The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!

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The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!, also simply known as Super Mario and Super Mario Brothers, was the first of the three series in DIC Entertainment's Super Mario trilogy, aired between September and December of 1989; it was the only one to be produced directly for syndication. The show featured live-action segments in which Mario and Luigi (played by Lou Albano and Danny Wells respectively), living in their basement workshop in Brooklyn, were often visited by various celebrity guest stars. Also featured were cartoons based on the first and second Super Mario Bros. games, where the Mario brothers teamed up with Princess Peach (then known as Princess Toadstool) and Toad to battle King Koopa and his forces to save the many lands of the world. The Super Mario Bros. cartoons were shown on Mondays through Thursdays only; on Fridays, the show would air cartoons based on The Legend of Zelda series. In 1990, the show was retooled and aired under the name Club Mario, combining the animated segments with new live-action segments depicting the antics of two Mario-loving slackers named Tommy Treehugger and Co-MC.

Profiles

• The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! Tempest Special Edition:
  • "The zany Italian plumbers are back with an extra escapade free!"
  • "Mario and Luigi are two wacky Italian plumbers who get washed through a warp zone into a magical land populated entirely by Mushroom people. Here they join forces with the lovely Princess Toadstool and her assistant to fight the dastardly King Koopa and his Koopa Troopas"
• The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! - Volume One:
  • "You're in for a treat, so hang on to your seat
    Get ready for adventure and remarkable feats
    You'll meet Koopas, the Troopas, the Princess and the others
    Hangin with the plumbers, you'll be hooked on the brothers!"
• The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! - Volume Two/The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! - Mega Disc:
  • "Mario and Luigi are two wacky Italian plumbers who got washed through a warp zone while fixing a clogged drain. They find themselves in the colourful video world of the Mushroom Kingdom where they stumble from one adventure to another helping the perky Princess"
• Robokoopa:
  • "Hey paisanos!
    It's the Super Mario Brothers Super Show!
    We're the Mario Brothers, and Plumbing's our game
    We're not like the others who get all the fame
    If your sink is in trouble, you can call us on the double
    We're faster than the others, you'll be hooked on the Brothers"
• WildBrain - Cartoon Super Heroes:
  • "The Super Mario Brothers Super Show is a zany animated fantasy adventure comedy based on Nintendo’s most popular video game. The stars are the world-famous Mario and Luigi, two laugh-provoking plumbers from Brooklyn who suddenly find themselves washed through a Warp Zone."
• Netflix:
  • "Mixing live action and animation, this classic series brought the beloved Super Mario Bros. video game characters to television screens everywhere."
  • "Beloved Brooklyn plumbers Mario and Luigi burst out of the video-game world and onto TV screens in this blend of animation and live-action."
• Super Mario Bros. Super Show! - WildBrain:
  • "The Super Mario Brothers Super Show is a zany animated fantasy adventure comedy based on Nintendo’s most popular video game. The stars are the world-famous Mario and Luigi, two laugh-provoking plumbers from Brooklyn who suddenly find themselves washed through a Warp Zone.
    
    Mario Bros. Plumbing
    The first and last parts of each episode were live segments which showed Mario (professional wrestler and manager Captain Lou Albano) and Luigi (Danny Wells), two Italian-American plumbers living in Brooklyn, where they would often be visited by celebrity guest stars. It appears that the live segments take place before Mario and Luigi went to the Mushroom Kingdom.
    
    Some of the celebrity guest stars were popular television stars, such as Nedra Volz, Norman Fell, Donna Douglas, Eve Plumb, Vanna White, Jim Lange, Danica McKellar, Nicole Eggert, Clare Carey and Brian Bonsall or professional athletes such as Lyle Alzado and Magic Johnson and WWE (then WWF) stars like Roddy Piper and Sgt. Slaughter. In one episode, Ernie Hudson appeared as a Slimebuster, a parody of his Ghostbusters persona Winston Zeddemore and on another two occasions, Mario and Luigi received visits from Inspector Gadget, performed live by Maurice LaMarche who voiced Chief Quimby in the second season of the show and later went on to voice Gadget himself in Inspector Gadget's Last Case and Gadget & the Gadgetinis. There were also two episodes with Cassandra Peterson as Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, but the episodes, as well as the second Gadget appearance and a few other episodes, were not included in the Shout Factory DVDs.
    
    In one episode, Lou Albano portrays himself, forcing his regular character to leave the scene in order for him to return as himself. In the episode in question, pop star Cyndi Lauper states she's looking for Lou Albano because he's missing, due to the note she got from him (although there is an important part missing from the note). Mario exclaims how much he wants to meet Lou, and later Lou appears as himself supposedly while Mario's out shopping for pizza. As a result, Luigi gets to meet Lou, but Mario does not.
    
    Lou Albano and Danny Wells also twice played female versions of themselves, cousin Marianne, mama Mario, cousin Luigeena and aunt Luigeena., and also two hillbilly cousins, named Mario Joe and Luigi Bob.
    
    Super Mario Bros.
    Each Super Mario Bros. cartoon served as the second segment of every show, following the introduction and first few minutes of the episode's live-action segment. The cartoon featured characters and situations based upon the NES games Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros. 2, as well as several sound effects and musical cues from both games. Each episode featured Mario, Luigi, Toad and Princess Toadstool defending the Mushroom Kingdom from the reptilian villain King Koopa, often in a movie or pop-culture parody. Getting into the spirit of these parodies, Koopa often used alter egos fitting the current theme, but Koopa sometimes goes without an alter ego in some episodes.
    
    The theme song for the cartoon segments revealed that the Super Mario Brothers were accidentally warped into the Mushroom Kingdom while working on a bathtub drain in Brooklyn. After traveling via the warp drain, the Super Mario Brothers defeated King Koopa's Koopa Troopas, saved Princess Toadstool and halted Koopa's plan to conquer the Mushroom Kingdom. At the beginning of every cartoon segment, Mario recites an entry into his "Plumber's Log", a parody of the Captain's Log from Star Trek.
    
    When Mario and Luigi are in danger, they often do their patty-cake routine: "Patty-cake, Patty-cake, Pasta-Man! Gimme Pasta power as fast as you can!
    
    There were a few blunders with the animation and production of the show. The Star power up in the Mario Bros. games grants invincibility, but in the show it gives them the same effect as the Fire Flower. This blunder even appears in the shows opening. In the Episode "Quest for Pizza" after Luigi turns the square wheels into round wheels of the Caveman car
    The Super Mario Bros. cartoons aired four days a week, from Monday through Thursday.
    The Legend of Zelda
    Main article: The Legend of Zelda (TV series)
    On every Friday episode of The Super Mario Bros. Super Show, a cartoon based on The Legend of Zelda video game series was featured instead of the Super Mario Bros."