Let’s Do the Mario!
Numbskull Nate’s Nostalgic Nintendo Netsite, September 12th, 1999
Hey, remember this? “Swing your arms from side to side!”
(Image source “mario.fandom.com”)
Yes, folks, it’s time to Do the Mario![1] A decade ago, that insane mix of live action and animation debuted in first run syndication, the very first production of Wayward Entertainment.
Looking back, I’m like, damn, did I watch this? Did I really love watching a fat guy in a bad mustache dance and sing in front of a green screen to introduce an animated TV show based on a video game? You’re damned right I loved it. I still do, cheese and all! And while a certain former neighbor turned investment banker named Kyle who shall remain nameless may claim otherwise, we watched it religiously. For my whole fourth grade class, this was the show to watch after school, giving life and voices to the characters we loved playing on our NES.
But how did this happen? What madness led to a professional wrestler dressing like an Italian plumber created by a Japanese gaming company and doing a silly chromakey dance?
Strap in, folks, because like squaring the square root of a negative turd, shit is about to get real[2].
It all starts with a man named Andy Heyward. OK, it
all all starts with a man named Shigeru Miyamoto in 1981 with a character named Jump Man and an ape for some reason named after a donkey, and then a rude Italian American landlord in Seattle, but the show itself starts with Andy Heyward.
You see, in 1986 Heyward had managed to acquire a controlling interest in the struggling DIC Entertainment, an international animation company behind a large number of your favorite Saturday Morning shows. He was the Chairman and CEO. He was also struggling to keep the company together and solvent as the costs of animation began to spike in the late 1980s. He made a deal with ABC’s Jeffrey Katzenberg in 1987 for a new feature length film called
Return of the Littles. “I will regret that deal until the day I die,” he said later.
If you’ve never heard of that film, there’s a reason. It had a notoriously troubled production rife with executive micromanagement and arrogance and it crashed and burned at the box office. Struggling to stay solvent, Heyward agreed to sell a controlling interest in DIC to ABC with a promise of retaining corporate independence. This became a second big mistake, because once DIC became Hollywood Animation, the micromanagement became chronic, and soon Heyward was finding himself increasingly pushed aside by Katzenberg, who was assigned control of the division by Hollywood Pictures Chairman Michael Eisner.
Image Apropos of Nothing at All… (Image source “pinterest.com”)
Katzenberg, whom the animators began to call “the DIC Head” behind his back, was a pretty imperious guy back then, and Heyward was an obstacle rather than a valued team member. So, with his powers reduced to a figurehead status, a disgruntled Heyward sold his remaining shares and quit.
“I might have stuck around if they actually cared about the art,” said Heyward, “But it became quickly apparent that they had no respect for animation and were only working with us to undercut Disney, with whom they had a personal grudge or something.”
Andy Heyward and his wife Amy Moynihan Heyward took the money from their stock sales and founded their own production studio, which in a play on their last name became Wayward Entertainment. They poached several DIC employees and recruited some clever artists from universities. His wife also contacted Vanessa Coffey[3], an animation producer for Murkami-Wolf-Swenson and increasingly sick of doing stuff that was either based off of comic strips or used as a vessel to sell toys. The Heywards offered her the position of Chief Creative Officer in their production startup along with a share of the ownership, and promised her free creative reign. She accepted. She almost immediately quit when she was handed her first assignment: a series based on the Super Mario Brothers franchise.
“Another merch-driven show!” she lamented, in a later interview. “I was so angry with Andy and Amy. But they promised me that this was ‘one to pay the bills’ and that we’d go for something unique and original soon enough. And you know what? Mario was actually a lot of fun! The production team we assembled in partnership with Marvel [Productions] was great, the actors were a delight, and Nintendo’s executives were surprisingly enthusiastic about it.”
Production ran through early 1989, eventually debuting in the fall. The mix of live action and animation kept costs reasonable and production timing on track since the work could be done in tandem. The show was a slow sleeper hit. Though the acting was at first the subject of harsh criticism, the animated sequences found an audience, and let’s face it, the cheese of the live sequences was half the fun. Marvel brought in some great writers, and, at the insistence of Coffey, Princess Toadstool avoided getting typecast as an eternal damsel in distress for Mario and Luigi to perpetually rescue. By season four, even King Koopa learned to fear her wrath.
(Image source Prime Video)
By season two, Lou Albano and Danny Wells settled into their roles as Mario and Luigi and loosened up. In season three, with rating sagging, they brought Jeannie Elias (in a red wig) into the live action sequences as Princess Toadstool, who soon became the subject of a million schoolboy crushes and reinvigorated viewership. The show would peter out after six seasons, but remained an indelible part of my generation’s childhood.
The show spawned spinoffs like the crazy-awesome
King Koopa’s Krazy-Kool Kartoon Kountdown and the ill-fated
Toad Time. The former was an insane live show with the great Christopher “Cobra Commander” Collins in a prosthetic suit, partnered with a Steve Witmer Muppet named Ratso. When Collins sadly passed away, Patrick Pinney took his place. The great prosthetics by the Creatureworks partnered with Witmer’s insanity as Ratso made the crazy blend of live hosted kid’s show and animated shorts work in ways that it shouldn’t have, and allowed Koopa to avoid becoming the Nightmare Juice that he very well might have become. It would pull off four successful seasons paired with Super Mario in a “Mario Hour” format.
“Renewed again?!? Shit. I’m calling my agent…” (Image source “retrojunk.com”)
As for the latter show,
Toad Time…well, let’s just forget that ever happened, OK?
But
Super Mario Brothers and
Koopa were classics of their time. The two show’s successes would put the fledgling Wayward Entertainment on solid financial footing, setting up Wayward Entertainment for the successes that they found in the 1990s. For that reason alone, we should celebrate their existence.
So, all together now, let’s do the Mario!!
What…no takers? Don’t make me dance alone! I look like an idiot.
[1] Mario Hat tip to
@TheMolluskLingers for this back-door pathway to the Koopa show he wanted!
[2] Ha! Math jokes! Suffer fools! PS: can I offer you a slice of Pi? Or would that be irrational of me?
[3] Luigi Hat Tip to
@Damian0358 for alerting me to her. I bet you didn’t expect this!
