The Lost Live-Action Super Mario Bros. Spin-Off Was Pure Nightmare Fuel

Since the introduction of the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1985, Nintendo has stood astride the world like a mighty colossus. Its theogony of video game characters has become even more ubiquitous and recognizable than Warner Bros.’ Looney Tunes or Mickey Mouse and his gang. There are even Nintendo theme park areas and films now, like the animated “Super Mario Bros. Movie.” The company is still going strong, too. The Nintendo Switch, introduced in 2017, soon became the third best-selling video game console of all time, trailing only behind Nintendo’s own DS and Sony’s PlayStation 2.

Apart from a few missteps (remember the Virtual Boy?), it’s always been this way for Nintendo. Thinking back to the 1980s, certain enthused members of Gen-Y might recall Nintendo Cereal, Nintendo wall calendars, and Nintendo-centric movies like “The Wizard.” (Hands up if you subscribed to Nintendo Power Magazine or, going even further back, were a member of the Nintendo Fun Club.)

In 1989, Nintendo even made its way onto the airwaves with “The Super Mario Bros. Super Show,” a strange live-action/animation hybrid program that, when one looks up the numbers, was one of the most popular series of its kind. The show had live-action sitcom-like bookend sequences featuring “Captain” Lou Albano and Danny Wells as Mario and Luigi, a pair of New York plumbers who, very often, hosted celebrity guests. These live-action sequences would then lead into an animated Mario Bros. segment wherein Mario and Luigi had surreal “comedic” adventures in the Mushroom Kingdom. Every Friday, the animated sequence was themed around “The Legend of Zelda.”

Less well-known, however, was the show that ran after “The Super Mario Bros. Super Show.” Debuting on September 11, 1989, “King Koopa’s Kool Kartoons” was an old-fashioned kiddie show hosted by King Koopa. The show ran 65 episodes over the course of its only season. Tapes of the series have not been preserved; hence, “King Koopa’s Kool Kartoons” is now considered lost media.

“King Koopa’s Kool Kartoons” was hosted by King Koopa. He would appear in a studio alongside a live audience of children, often making menacing remarks and talking about how much he enjoyed being a villain. (King Koopa, for Nintendo neophytes, was a renamed version of Bowser, the central villain of the Mario universe.) Koopa would introduce puppet shows that starred his pet rodent Ratso before the show cut away to a very old, public-domain cartoon. The suit worn by the Koopa actors was a more refined version of a Super Mario Ice Capades show that was popular the year before.

As noted in CBR’s rundown of the history of the show, the first Koopa actor, Christopher Collins (credited as Chris Latta), was fired because he was being “inappropriate” with the staff and with the visiting children. Not in a criminal way, it seems, but his jokes were seemingly too edgy for a young audience. He was replaced by Patrick Pinney.

Collins, incidentally, might be better known as the voice of Cobra Commander on “G.I. Joe.” He also played the Decepticons’ second-in-command Starscream in “Transformers: The Movie.” Pinney, meanwhile, played Wolverine in “Pryde of the X-Men,” and has been in dozens of Disney projects and “SpongeBob SquarePants” cartoons.

There was a mild scandal with “King Koopa’s Kool Kartoons,” as some parents thought Koopa was too mean. The show was clearly courting a very young audience (it was pretty safe for kindergarteners), so Koopa’s statements about killing the Mario Brothers or being villainous were concerning to some. The show got a lot of angry mail to this end. Koopa was also accused of being a little too scary, which is understandable. Koopa is nightmarish. And if Collins was making jokes about tracking down and killing children in their homes, then one might understand all those peeved letters.

Like all Mario-related media at the time, “King Koopa’s Kool Kartoons” was a hit. Its Nintendo imprimatur was likely 100% responsible for the show’s success, although some audiences may have responded to its old-fashioned format. There was something utterly guileless about “King Koopa,” giving the show, however mean-spirited, an innocent quality. It might have reminded some parents of “The Howdy Doody Show.” The kids in the audience got to get involved in the action, and Koopa would even give them prizes. At the end of several episodes, Koopa would admit to being a big softy who actually kind of liked his Koopa Kids.

The show was purportedly #1 in its time slot in 1989 and received a lot of letters from kids who were eager to hear King Koopa read them on the air. So, why was “King Koopa’s Kool Kartoons” canceled?

According to the YouTube channel Thomas Game Docs, the cancelation came at the behest of Disney CEO and “Beverly Hills Cop” mastermind Michael Eisner of all people. “Koopa” was broadcasted out of KTTV channel 11 in Los Angeles; the station was a Fox affiliate, but Eisner was still paying attention. The story goes that Eisner wrote a letter to Barry Diller, the president of 20th Century Fox, complaining that Koopa’s villain status was undermining the moral center of the children. Diller, in response, outright canceled the show despite its popularity.

This story hasn’t been substantiated, though, and it doesn’t seem wholly plausible that Diller would cancel “King Koopa’s Kool Kartoons” just because a rival like Eisner asked him to. It’s especially unlikely given how small the broadcast area was for “Kartoons”; it wasn’t huge outside of California. It’s more likely that “Koopa” was canceled for more practical reasons.

The show wasn’t well-maintained, sadly, and no full episodes are available anywhere online. Some enterprising TV viewers have transferred clips of their old VHS tapes to YouTube, but as of this writing, the show has no official home media releases or known archive prints. This obscure nightmare has, for better or for worse, vanished.