Presto is a character in the 1983 Marvel Productions Ltd., D&D Enterprises and TSR nonlinear animated series, Dungeons & Dragons. Presto is voice acted by Adam Rich.
Six children are magically transported to an alternate world called the Realm after boarding a rollercoaster in a Dungeons & Dragons themepark ride. On arrival a gnome called Dungeon Master presents them with magical weapons and promises to lead them home.
Brown haired, bespectacled and nervous, Presto is the only member of the group to be called exclusively by his nickname. This nickname almost certainly comes from his being an amateur magician in the real world, and this is hinted at in the first episode The Night of no Tommorrow, where Sheila complains about how they have always made fun of him when his magic tricks backfired.
Dungeon Master gives Presto a magic hat from which any object living or nonliving can be extracted. Presto can even pull large objects out of the hat, such as in the first episode where he extracts a cow. In addition the hat can be used to increase the strength of verbal spells. In AD&D terms it might be referred to as a Hat of Many Things, although its unpredictable nature might also make it a Hat of Wonder.
Presto's hat is by far the most powerful of all the children's items. Unfortunately, he can't control it. When Presto wishes for one thing out of the hat he often receives another, and this serves to chip away at his confidence to the point where the group have to conduct long arguments with him before he will be prepared to cast a spell.
The children's weapons function to either force the child to face their greatest fear, protect them from it, or to increase their existing physical abilities. In the episode Quest of the Skeleton Warrior we learn that Presto's greatest fear is not being in control. Presto's hat forces him to deal with this, and to practice improvising when things haven't worked out as he had planned. Often Presto ends up solving a situation completely by accident, though his self-confidence remains low due to the others' taunts.
Presto feels closest to Eric, and often sides with him in arguments. Since he has little control over what comes out of his hat, he shares the role of comic relief with Eric. He stutters with nearly every sentence and rarely displays any real confidence.
Presto's desire to be more in control leads him to apprentice himself to Merlin, and to desperately cast multiple spells, hoping to succeed with at least one, in the episode P-R-E-S-T-O Spells Disaster. In the episode The Last Illusion Presto falls in love with Varla - what in AD&D Spells and Powers terms is called a Wild Talent (able to cast spells freely without memorization, but each spell takes a physical toll). Unfortunately, this brief affair is not fully utilized in the development of his personality. In P-R-E-S-T-O Spells Disaster, Presto's self-confidence takes a huge beating when he not only teleports his comrades into disaster, but finds out that even Uni the unicorn can use his hat better than he can, flawlessly casting a spell that gets him out of danger during the episode. In Cave of the Fairy Dragons, a fairy dragon falls in love with Presto, but this doesn't amount to anything.
Presto does have some notable successes. In the episode Valley of the Unicorns he heals all the unicorns who have had their horns removed. In The Night of no Tommorrow he recasts a spell that killed Merlin when he tried to cast it a thousand years before. In The Dragon's Graveyard he renders Venger helpless by binding him to a rockface.
Overall Presto is hardly exploited as a character and his inner psyche insufficiently explored. Had this been done, the results might have been fascinating.