When I was kid, on a road trip with my family, we stopped in Vacaville, California. And there, drawing us off the freeway with a wooden glow, was a brand new roadside attraction: Wooz. The pitch? It was a maze. A big maze.

Wooz stood for “Wild Original Object with Zoom” (!), opened in 1988, and was built by Sun Creative Systems from Nagoya, Japan. You would pay $7 and try to walk through a giant maze as quickly as possible, getting four stamps along the way to prove your progress.

You might say Wooz was ahead of its time, in a world where seasonal corn mazes are a now normal, expected thing. (Trivia: the first corn maze appeared in 1989, one year after Wooz’s opening!)

I remember it being extremely hot, and I remember a lot of kids cheating by crawling under the walls, and I also remember that you couldn’t run, which was super annoying, but absolutely American-lawyer-driven.

But above all else, I remember the mascot character drawings being really unique and interesting — not like anything I had ever really seen. A critical tantalizing pre-internet kid window to a Japanese culture that was right on the brink of becoming mainstream in America.

My folks got me a t-shirt!!

Why am I bringing any of this up? Uhh good question.

I recently came across a TV clip on YouTube of an episode of “That’s Incredible”, featuring Apple co-founder Stephen “Woz” Wozniak racing at Wooz! I was delighted by this, so I edited it down to Just Woz®, to maybe delight you.

Enjoy!

(Is it me, or can you clearly hear Woz say “finish!” when he saw the finish sign/door?! So why did he turn around!?)

Ultimately, Wooz did not make a dent in the universe. Woz did! But now you know that it at least existed. And I can only imagine how excited the television producer must have been when they shouted “we gotta getta Woz in a Wooz!”

Oh, after closing in 1992, but before becoming a car dealership in 2000, the Vacaville Fire Department burned Wooz to the ground. Training exercise, or just a fun time?

If anyone wants to make bootleg Wooda shirts let me know.

Best,
Cabel