Is there some reason no printed materials (children’s books etc.) seem to exist for the Mario Bros franchise? I know that in the past there was a series of choose your own adventure books based on the characters. Those were fondly enough remembered that they are collectors items now fetching $400 a pop. So why no current books?
Because Nintendo doesn’t publish print in-house, so someone would have to go after the license, and realistically - you need to be reasonably sure that you’re going to sell enough to recoup your costs. Mario’s still recognizable, but he’s not as hot with the kids as, say, Pokemon.
Back in Nintendo’s heyday, though, he had a cereal and several comic books, and a cartoon show…
Untrue. Your average Mario game will sell twice the number of copies of your average Pokemon game.
As for why there’s no books, Nintendo actually felt a little burned by the Super Mario Bros. movie and they decided that any “story” bits pertaining to Mario would all be done in-house. But they’ll happily plaster his likeness on folders, shirts, toys, board games, etc, etc, etc.
Yes the presence of all the toys, shirts etc. made the absence of books really stand out. My child really wants to go to his school’s book character day as Luigi, and I thought “No problem, I’ll just order a book for him to take along” (one of the requirements is to bring the book the character you are dressing as appears in). I find absolutely nothing. I’ve even been scanning big retailers looking for any tiny, paltry, psuedo-book which might suffice but have turned up absolutely nothing.
True, but Mario’s appeal is a very broad demographic. People from 5 to 55 play the Mario games. But that same demographic isn’t going to be buying the merchandise tie-in junk.
I think the Pokemon outsells Mario in the age group that would be the market for these tie-ins.
Believe it or not, a lot of the people playing Pokemon today are the same people that played it back when it first came out in 2000 (or 2001, I’m never sure). They’re just ten years older, the same as the Mario games.
I don’t understand it either.
Not really relevant. Pokemon merch outsells Mario merch. The proof? If Mario merch sold well, Nintendo would make more of it.
You’re exactly right.
I’m confused. There is just as much Mario merch out there as there is of Pokemon merch.
Oh, really? Damn, I gotta get in on the Mario CCG, Mario Manga, and Mario TV show! :rolleyes:
No, there’s not. You’ve got some T-Shirts, some keychain charms, and a very small line of non-articulated figurines, maybe a handful of other things with logos on them.
With Pokemon, in addition to the comic, card game, TV show, t-shirts - you’ve got several toy lines in different scales. Things kids apparently actually play with. Unlike the Mario figurines, which look like they’re made for thirty-something computer programmers to set on their desk at work.
Data point : Amazon has 6 times as many listings for Pokemon in ‘Toy and Games’ as it does for Mario. Twice as many books for Pokemon as for ‘Super Mario’.
There was a Mario comic and there was three Mario TV shows.
And did you look at those Amazon listings? Half the Pokemon entries are individual cards/lots created by third-party sellers. The numbers are artificially inflated.
Emphasis on ‘was’. In fact, I mentioned those things before! In one of my very own posts! Talking about when Mario’s popularity with kids USED TO BE similar to Pokemon’s popularity amongst kids today. But the OPO wanted to know why there’s no print media Mario stuff NOW.
I didn’t view all 18,000, no. But if there was similar demand for Mario merch, there would be a similar number of third-party sellers hawking his stuff. There isn’t.
I remember enjoying the choose-your-own-adventure books, but they were of very variable quality. I remember one of them described Mario as “spitting” fireballs after getting a fire flower. Kids of the late 80s often described Mario as “spitting” fireballs because of how the animation in Super Mario Bros. looked, but Nintendo’s official line has always been that he throws them from his hands.
I also remember a Legend of Zelda choose-your-own-adventure book that referred to the currency of Hyrule as “rubies.” Some people just can’t do research, which I imagine is a major concern of Nintendo’s when it comes to licensing their characters.
Because the characters of the Mario universe are lame and boring. Why would anyone, kid or otherwise, want to read about the adventures of a plumber in mushroom land? Mario and his ilk are secondary to the action of the games. The platforming is what keeps him in the spotlight. Hell, I don’t think he’s even had an actual speaking role in any of his games.
Charles Martinet has been the voice of Mario since the mid-90s.
That’s true, though Mario, historically, has only had incidental dialogue (“It’s-a me, Mario!”, “Let’s-a go!”, “Woo hoo!”, etc.). Even in games in which you’d expect him to speak, such as Super Mario RPG and its successors, he either communicates mostly in pantomime or his dialogue is implied rather than written.
I just thought of something else. Very few of Nintendo’s main franchises have any kind of media tie-ins. There was the Super Mario Bros. movie (as already mentioned, it was a disaster), a Kirby anime, and there’s a Legend of Zelda manga, but that’s pretty much it. There’s no Metroid stuff or Star Fox or Donkey Kong (though there was a DK cartoon in the past).
So what’s different about Pokemon? Nintendo doesn’t own Pokemon outright. They share ownership with the franchise’s developer, Game Freak. It’s probably this arrangement that lead to Pokemon’s media franchising frenzy.