In each episode of Wish List Games, hosted by Nick Cannon and Lele Pons, three members of the studio audience get to play a game to win part or all of the items they’ve put on their Amazon wish list. The lists themselves are generic — a single dad wants “bunk beds” and a “fire pit”, for instance, to set up his new house for his kids — but the value of the lists are all around $25,000. In the final game, a contestant plays for the rest of the audience; if they get a timeline of books or movies or something else right, everyone in the audience wins an Amazon-branded prize.
Opening Shot: On a bright game show set, host Nick Cannon says, “I’m your king of wishes, Nick Cannon, and this is Wish List Games!”
The Gist: The games on Wish List Games are quick and a little silly — anyone who saw Beat The Clock back in the day will get a familiar feeling from these games — and they’re rotated through the episodes. One is a Jenga-style game with giant Amazon-tape-adorned boxes for pieces, another is a shuffleboard-style game. There’s a Concentration-style memory game, and a Simon-style pattern game with giant lit-up gift boxes. In another game, people flip giant coins into a fountain; if a coin gets in the lower tiers, some of the wish list items are won, but if one goes in the top, the contestant “clears” their list and wins everything.
The final game, which is called “Wish Came First,” is where one contestant puts books, movies, etc. in chronological order in order for everyone in the audience to win a prize. In one episode we saw, it was a Fire TV; in another, it was a top-of-the-line Kindle. There is a smaller prize everyone gets if the contestant gets the order wrong.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Like we mentioned above, the show has a similar feel to Beat The Clock, with copious Amazon product placement added in.
Our Take: Wish List Games goes in the opposite direction of game shows we’ve seen on Prime Video and elsewhere of late, which stretch a half-hour format into an hour. Each 25-minute episode of Wish List Games is fast-paced, and the games that the contestants play give them a pretty good chance of at least winning a good portion of their wish lists, if not their entire lists. In other words, Amazon isn’t there to restrain the budget in the show’s five-episode first season; they want people to win, and give them every chance to do so.
Because of the fast pace, we got into each game, even though we knew that we were being subjected to some eye-rolling Amazon product placement in the process. The games are mostly timed (generously timed, by the way… another way Amazon encourages wins) and presented in a way that doesn’t give the contestant time to ponder and pontificate, like we see in other shows. There’s no time to give a dramatic pause to see a result. In a lot of ways, it feels like an old-school game show, more Price Is Right than The Floor.
The episodes do take a little bit of time to get to know the contestants, like that single dad whose list is mostly for his kids, or a chef that set up her list to open a “tiny house diner.” Cannon does a good job riffing on these lists and asking contestants funny questions about the items on them. In one case, a contestant wants a ring for his girlfriend, and Pons interviews the soon-to-be fiancée and her mom (!) about the surprise of the ring being on his list.
It seems that the prizes in the final game, the ones that every member of the audience gets, are a little undervalued until you realize two things: The same audience is present for all five episodes, and even the contestants who won their wish lists still get to take home the audience prizes. It ends up being a pretty good haul for what looks to be about 150 lucky people, all things considered.
Sex and Skin: None. This is a show for all ages.
Parting Shot: The wish list contestants talk backstage about how much of a thrill — to some, a life-changing thrill — winning their wish list items are.
Sleeper Star: Lele Pons generally sits or stands with the audience, and does a nice job of keeping everyone hyped up.
Most Pilot-y Line: We have to be honest; we never used Amazon’s wish list feature for anything other than a baby registry. Maybe we should go on and put a “Tiny house/diner” on our lists.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Yes, Wish List Games is basically an Amazon infomercial. But it’s a fun one, with game hosts in Cannon and Pons and contestants that put some interesting things on their wish lists.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.