Top Kids/Trivia

Trivia about Top Kids includes:

Executive Meddling: According to a YouTube user who got in touch with Ross Harris, the film was originally sponsored by Mercedes in celebration of its centenary (and the centenary of the automobile for that matter). Niki was supposed to be the guide in the computer car, but the video game and hacking elements were shoehorned in later when Disney bankrolled the film so they can air it as an "after-school special" on the then-nascent Disney Channel, leading to some glaring plot holes.
Fake Nationality: Austrian Mercédès Jellinek is portrayed by French actress Joëlle Miquel. Averted with her father Emil who was played by fellow Austrian Werner Kreindl.
Keep Circulating the Tapes: Outside of unofficial reprints on DVD and uploads on YouTube, the film is out of circulation, and it's doubtful that Disney would even care at all.
What Could Have Been: Mercedes-Benz originally commissioned the film in celebration of their centenary under the title Centurion Odyssey, with the late Michael Pfleghar as the director and a soundtrack album released to tie in with the film. Disney later took up Odyssey to be aired on their newly-minted cable channel as an "after-school special" under the name Top Kids, inserting new sequences such as the subplot of three kids hacking an arcade machine to tap into Eric's computer car.
- The liner notes to said soundtrack album contain the following passage, hinting at a vastly more different plot than just a cheesy edutainment movie:

During the unveiling of the car of the century, a phenomenon occurs which catapults its designer, Sam, and his young son Eric, through the gap in the space-time continuum into the fourth dimension where Sam, the "living" computer that controls the super automobile, forces them to take a perilous time trip to find its roots and the effect the machine has had on mankind in the 100 years since its invention - while the gap back to 1986 gradually closes off, the two humans and the machine engage in a series of exotic adventures and resolve the conflict of who is the master: man or the machine?

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