A Look Back At The Takara Super Mario RPG Plushes!

one aspect to merchandise that I haven't really gone into too much detail in the past worth is its relation to the lost media if there's actually quite a bit of notable merchandise that has gotten lost over the years may it be canceled products products so rare that barely any images of them exist or in this case products that are so impossible to find that they are simply rumor especially with older merchandise lines it's very common for them to have poor documentation and that's the case with the set we'll be looking at today Super Mario RPG was released for the Super Nintendo on March 9th 1996 the game was noteworthy as it was as the name suggests Mario's first ever RPG is the game was a success when it came out but one thing not many people know is that it got a lot of merchandise as odd as it is for the seemingly risky Mario spin-off title to get such a marketing push it did from keychains to playsets to socks tons of products bearing the mario RPG brand were made during the game's release but one set of mario RPG merchandise stands above the rest one set that's so hard to find so coveted it's become that of legend of course I'm talking about the set of mario RPG plushies and with that said welcome to a look back at the Takara Super Mario RPG plushies [Music] this set was released by Takara in 1997 as promotion for the games Super Mario RPG the set contains Mario Yoshi a mushroom a star boshi and hmm yeah okay look one of the main draws to this set for many people is the mystery surrounding it we don't actually know how many plushies there are to this set why well for a number of unfortunate reasons is the main thing though is that we don't have an official set image for this set the promotional pictures that showcase all the plushies in a set that we're often used during this era yeah we don't have one of these for this set for example check out this set image for the Banpresto Super Mario 64 plush set that I've looked at in the past not only is this image super cool but it also tells us how many characters were in the set which is very useful these mario RPG plushies don't have any archived images like that I know there's gotta be one out there we just don't have it archived and you may be thinking oh just check the paper tags that came attached to the plushies I'm sure those have all the info you need right well they probably would but this said never had a paper tags the plushies had touch tags and heck they even had gold hang strings but no paper tags this isn't completely uncommon for example this ocarina of time plush set also made by Takara don't have paper tags now along with the five confirmed plushies to the set there seems to be a sixth mallow however he has only shown up for sale twice ever since this set came out there have only been two documented times this guy has shown up for sale not only that but pictures have even be confirmed to exist plushies are hard to find try looking up pictures of the Mario plush and you won't find much I think that's all the background history we need for now o delve more into the mystery aspect of the set later but for now I think it's time to start looking at the plushies themselves starting with Mario [Music] here's the Mario plush in the set to start off I have to say my favorite aspect of these plushies is just how accurate they look to the characters in the game Super Mario RPG has a very distinct style to it given the limitations of 3d at the time and when it comes to how the characters look this set nailed that Mario's proportions and overall design looked to be a near-perfect replica of his in-game appearance in the game Mario had a very short and stocky look which this plush captures perfectly Mario's body is very round his legs and arms are very short his face looks very plump and the proportions on this guy look entirely game accurate another thing I should mention is the different fabrics used to make these plushies for example Mario's hat uses a much shinier fabric than what is used on the rest of the plush speaking of Mario's hat it looks very nice it's sized well in the M emblem is captured perfectly with the white and M pieces being separated from the rest of the Hat the rim of Mario's hat is also expertly captured with a very distinct curve to it Mario's face looks great his eyes and eyebrows are made of an overlay material but everything else is well-defined his moustache surprisingly isn't an overlay it's a separate piece and you can see the ends of it coming off the plush slightly his nose is correctly large as are his eyes Mario's hair is also very simplified especially in the back but it looks fine Mario's body is very short and round his overalls aren't layered or anything like we see on newer plushies if they have a simple design to them but they still look great and his buttons are made of felt these could have easily been overlays but they went the extra mile here the back of Mario's overalls are cut off to another detail uncommon with relatively early Mario plushies like this Mario's touch tag is attached here to the back of his leg if the touch tag is important as it gives us all the info on the set we have to go by it's full of legal information tells us these are RPG plushies and that Takara made them since these plushies don't have paper tags these are all we've got anyway Mario's gloves are perfect they're the correct size and his fingers are all there his glove cuffs well and stuffed look fine as well his shoes are a flat brown color but our size do all I have sole details overall this Mario plush I'd say is important not only because it's accurate to the game it's based off of but because this is one of the earliest Mario plushies to look at this accurate if there are a lot of charming early Mario plushies but a lot of them look weird by today's standards they have style to them which is great if you capture that perfect Mario look this one for the time it was released in at least did which is very commemorate now how rare is this Mario plush the answer to that question and really the rarity for all of these plushies is pretty hard to find a lot of these guys haven't been sold in a long time they rarely show up for sale but when they do it's usually for an extreme premium is the last Mario I saw sold for over two hundred dollars on Yahoo Japan auctions but I know even that is probably low balling this guy's value and given how infrequent these guys show up I'd rather not waste time analyzing how much they could sell for and instead simply say they're just worth a lot of money some may argue this is the rarest set of commercially released Mario plushies and apart from a few potential contenders I agree with that you never see these guys for sale and it's always an event whenever they do show up because they're just that rare here's the Yoshi in the set just like the Mario this Yoshi just screams Mario RPG compare the plush to a render of Yoshi from the game and yeah it looks just like it also this plush gives off the look of Yoshi's classic design in general compare it to any recent plush of the character and you can instantly tell what time frame it came from this is just a perfect classic Yoshi plush his stance is closer to how Yoshi tended to stand back in the day and his body looks a lot longer Yoshi's face looks great his entire face is very well patterned and his eyes are made of plastic he even has nostril details which are represented by stitching Yoshi's touch tag is attached to the bottom of his tail as you can see here Yoshi's body is long but also pretty wide as can clearly be seen by his shell or saddle which is much larger than how were used to seeing it today another difference in Yoshi's design compared to today is that he has four spikes here as opposed to modern Yoshi's three spikes his arms are great they're bent a little forward and are again well stuffed his hands have stitching to indicate his fingers too which is a detail they could have easily skipped Yoshi's legs look very nice as to his shoes his shoes are made from the same shiny material as Mario's hat and he even has the correct sole details these look very nice Yoshi's tail looks excellent and has the proper curve it should with the end of it pointing upwards this Yoshi is without a doubt the best secur oh she plush in terms of accuracy at least it probably would have been my favorite Kupfer and plush in the set if not for the next plush we'll be looking at bow she all right now we're talking check this guy out an official plush of bow she this bow she plush encompasses everything I love about old UFO catcher plush sets in terms of character choices a lot of UFO catcher sets such as this were based off of specific games and as such had game specific characters like bow she this is without a doubt probably the only bow she plush that will ever exist if there's a 99% chance we will never see another piece of bow she merchandise release period no plush no figure nothing and to top it all off if this plush is a near-perfect recreation of the character for starters it's a little strange to cower would even make this guy it seems more important characters such as peach or Bowser didn't get plushies but Bo she did it's a little strange at first glance but when you think about it it makes sense Takara already had a Yoshi pattern made they could easily add and change a few details to make Bo she who is essentially just a cooler Yoshi so he's a guaranteed success anyway if they could easily make a plush of him with a little risk despite him being such an unknown character with that said this plush does share the same general pattern and structure as the Yoshi he just has a lot of added details like his sunglasses which are cut pieces of felt his spiked collar his fangs and his spiked shoes his shoes are no longer shiny but I'd say the spikes make up for that his body is this nice cool shade of blue and his spikes are now more orange than they were on the Yoshi plush apart from that he's basically the same as Yoshi but that's fine because that's just who Bo she is I'm so glad this plush exists even if it is nearly impossible to come across we could have just got an oboe she plush at all but this guy exists and that is so cool to me like I said this will most likely go down as the only plush of this character that will ever exist there's absolutely no way that first off a merchandise company would even think to make Bo she but even if they did I'm sure there's tons of legal issues preventing the creation of new merchandise of the character if the only way a new boshi plush would ever be made as if a new boot like plush of him came out sort of like those fake dry and dark Bowser plushies but would be horrible because then tons of people would buy it because it's boshi supporting bootleggers with that said oh if that makes this plush even more special it's truly one-of-a-kind and if this plush didn't exist if there would be no boshi plush that's probably one of my favorite aspects to these old merchandise lines they're total products of their time and because of that they often feature elements of franchises that aren't relevant anymore such as forgotten characters that we will never see new merchandise of and for the record as time moves on a lot of unique UFO catcher plushies will have modern interpretations for example for over 20 years the Sonic the fighters supersonic plush was the only plush of SuperSonics classic design but now in 2018 tomi made a new classic supersonic plush same thing happened with JAXA their Metal Mario plush making the banpresto one not as special but that will never be the case with boshi this will forever be the only plush of the character and that makes it insanely cool when it comes to this set a lot of the characters are very interesting and unique and as such are highly desired that's not necessarily the case with the next two plushies we'll be looking at to flush out the set a little more Takara included these a plush of a super mushroom and a star these two plushies are very basic when compared to the other plushies in the set and aren't really all that noteworthy relative to the rest of this set to be fair they still capture that distinct look of the items that they had in Mario RPG compared to current incarnations if the mushrooms face looks quite different and its spots aren't as uniform compared to what we see today the star is a lot more basic and it's without a doubt the most generic plush in the set but it still looks just like how stars looked in the game and I suppose that is still pretty noteworthy but in this set with characters like boshi a mushroom and star aren't really that special but they probably weren't meant to be I imagined Takara felt the scent needed a few more plushies and well it would have been really cool to see characters like Peter Bowser get plushies maybe that wasn't seen as financially viable given how complicated plushies of those characters would have been especially considering how complicated some of the characters in the set already are so instead if they made these two which are still appealing at people would still want to get them but they're significantly simpler I actually had no eye the star plush even existed until way after I first found out about the set people just don't really talk about these two all that much and they get lost in the hype surrounding the other characters I still like them and I'm glad they exist they look accurate plus it's always going to have some items to go with a Mario set there are quite a few Mario plush sets that I've garnered very strong followings over the years for example the sanae mario party 5 plushies the kelly toy Mario plush is the Banpresto Mario 64 plushies etc something that's consistent about all of those examples is that and this may sound a little strange but they're all documented we know all of those plushies exist we know exactly how many plushies are in each set etc as I've made clear that is not the case with this set yes it's time we talked about the mystery of the mallow plush and the potential case of the geno plush however with the set as mysterious as this one I think there might be someone out there more suited to talk about this set than me and I think I know just the guy for the job [Music] the mystery of the mallow and geno plush is something nearly as old as the online video game collecting scene itself given the elusive status even the confirmed plushies have in this set and the lack of concrete evidence of what the full set contains several rumors regarding this set have popped up over the years and that's all thanks to to Yahoo Japan auctions listings both containing what appears to be a mallow plush which would go to this RPG set this image is from an early 2000s Mario plush lot from Yahoo Japan auctions at first glance it seems to just be a standard Mario plush collector selling off their collection however in plain sight is mallow now there has been some debate over the authenticity of this plush some people believe it to just be a very accurate custom however customs were not very popular at this time and it's unlikely a custom that's accurate and close to the real set could be made let alone one of mallow plus he clearly has the same gold hang string that the rest of the plushies in the set have and another plush from the RPG set the mushroom is also in this lot making it more likely that this is a collection the seller has had collected from years of arcades sadly since the listing is so old there's no way we could ever find it and it's a miracle we even have this image to begin with and that's where the story of this mellow plush would end if not for a second listing that went live nearly 16 years later in May of 2016 just like Mallos first appearance this too was a lot of Mario plushies unfortunately though the auction was ended early due to what I assume was a buyer messaging the seller with an extremely high offer of his own but we have no idea who bought this lot or where the mallow plush is and as such no further pictures of mallow were ever released from it in fact we don't even know how many different Mallos exist this might be the same plush as the one from the early 2000s lot but if there's one thing for certain at least one of him does exist I've scrutinized these images long enough to conclude that yeah mallow is an authentic plush but is insanely rare which is more than we can say for the other rumored plush in this set since mallow exists in this set it's created a legacy of speculation on whether or not a plush of geno exists as part of the RPG set as well let's get this straight we have absolutely no evidence for an official RPG geno plush existing this is all purely rumor and speculation due to Mallos absolute legendary status and how for over two decades we've only seen them for sale a grand total of two times it's entirely possible to Karam it a geno plush right well this argument in debate has gone on for years both for and against his existence while mallow has been visually captured on two different occasions we have no proof or even solid evidence that points towards the geno plush existing at all his rumored existence sort of comes from the fact that I think people want a geno plush sure pairing him with the game exclusive mallow and Bo she would make sense in regards to the set but to say that Geno exists because mallow does is almost as baseless as saying peach exists because Mario does these plushies were most likely released in UFO catchers for a very very limited time and did not come with a tag or set sheet which many other UFO plushies from around this era did have and that's the only way we will ever get to the bottom of this mystery and that's if an official set image was located so to advertise new UFO catcher plush sets manufacturers usually took what are known as set sheets to showcase all of the characters set quite a few of these have serviced over the years such as ones for old sonic plush sets as well as Mario plush sets and that Super Mario Cart set was made by Takara proving they did take set sheets for their releases just recently back in October of 2017 twitter user at game tent eden posted a catalog scan showcasing the Takara Kirby's Adventure starfox and Super Mario Kart plush sets and that is very important when I saw these set sheets for the first time I really wanted to know their source thinking a Mario RPG set sheet could exist within the same pages as these images well i translated the tweet and found out that these scans actually came from a series of catalogs that specialized in showing you a full prizes and arcade prizes the RPG set came out in 1995 so all I had to do was find a 1995 issue in the set sheet would probably be there well unfortunately this catalog series was discontinued in 1994 and that's too early for the RPG set but it doesn't end there while I was unsuccessful in finding a set sheet for the RPG set when I was browsing old import shop websites in the past I came across a very very rare set sheet for CHIKARA's ocarina of time plushies which released in 1999 so we have set sheets from pre and post RPG but if RPG is the only set sheet we can't find does that mean it doesn't exist well that's not the only Takara plush that I could think of without a known set sheet both banjo kazooie and Donkey Kong Country 2 plushies don't have set sheets documented and those released between Takara plushies that we have set sheets for so unless Takara just stopped making set sheets for a time then went back to it randomly with ocarina of time I'm confident there exists set seeds of all of their plush series but unfortunately that doesn't help us figure out if Geno is any more real and people think he is well like I said earlier it can go both ways Geno's design is very complicated compared to other patterns used for this set and he's not as recognizable or even as Mario asked as the other plushies Geno's are called character nowadays but back then he wasn't so the merchandise surrounding him wouldn't have been a priority on the other hand there is honestly so much obscure rare or unknown video game merchandise that has evaded all traces of existing for the longest time or in some cases still eluding proof that Geno could honestly be another case of this phenomenon just the other day I was randomly looking for Yoshi's Island plushies and I stumbled upon a geocities picture that shows eight different colored Yoshi straps from the Yoshi's Story set what's amazing about this picture is that the red dark blue black and white Yoshi's have never been seen before outside of this one image and on top of that the black and white Yoshi's are prototypes from the manufacturer that this collector ended up getting ahold of this means that not only could Gino exist as a released plush that has eluded all evidence but also the possibility that he exists as a prototype and you wanted to know what I guess that means mallow could also be a prototype since we've never seen his touch tag so we have no idea how it compares to any of the other characters in the set despite this it still reconfirms mallow as official if we are ever to find evidence of a geno plush existing we'll have to look through old catalogs and advertisements from the 1995 era or possibly get in touch with the manufacturer or someone close to them as apparently that's not as impossible as we thought it was ever since I got into video game merchandise collecting this set has without a doubt always been the most mysterious to me it's so crazy that after all this time we still have concrete answers to the truth behind this set and it's unfortunate that unless a search effort is really started for that mythical set sheet image there's a chance that it will remain a mystery forever is mallow real probably but we don't have confirmation yet and who knows if any more plushies to the set exist we all speculate Geno but maybe there's a peach short bowser maybe there's even a toad chancellor or something who knows and that's the true appeal to this set not only are the plushies want to one with the game a game that already has a huge fan base but the set has an incredible mystery to it making them extremely sought-after and desired me personally I'm not too bothered by not having any of these guys maybe eventually I'll end up getting them but for now they're not much of a priority for me especially since I know there are fans of the game out there that would enjoy them much more than I would I find talking about this sense mysterious history much more interesting than the plushies themselves there's still great but how many examples of a lost Mario plush are there not many this set is such a unique case by poor documentation and just general unluckiness there's a good chance a handful of Mallos are out there they probably just happened to fall into the hands of people who didn't care to post about them online maybe someone someday will stumble across this very video and find out that they have a plush that for decades has become the stuff of legend because think about it this set was in UFO catchers in arcades chances are a lot of these guys are in storage or destroyed because they were won by kids who at the time just saw them as another Mario toy imagine being the absolute legend who while they were a kid living in Japan who went to an arcade and won a maillot plush it's really just a waiting game there's only so much we can search for with finding that set image it'll just come down to the right person at the right time randomly stumbling across it and posting it online but until that day comes the Takara Super Mario RPG plush set will remain a mystery [Music] [Music]

Channel: PatMac

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Rating: 4.9611125 out of 5

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Id: KSQ-HZpzFlM

Length: 22min 15sec (1335 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 11 2018