Before They Were Stars: Tobey Maguire in an Atari Lynx Commercial

Awhile back, I did a “Before They Were Stars” on Tobey Maguire’s early role as an extra in The Wizard, a.k.a. the Nintendo commercial masquerading as a feature film. I wonder what Nintendo would have thought about him doing Atari commercials on the side. In this ad, Tobey plays a schoolkid who asks his teacher for permission to go to the bathroom, but only uses this as an excuse to secretly play with his Atari Lynx inside the stall. The Atari Lynx came out onto the market around the same time as the Nintendo Game Boy and has the distinction of being the first handheld game console with a colour LCD. So why did the monochromatic Game Boy become a huge success while the Lynx faded into obscurity? Maybe the fact that it’s the size of Tobey Maguire’s head had something to do with it!

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