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Captain lou albano6/2/2023 “And they wanted to see if we could come up with an animated TV series for them.”ĭiC was the right company to tackle Super Mario Bros. “They had two plumbers, a princess, a very infectious song, and that was about it,” says Heyward, who launched his animation career at Hanna-Barbera, the studio behind The Flintstones and Scooby-Doo. In the late 1980s, DiC animation head Andy Heyward recalls, he met with Nintendo of America executive Howard Lincoln about a potential collaboration. Still, the idea of building a show around a video game franchise was daunting. 2 on the cover, and there was a glut of adjacent merchandise, including a sugary breakfast cereal. The Nintendo Entertainment System was a best-selling home console, Nintendo Power magazine had launched the year before with Super Mario Bros. Super Show!, its characters had become ubiquitous. As Harnage puts it: “ The Simpsons came along and proved that character is everything.”Įven before The Super Mario Bros. It’s a lesson borne out by a slightly bigger animated hit that premiered 31 years ago. “Everybody has heard of Mario,” says Super Show! writer Phil Harnage. Super Show! may have only lasted one season, but the fact that a generation of kids now in their 30s remembers it fondly is a testament to the franchise on which it’s based. But none of those properties, not even TMNT, has remained as universally beloved as Nintendo’s flagship. Joe, Cabbage Patch Kids, My Little Pony, He-Man, The Transformers, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles before it, Super Mario Bros. The syndicated children’s series, which aired every weekday, is a trippy relic of a time when a toy’s popularity could be gauged by whether Hollywood wanted to turn it into a cartoon. But more on that delightful monstrosity later. that also starred Albano and Wells in the title roles. Sandwiched between these short, laugh-tracked live-action segments shot on a faux Brooklyn set in Los Angeles was an animated version of Super Mario Bros. While filming, producer Troy Miller says, Magic “was everyone’s friend.” Slaughter, Ernie Hudson, Elvira, Patrick Dempsey, Vanna White, Cyndi Lauper, and yes, Magic Johnson. Among them: Nicole Eggert, Danica McKellar, Sgt. The program was awash with time-capsule worthy guests. The series featured pro wrestler and manager Captain Lou Albano as Mario and comedic actor Danny Wells as Luigi. Super Show! brought Nintendo’s two Italian American mascots to life. For a short stretch, The Super Mario Bros. I know what you’re thinking: This sounds like a late-’80s kid’s fever dream. Then Johnson had to go-he had to get to a game. First he made a basketball disappear, next he helped Luigi pull a rabbit out of a top hat, and finally he sent Luigi into the hat before bringing him back. “Sorry to disappoint you guys, but what I really want to do is practice some magic tricks,” Johnson told them. The Lakers superstar, however, had no interest in shooting hoops with the two mustached brothers. When the reigning MVP arrived, the greatest video game hero of all time was playing one-on-one with Luigi. That’s right: Magic Johnson once visited Mario at his home. In 1989, the Most Valuable Player met the Most Valuable Plumber. So jump down the pipe and warp to the Mushroom Kingdom with us. The Ringer is also celebrating, looking back at the legacy of the most iconic video game character of all time, both in games and his forays into film and television. To mark the occasion, Nintendo is releasing new games and holding events in the coming weeks. He sported three rubber bands dangling from a pin on one cheek, another three hanging from an ear and one more through a long beard as wild as his curly dark hair.This weekend marks the 35th anniversary since our favorite overall-wearing, mustachioed plumber ingested his first mushroom in Super Mario Bros. Lauper’s father in her “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” video.Īlbano, who stood 5 feet 10 inches, weighed about 310 pounds at the time and delighted in Hawaiian print shirts that revealed a generous portion of his midsection. “I wrote the book on being ugly,” Albano told The New York Times in 1984, after blending pro wrestling with the entertainment world beyond the ring and taking it into the “Rock n’ Wrestling” era with his role as Ms. It said he had been under hospice care but did not report the nature of his illness. His death was announced by Wrestlers Rescue, which supports the health care needs of retired wrestlers. Captain Lou Albano, the pro wrestling villain who reinvented himself as a pop culture celebrity in a Cyndi Lauper music video and in movies and television, died Wednesday in Westchester County, N.Y.
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