In 1990, children across the U.S. flocked to Nintendo Powerfest events to show their appreciation for the company and its products. Nintendo repaid them by making them dance to the Nintendo Fruit Snacks "rap." Those with sensitive stomachs may want to look away.

The video above features Kotaku reader Robert Leonard and his brother RickyLee. Robert bravely offered up this recently-discovered dance number, the result of a bizarre marketing campaign for Nintendo-branded fruit snacks. Children attending the Nintendo Powerfest event were given the opportunity to make a music video of them dancing to the world's most hideous commercial music.

"Dance, dance, dance to the beat. Move my body in my seat. Party all day and night. Make it loose. Keep it tight."

No wonder these poor children were so confused. And then this happens:

"Do your dance, dancing machine. Don't be dirty, keep it clean."

Was being dirty an issue for these children? Robert, what did you do? WHAT DID YOU DO!?


I keep trying to convince myself this isn't some sort of nightmare. Fruit snacks are healthy-ish, right? Robert and RickyLee are really tearing it up, so much so that the cameraman goes completely batshit insane around the 1:50 mark, unable to hold it in any longer.

Were this an isolated incident, perhaps I could turn a blind eye. What's a little childhood trauma between friends? It's not like the video would be showing up on a major video game website 23 years later or anything.

But Robert and RickyLee are not alone. This poor girl is with them:

There is no such thing as safety in numbers:

By far the darkest example, this poor lad was but a prop in nightmare-mode Mario and Luigi's constant passive-aggressive battle for supremacy.

How does a child survive this sort of thing? Who comes through the Nintendo Fruit Snacks rap unscathed?

Roberts take on the situation reflects the goofy grins of the youngsters in the videos, blissfully aware that they were being recruited into a marketing onslaught for a product that tasted just like every other fruit snack on the market at the time.

"Upon finding this video, I see there's other people that posted their own online. This is a video game nerds dream! Looking at these videos, I can see a segment of a generation of people that literally 'grew up' Nintendo."

I see night-after-night of bolting upright from sleep, soaked in sweat, waiting for the nightmares to go away. "Real Fruit Snacks!"