The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!

See also: List of Super Mario episodes

The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! is the only one of the three American Mario animated series to air in syndication. The first and last parts of each episode were live action and showed Mario (played by "Captain" Lou Albano) and Luigi (Danny Wells) living in Brooklyn, where they would often be visited by celebrity guest stars. Some of them were popular TV 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, Magic Johnson, Roddy Piper and Sgt. Slaughter. Occasionally, the main actors would be playing guest stars themselves, forcing their regular characters to leave when it came time for their other characters to show up. In the fifth episode, Ernie Hudson appeared as a Ghostbuster using his own name rather than Winston Zeddemore.

The second part of each episode was a 13-minute cartoon based loosely on the Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros. 2 video games, where Mario, Luigi, Princess Toadstool (as Peach was called in North America until the release of Yoshi's Safari), and her loyal mushroom retainer Toad battle against the reptilian villain King Koopa, often in a movie or pop-culture parody. Getting into the spirit of these parodies, Koopa usually had a different outfit for each one. Wart, the main antagonist of the second game, was never in any of the episodes, yet most of his minions appeared in the show. The cartoons were meant to take place after the timeline of the Super Mario Bros. game where the Princess was rescued. It was revealed that the Mario Brothers accidentally were warped into the Mushroom Kingdom while working on a bathtub drain in Brooklyn, NY, and in appearing presented a challenge to King Koopa's plots to overtake the kingdom. The brothers and Toad had to protect the Princess, as they believed she had the power to save her people as well as to get the Mario Brothers back to Brooklyn. It was never explained whether the live action segments were meant to be the Mario Brothers before they found the Mushroom Kingdom, or if they had successfully made it back to Brooklyn and returned to operating their plumbing business as before.

The Super Mario Bros. cartoon was shown on Mondays through Thursdays. On Fridays, the show would air the Legend of Zelda cartoons based on the game of the same name, in which the elf-like hero Link and Princess Zelda fight against the forces of the evil wizard Ganon. Scenes from the episode were shown during the live-action segments on the preceding days as sneak previews.

During the summer of 1990, Club Mario replaced the Mario Bros. live-action segments. This featured rock and roll and Mario obsessed teenagers (Chris Coombs, Michael Rawlins, and Victoria Delany) goofing around, and in at least one episode, running around the DiC studios and harassing Andy Heyward. Coombs and Delany played Siblings Tommy and Tammy Treehugger. An additional added segment was a 1-2 minute viewing of "Spaced Out Theater", which was edited from the TV series, Photon

The show ran from September 4 to December 1, 1989. DVD box sets of SMBSS were released on March 28, 2006 (Volume 1) and October 31, 2006 (Volume 2) by Shout! Factory.

Cast

 * Captain Lou Albano as Mario
 * Danny Wells as Luigi
 * Jeannie Elias as Princess Toadstool (most episdoes), Birdo, and Shy Guy
 * John Stocker as Toad, Koopa Troopa, Mouser, Beezo, and Flurry
 * Harvey Atkin as King Koopa, Tryclyde and Snifit

Show Trivia

 * In the reruns of the game into the nineties, the Legend of Zelda previews were omitted due to that show being off the air. The previews were kept for the DVD releases.
 * The show was sponsored by Domino's Pizza.
 * The theme song for the show was called "Plumber's Rap".
 * The cartoon shared much of its background music with the first season of Captain N and the music that did not come from Captain N were remixes of music from Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros. 2.
 * When shown in reruns after cancellation, DiC took out all the song covers played during the action/chase sequences, and replaced them with instrumentals of songs featured in The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World, presumably because of music licensing issues for each of the songs. The original songs have only been reinstated in the UK DVD volumes, but not on the Region 1 DVD releases, nor even the box sets released by Shout! Factory in 2006.
 * While Jennie Elias was the voice behind Princess Toadstool, there were at least eight episodes where she did not provide her character's voice for unknown reasons. At least two un-named voice actresses provided the Princess' voice in those episodes.
 * According to the interview on Shout! Factory's first DVD box set, Captain Lou Albano had stated that he was not interested in portraying Mario and voicing him at first due to his popularity from WWF, but was talked into it by his wife.

Mario Trivia

 * Beginning with Super Mario 64, Mario and Luigi would adopt exaggerated Italian accents. Toad would adopt a more gravelly voice.
 * Bowser and Peach would not be referred to by those names until Super Mario 64, hence their different names in this series.
 * Birdo was changed to female after an odd description from the SMB2 manual. Since then, however, she has never spoken and her mouth does not move. Her "speech" today is sounds that sound like "rau" or "wow", but also sounding like a go-kart engine. She is also no longer depicted as a nearsighted older mother, but rather as a young adult. Her voice, however, would be used in the remake of SMB2.
 * Bowser's scepter might have inspired the magic wands that the Koopa Kids would steal from kings in different worlds in Super Mario Bros. 3 which later on the Koopa family would have in The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3.
 * The episode "Little Red Riding Princess" (an obvious parody of the fairy tale "Little Red Riding Hood") indicates that the Toadstool name in Princess Toadstool is a family name, not a personal name, because her grandmother is known as "Grandma Toadstool." The Princess' personal name, however, is never revealed in the cartoon series.
 * For the first two episodes and the first half of "Butch Mario and the Luigi Kid", Toad's color scheme is more or less inverted. He had a red mushroom hat with white spots, red shoes, a white vest, and red pants. No official explanation was given for this anomaly, but when Toad used a Fire Flower in "The Fire of Hercufleas", he donned his old color scheme.
 * Due to the show being based partially on SMB2, Peach accompanies Mario rather than being the damsel in distress. In SMB2, Peach was a playable character. Toad was also a playable character in SMB2, which explains his accompaniment of Mario.

Miscellaneous

 * Mario's "Plumber's Log" narrations at the beginning of each episode is reminiscent of William Shatner as Captain Kirk in the original Star Trek.
 * The episode "Slime Busters" was a parody of the Ghostbusters; Ernie Hudson, who played Winston in the movies, made a guest appearance as himself in this episode.
 * In the episode "Stars in Their Eyes", the song sung/buzzed by the alien Quirks is the theme to The Legend of Zelda. Similarly, in the Zelda episode "Doppleganger", Link is whistling the Super Mario Bros. theme while practicing his swordsmanship.
 * There was a Viewmaster three-reel set based on the show (but labeled as "Super Mario Bros. 2"). The "A" reel showed various scenes from the live-action segments, while the "B" and "C" reels were an adaptation of the episode "The Bird! The Bird!" Oddly, although the picture descriptions say "King Koopa," the villain featured in reels "B" and "C" is clearly Wart.
 * "Love 'Em and Leave 'Em" was the only episode Koopa (a.k.a. Bowser), did not appear in. On Her Majesty's Sewer Service" was also the only episode in which Toad also doesn't make an appearance.

Inaccuracies

 * Mario speaks in this series, something that is only implied otherwise.
 * In the intro to the cartoon segment, Mario and Luigi are seen going down a bathtub drain. They typically only use large green pipes, though different colored varieties have been used.
 * Mario wearing white overalls and a red undershirt is referred to as Super Mario. This in reality is Fire Mario. Super Mario would only be larger unless the powerup provided him with special powers. In the intro, Mario turns into "Super Mario" when he touches a Starman. He should simply become invincible.
 * Pizza and pasta are heavily used in the show, something that has almost never been used in the Mario series of games.
 * The patty-cake poem and the phrase "Pasta power!" have never been used in Mario games.
 * Because the show is based on the first two SMB games, elements from both are used. In reality, elements from SMB2 would not be used until Shy Guys were used in Yoshi's Island. Elements from SMB2 would not be used in Mario games until Paper Mario.

Home Video Releases

 * From 1989 to 1991, Kids Klassics released NTSC VHS videos of the show. These videos contained two, one, or no live-action segments, and are the only commercially available versions (in the US) of the episodes to feature the cartoon segments as they were originally produced and aired (meaning they included the action/chase songs that were edited out in later airings). On these videos, the "Super Mario Bros." theme was not included before the cartoon segment.
 * The animated episode "Koopa Klaus" and the live-action segment "Santa Claus is Coming to Flatbush" were featured, along with Super Mario World ' s "The Night Before Cave Christmas" on the 1996 VHS release Super Mario Bros. Super Christmas Adventures!
 * The show made its DVD debut in February 2002 with the single-disc release Mario's Greatest Movie Moments, which combined the adjacent new VHS releases Mario's Action Adventures and Mario's Monster Madness. This DVD features a bonus episode only viewable after correctly answering questions in an interactive quiz. The episode, "The Adventures of Sherlock Mario", also features the final segment of the accompanying live-action segment, "Plumbers of the Year", complete with a preview for the next episode of "The Legend of Zelda" and the ending credits. Strangely, the first half of "Plumbers of the Year" is not shown; also, there is a strange glitch in the middle of the animated segment that causes the video to go back to the scene following the commercial fadeout, and the audio for speaking roles shifted to the left side. This was corrected later in the release of the US Volume 1 DVD set.
 * The episode "Do You Princess Toadstool Take This Koopa...?" was included as a bonus feature on the Sonic Underground DVD Dr. Robotnik's Revenge.
 * Shortly after the show began its run on Yahooligans! TV, another single-disc release was put out, titled Mario Mania! and featuring the first week's worth of episodes. The DVD used the same prints that had been featured on the Yahooligans! website, and as a result did not include the Legend of Zelda previews.
 * Shout! Factory released two four-disc volumes of the show in 2006 (distributed by Sony), which featured the episodes with the Zelda previews (except on "King Mario of Cramalot") and custom-made commercial indents reinstated, but with the song covers still edited out. However, on the second volume, due to legal issues, four of the animated episodes were presented as "bonus episodes" without their respective live-action segments.