It’s Mario’s pal, Toad!
The second entry in the tribute to cookies series is that of the starman power-up from the Mario series of games. Touching these bouncing stars makes Mario temporarily invulnerable and able to kill pretty much any enemy that he runs into. Despite years of testing, power-up does not apply to cookie.
I found these two (full, mind you… full!) cans of Super Mario Bros. sodas in my basement a while back. These mini sodas from the early 90s and made by Shasta sure bring back some refreshing sodariffic memories. I also remember there being some kind of Yoshi apple and possibly Princess Peach something or other. If the Princess Peach soda wasn’t peach flavored then I don’t know what those soda guys were thinking. Either way, I remember the Mario one being the best, which is probably why I was left with a surplus of Luigi ones. Poor Luigi.
That reminds me: when did she become Princess Peach? I aways remember her being Princess Toadstool in the old video games and the animated shows. Was it a name change like Sega did with Dr. Robotnik/Eggman? Would Peach be techically “Princess Peach Toadstool”? That would certainly make sense, considering both Mario and Luigi have last names: Mario Mario and Luigi Mario.
This super obese Super Mario from the McDonalds Super Mario Bros Happy Meal was the first time that I had ever been able to have any kind of Mario or video game character in a toy form aside from an early 80s plush Donkey Kong I got from a Goodwill. Video games used to not be marketed the way that they are today. Looking back, it seemed that games were marketed as games and not as general products across the market. Not even Mario had a whole lot of product back then. Sure, Nintendo put out a ton of shirts (and always has) but there was no aisle dedicated to toys of game characters in Toys ‘R’ Us. There were no websites that you could go to and import stuff from Japan. Hell no. This was 1990! The internet was used to share scientific data back in those days and not to watch videos of monkeys throwing poop at each other or zombie kids saying how they like turtles. This was why I played with these toys long into the 90s until they started putting out actual figures of these characters (which I might do a Flashback feature over).
These came out in 1990 as part of a cross-promotion for the release of one of the greatest games of all time, “Super Mario Bros. 3” for the NES. Up first is our hero, Mario.
Mario eats a lot of fatty foods, I’d assume. Pizza, spaghetti, lasagna, calzones… the list goes on and on. It looks like our hero Mario has been pigging out a bit much on them, as he required a spring with a platform to launch himself! This picture is missing the spring, but I’m sure you can imagine what the mechanism would have looked like.
Luigi, on the other hand, doesn’t even have a body–it was sculpted into a cloud or something! This was a pull-back toy that went… fast… I guess. I don’t know. I never really played with Luigi. He looks a bit like a genie or something.
Now these were great. The Koopa Paratroopa (left) and Goomba (right) were common enemies that Mario needed to squash, so I think that I must have gone to McDonalds several times during their available weeks because I have 5 or so of each of them. Every time I clean the basement, I swear that I find another one of them.
The Koopa jumped when you squeezed on a pump that was attached to his shell and the Goomba did backflips when you pressed his head down to his feet and let the suction cup attach to the circle there. In all, not bad for a fast food toy.
I cleaned out my closet a few years ago and found this box of Super Mario Bros. 3 fruit snacks that date back to around 1990/1991. As bizarre as of a find as the box was, there was even an open package of fruit snacks inside of it!
The fruit snack pieces have shrunk over the years and turned into amorphous blobs, which is why I didn’t include any close-up shots of them here. Instead, here is the side panel of the box that shows the various pieces that were included:
There also was a “save the princess” game that ended in 1991 where, if you found a blue princess Toadstool fruit snack and mailed it in, you could earn an “I Saved the Princess” t-shirt. Or, you could just cheat and send in 4 UPCs. Remember the days when S&H was 75 cents?
I wonder how many people actually had blue princess pieces and ate them in the dark, in a big handful of fruit snacks, or were unaware of the promotion. Any candy contest where variations of the pieces are the winning determanants makes me wonder.
There isn’t a whole lot that I could say about this movie that hasn’t already been said perfectly by somebody else. The movie flopped like a fish on land, gasping for air, knowing its about to die but unable to think about anything else other than “am I going to be cooked with teriyaki glaze or lemon butter?”
Rather than talk about the movie, I’ll discuss the toys. For what they were, they were actually pretty decent. I actually remember them more fondly than the film. The likenesses were pretty good for how old they are, plus Mario and Luigi — aside from the lack of Luigi’s ‘stache — look like the game characters except that the colors are reversed. Below are the Mario and Luigi figures from the movie line next to newer figures that are true to the characters.
The movie unsuccessfully attempted to rationalize the nonsensical dream logic of the Mario world. Mario and Luigi came with flamethrower gun accessories that blasted fireballs attached to a stick so that the projectiles never left the weapons. Koopa also came with a similar “devo” gun like he had in the film. No–the gun didn’t play Devo–then it might actually be good. The filmmakers also justified Mario and Luigi’s super jumping ability with super jumping boots, but the figures lacked any kind of jump ability but you can see their hydraulic boots in the picture above.
The next entry to the “what were they thinking!?” file is the Goomba. Pictured above are the movie goomba (left) and a paragoomba (right). The only difference between paragoombas and regular goombas is the regular goomba lacks wings. This doesn’t matter. Neither of these guys look anything alike! Goombas are mindless henchmen, so why does that mean they should be big, burly, trenchcoat-clad goons? Goombas are supposed to be awful! Movie goomba has to be seven feet tall! This big green behemoth could pummel Mario just by yawning! Look at the guy cockeyed and you’d be paste on the wall! The only similarity is a big, wide mouth, and yet they managed to screw that up and take away the goomba’s trademark bottom jaw fangs!
For the record, I’d have given the movie goomba pants. Just saying. That’s something I just don’t need to see.
Next up is the big boss man himself, Koopa. There really isn’t a whole lot to say about this one. Why bother making the villain a full-blown turtle man when you can give him a crazy slicked-back series of tiny mohawks?
Growing up, I always knew Bowser, who is shown on the right, as Koopa. He was always referred to as Koopa in the TV show and I remember manuals and books calliing him Koopa. Then I started hearing the title “King Koopa,” so I figured that was just his titular name, like how kings are named. They’re never referred to by their last names, so why on earth would I think that “Koopa” was anything other than this character’s first name?
Then came all of this “Bowser” business and I was confused. Was his name Bowser now? Was this even the same character as King Koopa? It turns out that this character was technically named Bowser, King of the Koopas (the “Koopas” being a name for his various turtle-like underlings), so “King Koopa” was just a nickname for him being the king of the Koopa enemies. This name business became even more of a problem with Princess Peach. Today we know her simply as “Princess Peach” or simply “Peach” but when I was a kid, everyone and everything called her “Princess Toadstool.” I figured that Toadstool must be her last name because that would be a terrible name to give a girl. Then everyone started calling her “Princess Peach” in the late 90s and while I knew this was the same character as the Princess Toadstool that I grew up rescuing, it has baffled me why nobody brings up the Toadstool part of her name. Is she actually named Princess Peach Toadstool? That sounds about right to me.
The Peach nomenclature was an even worse problem in the Mario movie. To understand this issue, let’s have a brief Mario history lesson.
The NES launched with Mario’s first adventure as Super Mario, “Super Mario Bros.”, in 1985 in Japan and 1986 in the US. In this game, the princess was called “Toadstool” and the villain was “Koopa.”
The official Japanese sequel to “Super Mario Bros.” came out in 1986 in Japan under the title “Super Mario Bros. 2.” The US never saw this release until “Super Mario Bros. All-Stars” for the Super NES. Instead, we got a reworking of the game “Doki Doki Panic” with Mario characters added in place of the Middle Eastern-themed characters. The Japanese Mario 2 was identical to the first Mario, except that it added death mushrooms and had much more difficult levels. It also introduced Luigi as a slightly-different character than Mario by making him jump higher but slide more on the ground. Again, our Princess was “Toadstool” and our villain was “Koopa.”
The US saw our Mario 2 release in 1988. As this was not a “true” Mario game, it ended up having a different villain, “Wort,” and had no princess to save. Instead, Mario and pals were trying to escape another world.
1990 (1988 in Japan) saw the release of “Super Mario Bros. 3” with “Koopa” and “Toadstool” again. Super Mario Bros. came out that exact year with, again, “Toadstool” and, finally, “Bowser.”
Rewinding a year, 1989 saw the release of “Super Mario Land” for the Game Boy. In this game, Mario had to rescue a princess named Daisy from a villain named Tatanga. She was not the same princess as Toadstool, but a princess of another place called Sarasaland.
Not the same princess. Not the same villain. Not even the same world.
Yet, somehow, the Mario movie named princess Toadstool “Daisy.” Maybe the movie’s writers and producers were confused because she had never been referred to as “Peach” outside of Japan (where she had ALWAYS been known as “Peach”) until 1993’s “Yoshi’s Safari” (she continued to be referred to as “Princess Toadstool” in 1995’s “Super Mario RPG). However, Daisy had been, and never was implied to be, the princess of the Mushroom Kingdom! She was the princess of Sarasaland! Worst case scenario, she would be called “Princess Sarasaland” or even “Princess Game Boy.” Honestly, I just don’t think they cared about any relation to the source material, considering also that Yoshi looks like a baby velociraptor in the film! At least they didn’t make HIM evil. That would have been a nightmare. I can see it now… Mario crawling around in a kitchen a-la “Jurassic Park” avoiding an evil band of rampaging red, green, and yellow Yoshis, pissed off at their years of being used as a sacrafice and all-around horse by Mario and Luigi!
Next up are movie’ Koopa’s bumbling cousins, Iggy and Spike, who are roughly based on two characters from the Mario games. By the term “roughly based on,” I imply no connection to any specific character, as in the case of Mario in the movie being connected to the Mario in the games. Iggy is actually one of Bowser’s children in “Super Mario Bros. 3” and Spike is an enemy that hurls spiky balls. Neither of these two turtle-like Koopa enemies look or act anything like the characters in the movie. In fact, Spike is a generic term for an enemy type and not a specific individual Koopa underling. It baffles my mind why they would use the name of one of Koopa’s children from the game but not another, considering that Bowser had seven children and six of them were males! What, were Lemmy, Roy, Larry, Morton, or Ludwig all unacceptable names, or did they just go with “Spike” because it sounded more “punk” to fit the movie’s goth-punk-industrial late 80s dystopic atmosphere? Why were they Koopa’s cousins? Just because Koopa wouldn’t kill his own cousins? Then again, this is the very same Koopa that was terrorized by a tiny — gasp — Bob-Omb, it wouldn’t surprise me if he would keep these morons around.
This whole Koopa relations discussion brings me to a really interesting point. Bowser’s kids appeared in a few other (craptacular) Mario games in the early 90s and then went away for nearly 20 years until “New Super Mario Bros. Wii,” where they return as henchmen to Bowser and not his children. The “Koopa Kids” or “Koopalings” were never implied to be related to Peach. I always just assumed that Bowser had some kind of wife that was either dead (ouch) or had left him because of his obsession with Peach (logical). Perhaps that’s why after “Super Mario World” the Koopa Kids just disappeared–maybe Mrs. Koopa was sick of Bowser’s creepy Peach obsession and took full custody of the kids.
What is there to make of the Koopa Kids from the “Mario Party” games? Who are these guys? They look just like Bowser, Jr. but there are several of them, each with a unique color scheme like the NinjaTurtles! What is going on here?!
Also weird is the implication that Bowser is really named Morton, as one of the Koopa Kids is named “Morton Koopa, Jr.” If this is true, is Bowser REALLY named “Morton Bowser, King Koopa”? What a bizarre name. Unless, of course, the Koopa Kids were adopted children. Even then, where did they go from 1990 until 1999? If they aged out of being kids, why did they suddenly return AS KIDS in “Super Mario Bros. Wii”?
Bowser Jr. has taken over the “Bowser’s offspring” role in the modern Mario games. Did Bowser disown all of his “Koopa Kids” and “Koopalings” children? If so, that must have been a lot of paperwork. If Bowser apparently has a child named after himself in “Morton Koopa, Jr.”, what would this make the modern “Bowser Jr.?” They aren’t the same character, as they both appear as two different characters in “New Super Mario Bros. Wii”! Therefore, wouldn’t “Bowser Jr.” technically be named “Morton Koopa, the Second” like how Michael Jackson named two of his kids “Prince Michael”?
Additionally, Bowser Jr. calls Princess Peach his mother. Did Bowser convince Bowser Jr. that Peach was his mom so that it would encourage him to assist in his own personal obsession with capturing the princess? I’d certainly hope so, because it would blow my mind if what Bowser Jr. claimed was actually true. I’ve also heard that Bowser Jr. knows that Peach isn’t really his mom but would like her to play a maternal role in hise life. Why? She isn’t evil like him and his father are. We already know there are female Koopas (Wendy O. Koopa) so why doesn’t Bowser Jr. want an evil turtle mom? Is he THAT enamoured by Peach? That’s slipping into Norman Bates territory right there.
What would blow my mind even more is if Nintendo intended it to be this way, considering Nintendo’s history of cleaning sex and violence out of their NES and Super NES games. I’d think a little blood splatter in “Mortal Kombat” is way less disturbing to children than the horrifying revelation that Princess Peach somehow had a relationship with Bowser. Just typing that made me cringe a little bit. Yuck.
If that was somehow, disturbingly, true, it might explain why Peach seems to get kidnapped so much. You’d think that after Mario returned her in the very first Mario game that she would be okay. But no. That Mushroom Kingdom security is terrible as she just keeps getting kidnapped. If you look at “Super Mario Bros. 3,” the king of every world was somehow turned into an animal by Bowser, so its not just Peach’s castle that has horrible security. Every castle in the entire kingdom has such a lax security protocol in place that Bowser can just walk right on in with a bunch of worthless little fangy goombas and turn the king into a little animal. It usually takes a super powerful wizard to do something like that in video games and Bowser falls short on being a wizard.
Plus, its a little weird that all Mario gets for rescuing Peach anymore is a cake. Say that, hypothetically, I rescued a princess. I’d assume that her family would be so pleased that I’d get a huge cash reward. At the least I might get knighted or something. Mario has never been knighted! Poor guy. I bet they knight Toads all of the time. What a scam, Mario. What a scam.
The only other logical reason that I can come up with for why Bowser might want to kidnap Peach is to hold her at ransom. If this was a true scenario, I’m sure that we would have seen some sort of reference in one of the games by now where Bowser demands a massive sum of gold coins from the kingdom.
Perhaps Bowser wants power, clean and simple. That is often the sole demand of video game villains, but what power would Bowser have to gain from Peach? She’s not really that powerful. True, while she was the best character in “Super Mario Bros. 2” because of her gliding jump ability, she’s far from being powerful enough to kidnap for the sole purpose of gaining power. That’s more of a scenario that you’d see in a Zelda game (“A Link to the Past” comes to mind). In those scenarios, its always obvious.
Maybe its just because we need someone cute and generally helpless to rescue. I’ve read various interviews about the Mario franchise and the purposeful lack of a heavy plot like you’d find in a Zelda game because the game is what it is: dream logic and free-association that results in, simply, a fun game experience. Its been a rock-solid formula that’s worked well both commercially and gameplay-wise for over 25 years. Mario is more than just a character and icon: he’s one of the few survivors of a bygone era where games were what they were: simple fun that didn’t need to make sense. Those classic games didn’t need deep stories, cut scenes, explicit and boundary-pushing mature content — they were pick-up-and-play fun that people of all ages could enjoy.
That’s the only conclusion that I can realistically reach. Bower kidnaps Peach because he can and because there would be no game if he didn’t. It just sort of bothers me that, when a playable character, Peach is usually one of the more useful characters (“Super Mario Bros. 2,” “Super Paper Mario,” “Super Princess Peach,” and “Mario RPG” come to mind) and that, even with these abilities, she winds up being captured. Maybe Bowser is just trying to do the whole “if you can’t catch Spider-Man than catch his girlfriend” scenario. It was actually refreshing to see the stereotype turned upside down with Peach having to become the hero and rescue Mario in “Super Princess Peach.” That’s exactly the kind of thing that I’d expect to happen. Bowser should come after Mario because Mario is, for the most part, his only enemy. I think that he enjoys watching Mario attempt to stop him and overcome his various obstacles and underlings. The only evidence that I have to this is that, when faced with a common enemy, the two become begrudging allies (“Super Paper Mario,” “Mario RPG,” and “Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story” come to mind). If these two can become a team without literally trying to kill each other every 10 seconds, even after 25 years of rivalry and Mario’s neverending success streak, then Bowser certainly isn’t some kind of psychopathic megalomaniac set out for wold domination. Then again, he did act pretty psycho at the end of “Super Mario Galaxy,” so who knows. Maybe this is all a big non-existent split timeline like how there are multiple Links in the Zelda universe. Who knows.
Originally posted 25 August 2010.