guy standing at a mic in a spotlight. And so we called the agency, we called back and to the executives, and they said to go ahead, maybe because we were there already, but very quickly after that, we did another Zelda commercial, so you’ll have to look at the two knowing in that order and what happened, and that one is called, is called Zelda Rap, and I really don’t think that probably neither of them is very appealing."
If you want to listen to the full episode (which we highly recommend you do!), you can find it here.