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Jade's Rambles: The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!
#1
It was the late '80s and Nintendo had well established a foothold in the video gaming market. One of their biggest runaway hits was Super Mario Bros, which took the gaming world by storm and is often credited with revitalizing a waning market in the industry. Naturally, merchandising was everywhere, and of course, an animated series would arrive as well in 1989, produced by DiC.

The Super Mario Bros. Super Show was one of many featuring the Mario Bros. series. While it was not the first (earlier animated series includes Saturday Morning Supercade, which featured Donkey Kong and Mario, as well as the Japanese OAV, The Great Mission to Save Princess Peach), it is the first animated series based on a video game that many of us that grew up in the American 80s remember. The Super Show was split into two parts; the first was actually a live action skit of Mario and Luigi running their plumbing business in Brooklyn, while the second part was an animated short about their adventures in the Mushroom Kingdom alongside Princess Peach and Toad, and their battles against Bowser. The first half of the  live action segment would end on a cliffhanger, followed by the animated portion, then the resolution of the live action part. In this series, Mario would be played by WWE's Captain Lou Albano in both segments, and Danny Wells as Luigi (sadly neither of them are with us today). The rest of the voice cast for the main characters is listed below:

Mario: "Captain" Lou Albano
Luigi: Danny Wells
Peach: Jeannie Elias
Toad: John Stocker
Bowser: Harvey Atkin

As I said, the live action portions focus on Mario and Luigi running their plumbing business in Brooklyn, and various comical slapstick that ensues. This often involves a lot of celebrity guest stars showing up as well. The animated portions are more based on the games, particularly Super Mario Bros. 1 and 2; Bowser is the main antagonist, but some of his minions include enemies from SMB2. Plus, Peach and Toad join Mario and Luigi in their adventures, and not necessarily in the "Damsel in Distress" role, either.

Anyway, without further ado, here is the first episode:


It might seem campy and ridiculous now, but for us as kids back in the late 80s, this was pretty awesome.

- While the Mario Bros. have always had some Italian inspiration, this series REALLY steamrolled their apparent obsession with pasta and other Italian foods into the ground. I would suggest a drinking game where you take a shot every time one of the Bros. makes a reference to it, but you'd probably be black-out drunk within ten minutes...
- "UH-OH" Count: 1
- Into the animated segment, a visually-impaired Birdo mistakes Toad for her baby and runs off with him; the others have to get him back.
- By the way, I call her Peach out of habit now, but this was the time when she was called "Toadstool" in North America (she was always Peach in Japan, but she didn't get called that here until Yoshi's Safari for the SNES in the mid 90s). Also, she's a red-head in the animated series (all of them; this one, SMB3, and SMW), even though the games eventually settled on her as a blonde by SMW.
- On a similar note, Bowser is almost always referred to as King Koopa. Actually, this one is faithful to the Japanese series, where he is known as Koopa almost exclusively.
- Also, in the games, Luigi has become known to have a more cowardly persona in comparison to his brother; I think this is where that might have originated and eventually became canon.
- I almost forgot Mario and Luigi's idiotic patty-cake dance. Sadly, this is far from the last time they do it...
- By the way, the show originally aired Monday-Friday afternoons. On Friday, however, the animated segment would instead be Legend of Zelda cartoon. I'm going to talk more about that one on a later post.

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#2


- Many of the animated shorts in this series seem to base themselves heavily off other famous stories in pop culture. This one is clearly based on the King Arthur story, with its barely altered names and all...
- Something else worth mentioning; this series often had montages that featured covers of popular songs from this time. I believe where Mario says "I'm Bad!" was where there was supposed to be a cover of Micheal Jackson's "Bad", but later broadcasts and home video releases of the show replaced these with much more generic songs due to copyright concerns.

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#3


- Cap'n Lou brought in some of his WWE buddies to guest star; Sergeant Slaughter appearing in this one.
- The first appearance of Mouser in the series. He's a bit of a recurring minion of Bowser's; much moreso than he was in the games (never making it past SMB2 anyway...)
- And he's not too bright either...

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#4
Loved this show. Even the live action goofy stuff. It's amazing how investing the plots are and how they were able to stay somewhat faithful to the source material and put out so many different episodes.

One of my favorites was Mario vs Koopzilla.
No Man's Sky is awesome...and disappointing...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvAwB7ogkik
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#5


Damn I wanted to do more so much sooner!! This is so overdue... Two years since I touched this? Yeah I really need to get back to this.

- Heat stroke does that to ya...
- Especially with a tactical trampoline...
- Wow... Harem recycler? That didn't take long...
- Rubbed out the wrong way... Sounds like a personal problem...
- Naturally, Bowser wants to "buy" Peach...
- Worst. Genie. Ever... Shantae you're absolutely not...
- Luigi speaks Pigeot?? Since when???
-... is that Albano and Wells in drag???  Straight-Face

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#6



- The 'Bros' are too busy gambling to save Peach, so I guess it's up to Toad to go all the way...
- Or not... And then the Bros get found out too...
- OK so now Mark Twain is part of the SWB universe...
- Black-Pit Bob-Ombs?? Okay, those things DO have some firepower...
- And then the obligatory voo-doo lady in these kinda things also...
- As for the live-action segment, it goes for a Frankenstein parody... And it goes for the Young Frankenstein deal where Mario's brain is switched with the creature...

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