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The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! (1989) |
Category: Super Mario |
First episode title: The Bird! The Bird!
How familiar with the show am I?: I've played plenty of Mario games, and, even though I haven't seen most of this show, I happen to have seen this specific episode before.
After we last saw Mario as the protagonist of Donkey Kong in Saturday Supercade, he has become much more of a star. Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros. 2 (US version, long story) are two of the best selling games on the Nintendo Entertainment System, and it's time for Mario and the other titular brother Luigi to get their very own cartoon. Technically it's a live-action show with a cartoon segment, but the latter is essentially its own show and is all that we care about here - some episodes instead had an animated segment based on The Legend of Zelda, which I will cover separately in a future Debutniverse entry.
If you've played any Mario games, you probably know the central cast here, but this cartoon's incarnations all have varying levels of differences from how the characters would go on to be portrayed in later games.
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Mario is a brave plumber from Brooklyn (who here has the voice to match) who has arrived in the Mushroom Kingdom after being sucked down a drain. He is short and wears red. His outfit here is reversed from what you might expect nowadays: blue shirt and red dungarees instead of vice versa. That's especially notable to us, because it was the familiar way round in Saturday Supercade.
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Luigi is Mario's cowardly brother. He is tall and wears green (with the same colour reversal as Mario).
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Princess Toadstool (as was the contemporary English name of the character you may know as Peach) is the caring ruler of the Mushroom Kingdom. Oh, and she's a redhead instead of blonde here, just like in the games of the time.
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Toad is a little mushroom man and friend of the Princess. Despite being a Mushroom Kingdom native, he has just as strong of a Brooklyn accent as the brothers! In this particular episode he also has a colour reversal going on, in that his mushroom cap is red with white spots instead of white with red spots. Rather than this being a character design choice, though, it does seem to be a mistake - it's only the case in this one episode, and the opening sequence uses the correct colours.
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King Koopa (for some reason keeping his Japanese name here instead of using his established English name of Bowser) is the villain of the show, a big monstrous green turtle. In some ways he displaces Wart, the actual villain from Super Mario Bros. 2, by using enemies from that game as his minions in this show.
The opening sequence uses the main overground theme from Super Mario Bros. but with a rap song over it. It's definitely 1989. The show also uses music and sound effects adapted from both existing Super Mario Bros. games throughout.
As the episode begins, the main party of four are travelling across a land of ice, Toad pulling the Princess in a sled, as narration from Mario (for this scene only) sums up where we stand - the brothers have rescued Princess Toadstool from King Koopa and are searching for some magic that will save the Mushroom Kingdom and also return the Mario brothers to Brooklyn. All that with the same magic, eh?
Just then, a flying creature wearing glasses comes along, crashing into rocks as it goes, establishing its bad eyesight. This creature is meant to be a Birdo, a boss enemy from Super Mario Bros. 2 who looks like a pink dinosaur wearing a bow and shoots eggs out of her tube-shaped mouth. Notably, despite her name, the game's Birdo does not look like a bird and cannot fly, so there seems to have been some miscommunication resulting in her role in this episode - the animators have been forced to add bat-like wing flaps under her arms to make her flight make sense, and the episode's script will continue to act as if she actually is a bird, as we'll see later. This could all be related to the fact that the credits roll of Super Mario Bros. 2, which displays all the enemies with their names, infamously switches the names of Birdo and Ostro (who is a bird) by mistake.
The heroes haven't noticed the Birdo, though, so the first they know of her is when she suddenly swoops down and picks up Toad in her hind legs, flying away with him while crying "Cheepy! Little Cheepy!" Toad starts yelling for help, and the Princess, having got out of the sled, points out that the Birdo took Toad to the top of the highest mountain in a nearby range. The Princess begs Mario to save Toad, saying that Toad has saved her life a hundred times before so they have to do this for him. Toad hadn't been dressed for the cold at all, by the way, and the other three vary on how much they've adapted their usual outfits - the Princess has a cloak on over her dress, Mario is wearing a scarf, whereas Luigi's only addition to his costume is a pair of earmuffs!
Mario says he'll get to the top of the mountain faster than you can say "spaghetti and meatballs", because he is a stereotypical Italian-American, and Luigi establishes his cowardice by claiming to be allergic to mountains, until Mario makes him even more scared by warning him he'll get eaten by polar bears if he just stands there, and he rushes to join the others.
The Birdo and Toad reach the peak, where there is a weird open house that looks as though someone has taken a complete house and then ripped most of it off. It even has a staircase that just leads up to nowhere. Why this is a logical place for the Birdo to live I don't know - maybe the idea is that she's so clumsy due to her eyesight that she keeps causing accidents in the house? It would take quite the accident to remove the upper floor and roof, though!
The Birdo drops Toad into a playpen and then starts giving him big slobbery kisses, still calling him Cheepy and referring to herself as Mommy. Apparently Toad hadn't cottoned on to the fact that the Birdo had mistaken him for her child, as he has that realisation now, but when he insists it's not true she takes it as a joke. Does the real Cheepy usually joke like that, then?
The phone starts ringing, even though the receiver is placed on it upside down. Wait, are there going to be people reading this who aren't even familiar with old-fashioned analogue phones with wired receivers? The important thing here is, if the receiver isn't correctly placed on the phone, it should be impossible to make a call to it - you lift the receiver in order to answer the phone or dial a number yourself. So this little additional attempt to show how clumsy this Birdo is actually makes the scene impossible. Then again, I don't know how a landline would be connected in a house like this anyway, and this is the magical world of the Mario games which have plenty of equally logic-breaking setups in their levels, so maybe I am overthinking things.
Once the Birdo answers it, she says it's from the "Missing Bird Bureau", and she tells them they can stop searching for Cheepy now because she's found him. It would be pretty horrifying to actually be this Birdo's child if you think about it. We also see that she has a milk carton with Cheepy's face and the phrase "Have U Seen This Bird?", the idea of missing children's pictures being put on milk cartons being quite an old practice that probably survived much longer in cartoons than in real life. Cheepy looks just as un-bird-like as his mother, being a small Birdo, but it's still impossible for the animators to escape the assertion that Birdos are birds.
The Birdo says that the picture was a bad likeness anyway, as if she can at all tell, and then Toad manages to escape the playpen - not that that's much use, because he's still trapped up on the mountain. The Birdo starts chasing him around, wanting to give her Cheepy a hug.
Mario, Luigi, and Princess Toadstool, meanwhile, are walking up through the snowy mountains, when the earth quakes and the ground opens up in front of them. It was apparently the shortest earthquake ever but it still managed to open up a hole that big. The Princess and Luigi worry that they'll never be able to save Toad now, but Mario tells them that the "plumbers' motto" is "when the pipe is plugged, keep plunging". It's a good thing that didn't become a recurring catchphrase of his. Mario does a Scrappy-Doo and shouts "Pasta power!", then takes a run-up and jumps all the way over the gap! Jumping is what he does, you know. The Princess is inspired and copies what Mario did, but Luigi is still nervous - he jumps but only just makes it, and the Princess has to grab him to stop him from falling backwards into the pit.
The heroes don't know that they're being watched through binoculars by a pair of Flurries, two snowman-like creatures here wearing skis, although they could be mistaken for cartoon ghosts rather than snowmen. One of them refers to the brothers as "those two faucet freaks". Just an insult for plumbers, or a fetish I've never heard of? They go off to tell King Koopa, who currently occupies a castle made of ice, to the point where he's even sitting on an ice throne. I believe that Koopa theming himself to the episode's setting is a recurring thing throughout this show and its sequels that is only taken to more inexplicable extremes as time goes on - here it's only his castle, but in other episodes it extends to his outfit and the name he's going by.
King Koopa tells the Flurries that they finally did something right, and one of them really starts sucking up to Bowser in response, leading to this:
King Koopa: Watch it, soldier. When I want my feet licked I'll ask for it. ...I want my feet licked.
And the pair just start slurping on his feet as Koopa continues to speak. Okay then. Koopa gets out a radio and starts his communication "Attention, Koopa Troopas!", but this term isn't being used like in the games: rather than referring to a specific species of enemy, he's referring to his soldiers in general as Koopa Troopas. In this case, the communication is being received by a squadron of Albatosses, red bird enemies. Yes, there are actual bird enemies from the games in this episode!
In the Birdo's house, she is now feeding Toad milk (from a bottle, thankfully) and singing him a lullaby, but he shoves the bottle out of his mouth and again starts insisting that he's not Cheepy. Here's the most egregious consequence of the whole "bird" mixup, where Toad says "Look! No wings, no feathers!" despite there not being any sign of feathers on the Birdos. Toad asserts that, rather than a bird, he is a mushroom. Toad has always been some kind of mushroomy person, but keep that wording in mind for later in the episode. Then a clock pops out a weird human head that just says "cuckoo, cuckoo" - I guess it makes sense for a "bird" to use a human in their cuckoo clock, in a kind of role reversal - and this reminds the Birdo that it's time for Cheepy's "flying lesson"! Uh oh...
The brothers and the Princess are climbing up the mountain - at one point there's a particularly videogame-y bit where part of the mountain is shaped like steps and they each jump up it with the typical Mario-style jumping sound effect:
While the Princess and Luigi are worried about what might happen, Mario tells Luigi that it could be worse. As if to prove him right, one of the Albatosses up in the air chooses that moment to drop a Bob-omb in front of them! This is a common Mario enemy that's like a living cartoon bomb that self-destructs in order to catch you in its explosion. In this instance, the weirdness in its appearance compared to later instalments is not the fault of the cartoon - here it has arms and is lacking the wind-up key it usually has in its back, but both of those things were also true in Super Mario Bros. 2, and then got updated in Super Mario Bros. 3 after this cartoon was already released.
Mario slaps the Bob-omb into the air, where it hits the Albatoss and blows it up, but it's quickly followed by the rest of the squadron of Albatosses, each holding another Bob-omb! The trio manage to slap away the first few as before, but the last group of Albatosses are cleverer - they fly ahead and blow up the Bob-ombs further up the mountain, causing an avalanche that chases the heroes back down! Mario seems quite food-obsessed in this cartoon - not only does he keep mentioning stereotypical Italian food, but here while running from the avalanche he complains that he hates running on an empty stomach.
After a break, the three of them are still running from the avalanche, when a nearby rock structure conveniently has a door in it. The snow makes it hard to tell the shape of anything, but this door doesn't seem to be aligned with the ground in any way. They get in, shut the door, and Mario and Luigi struggle to keep it shut against the avalanche, but it bursts open and a small snowdrift comes through the door, blocking their way back out again.
After a quick reminder of Toad's situation - the Birdo is carrying him through the sky until they're high up enough for the flying lesson - the Princess points out to Mario a Fire Flower on a ledge above them. He is apparently unfamiliar with them, and the Princess has to explain what it does, although she really messes up some of the game terminology here, saying that the Fire Flower will turn him into a "Super Mario". Anyone can tell you that it's the Super Mushroom that makes you Super Mario, and the Fire Flower makes you Fire Mario (well, Fiery Mario in those days). She does at least accurately say that it will allow him to use a fire attack.
Mario and Luigi randomly do a version of the "patty-cake, patty-cake" rhyme that incorporates "pasta power", and then Luigi gives Mario a boost to jump up to where the Fire Flower is. He collects it, and his clothes become the distinctive red and white colours of Fiery Mario. He jumps back down and uses his fireballs to melt a tunnel through the snow. Interestingly, this isn't portrayed as him actually throwing fireballs like the games presumably intended, but just as him pointing his index finger and fireballs leaping from it in turn without any obvious motion or effort on his part.
In King Koopa's hideout, he is giving the Albatosses medals for their work. Specifically, because everyone there is evil, they are medals of the "double cross", and each one has "XX" on it. A lovely, silly pun. Then the pair of Flurries show up and tell King Koopa that the Princess and the plumbers survived the avalanche - how do they know that? - and the angered king pulls the medals back off the Albatosses' necks again, saying he'll have to deal with the heroes himself this time.
The brothers and the Princess are sitting around out in the snow looking downcast, Mario still Fiery. Hey, why aren't they carrying on the search for Toad now that they've made it outside?
Mario: I'd pay two hundred bucks for a nice pepperoni cheesecake right now.
What are you even talking about, Mario? Anyway, then they hear a cheeping noise and they look around to find a baby Birdo frozen in a block of ice! Mario fireballs the ice away and the freed Birdo starts crying for his mother. As the Princess puts her cloak around the shivering Birdo, she wonders if this Birdo's mother is the one who took Toad, as if there was any doubt about that. Still, she doesn't have all the information we have.
Speaking of the mother Birdo, she has just reached the height needed for the flying lesson, and chooses this moment to drop Toad. Falling to his doom, Toad has a brainwave - he takes off his mushroom cap and uses it as a parachute! Mario media has varied over the years on whether the thing on Toad's head is a hat or part of his body, but these days it has generally settled on the latter, making this a very weird moment in retrospect. It's also interesting in light of his assertion earlier in the episode that he is a mushroom, since he doesn't look much like one when he's not wearing it.
The others and Cheepy are warming themselves up around a fire, when Toad coincidentally lands on the party and sends them all into disarray in the snow. The Princess is pleased to see Toad, and Toad is pleased to have found Cheepy: "Hey! It's me! I mean, him!" Oh no, he's having an identity crisis from taking Cheepy's place for so long. Toad is reluctant to go anywhere near the mother Birdo again, but the sight of the crying baby convinces him to escort Cheepy back up the mountain. Mario tells him to get a move on while the rest of them keep King Koopa occupied, surprising the Princess who hadn't seen Koopa heading right towards them on a snowmobile! He's accompanied by an army of regular Koopa Troopas and Flurries.
From Mario's elevated position he's able to dispose of a few of the soldiers with his fire, Luigi once again referring to him as "Super Mario". But there are a lot of them to deal with, and then an Albatoss manages to hit him with a Bob-omb, whose explosion turns Mario back into his regular form. Imagine getting caught in the explosion of a bomb and all it does is change the colour of your clothes. It seems so much sillier in a full animated cartoon than in an 8-bit video game.
Now there are Flurries and Koopa Troopas all around them, and Luigi says "they got us surrendered" - I don't know if messing up words is meant to be a thing of his, because he doesn't do it outside of that line in this episode. King Koopa tells them it's all over - and then vegetables, possibly turnips, start raining down on them! Up above, the mother Birdo is carrying Toad, who has a bag of vegetables that he's throwing down. Throwing vegetables is a major way to attack enemies in Super Mario Bros. 2, which seems to translate to this cartoon treating them as a powerful weapon - King Koopa orders his whole army to retreat in response!
The Birdo lands and gives the real Cheepy a kiss - wait, did Toad not take him with him? - and then she picks up both Toad and Mario so that they can continue pelting the baddies with vegetables. In the air, Toad explains to Mario how the Birdo agreed to help once he was able to explain to her about his friends finding Cheepy. Once they've chased King Koopa off, the Birdo invites them to dinner, and Mario of course is the one to enthusiastically agree.
The final gag of the show is back at the Birdo's house, where she serves what Mario assumes is spaghetti but is actually worms. Living, sentient worms, in fact, drawn as just one worm, who feels insulted at being mistaken for spaghetti. But anyway... the joke is that birds eat worms. And the Birdos sure are birds, as far as this story is concerned. And now this story is over.
Obviously, watching this show now, anyone's opinion on it is going to be coloured by its differences from the Mario franchise as we know it today. These are not the Mario brothers I know. But, there's still something charming about the whole thing, and the way they've added a lot of personality to characters who were essentially just avatars for the player at the time. Luigi's cowardice, now his most notable defining trait, originates in this cartoon. And for a generation who grew up with this show, this is who the Mario brothers are.