The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!

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Hey, paisanos! It's the Super Mario Bros. Super Show!

The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! was a 1989 animated/live action DiC production was an Animated Adaptation of Nintendo's flagship games, featuring the adventures of those plucky plumbers from Brooklyn (although Yoshi's Island eventually revealed that they were born in the Mushroom Kingdom), the Super Mario Bros.. Mario is voiced and portrayed live by professional wrestler Captain Lou Albano, with Danny Wells as Luigi.

The show was presented in a Three Shorts style, where one live-action story is split into two parts and straddles an animated short. The live-action short features the brothers in Brooklyn before they were sucked into the Mushroom Kingdom, providing plumbing duties for normal joes (like Dr. Frankenstein) and celebrities (like Lyle Alzado and Cyndi Lauper) alike. The animated short features Mario and Luigi in the Mushroom Kingdom, looking for a way to get home and save Princess Toadstool's kingdom from the evil Bowser.

The show ran four days a week in syndication, with Fridays reserved for a cartoon based on The Legend of Zelda.

Now available on Hulu (Region Locked) Not to be confused with the The Adventures of Super Mario Bros 3 or Super Mario World.

Tropes used in The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! include:
  • And Now You Must Marry Me: "Do You, Princess Toadstool, Take This Koopa..."
  • Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Koopa becomes a giant in two episodes. So does Mario in one of these two.
  • The Blank: Indiana Joe from "Raiders of the Lost Mushroom" is literally drawn without an actual face.
  • Brown Note: In one episode, Koopa is defeated by the playing of The Legend of Zelda theme song. Seriously.
  • Captain Ersatz: Stand-ins for Indiana Jones [the above-mentioned Indiana Joe], Robin Hood [Hooded Robin] and Elvis Presley [Elvin Parsley], among others, appear.
  • Catch Phrase: Koopa had two: "He who Koops and runs away lives to Koop another day!" and "Koopa Pack, ATTACK!"
  • Celebrity Paradox: Captain Lou Albano played Mario in both the live-action and animated segments of the show. In a particularly memorable live-action segment, Luigi mentions that Mario idolizes Captain Lou, who goes missing. Cyndi Lauper then shows up to lead a search to find Albano. Albano appears at the end of the episode, shortly after Mario leaves...
  • Christmas Episode: "Koopa Klaus".
  • Clumsy Copyright Censorship: Most of the episodes featured a cover song during an action sequence. When the show was reran in the early 1990s, these were removed and replaced with BGM from the series. In many instances, the cover songs were the highlights of the episodes, as the subject matter often tied into the action (for example, "Proud Mary" played in "Rollin' Down the River", an episode taking place on a steamboat; "Bad" by Michael Jackson is played in the episode, "King Mario of Cramalot", after Mario says, "I'm bad!"; "Thriller" by the same Michael Jackson in "Count Koopula", an episode taking place in Koopa's haunted castle), so their removal really hurt part of the show's appeal.
  • Continuity Nod: In the live-action segment "Defective Gadgetry", Mario discovers and subsequently tosses away a dead goldfish named Kenneth, whom Mario had to look after and whom he unwittingly killed in the segment "Goodbye, Mr. Fish".
  • Cover Version: Nearly every episode featured a cover song of a famous song, such as "Bad", "Thriller", and "Beat It".
  • Crossover: Two live-action segments had the Mario Bros. meet Inspector Gadget (played by Maurice LaMarche, no less).
    • Capt. Lou Albano also managed to get a couple WWE wrestlers on the show, such as Sgt. Slaughter and Rowdy Roddy Piper.
  • Dance Sensation: Do the Mario!
  • Demoted to Extra: Clawgrip got this bad. A boss in the second game, he was not only reduced to a mook, but a generic mook.

"Look out! A clawgrip!"