That time McDonald's tried to SPONSOR Mario's Hat

the year was 1985 and Nintendo were finally ready to release the newest game it was called Super Mario Bros and it was about to change the course of video games well forever but what did the box look like of this magnificent videogame well in the US it looked like this simple and classy in Japan though here's what it looked like instead of hiring a professional illustrator Nintendo's just asked the game's designer Shigeru Miyamoto to give it his best shot his depiction of Mario looked fairly similar to his modern appearance but Bowser and teach both look pretty rough peach has the pose of a scarecrow for some reason and Bowser looks like a bizarre BDSM warthog and I think that perhaps seeing this heart was what motivated Nintendo because not long afterwards they hired a professional illustrator his name was the OE Chico Toby and his task was to redesign Mario so a quick bit of background yo Ichi kata Bay is actually one of Japan's best illustrators and animators when he was younger he worked alongside young miyazaki the studio ghibli wizard who would later create this and this and this anyway nintendo needed someone to jazz up the look of their Mario games so they decided to hire one of the best animators that money could buy but Kota Bey had some problems at first he would draw these beautiful smooth animations with hundreds of frames they looked great but they were useless for the games adding them in would just take too much storage space in the cartridge but a few months later Nintendo gave Ichiko tibay his first proper job they wanted him to redesign the world of Mario first was Princess Peach shigeru miyamoto asked Kota Bay to make her a little more stubborn looking those were his exact words but could he please make her eyes a little more cat-like cares what Kota Bay came up with and Miyamoto liked it a lot then was Bowser the villain for him Miyamoto pulled up an old film he loved called Alakazam the great there was this big bad ox in the movie and that's what Miyamoto wanted Kota bata based Bowser's new designer it took a few iterations but eventually Miyamoto was really pleased with this character's new look it was great which left only one character to go Mario himself now this was Miyamoto's baby his child and so he only had one piece of advice for Kota baby do what you want but Mario doesn't kill that was all he told Kota Bey and so Kotov a took a good long look at this most important of characters for the most part he actually really liked the design as it was but there was one area that grabbed his attention Mario's hat you see it had this red M on it M for Mario fine but the way the M was drawn it reminded him of something completely different the McDonald's logo Oh God he couldn't leave that or it was and so Kota B started redesigning this M to make it more distinct more clearly separate from the McDonald's arches but that's when something very unexpected happened [Music] it was McDonald's on the phone they had somehow caught wind of Mario's redesign how exactly it was hard to know anyway they had a request for Kota baby you know that M on Mario's hat well we've actually noticed it looks kinda like our logo the McDonald's air yeah yeah that one well we kind of like that it looks similar we think it's an opportunity and so we're actually requesting that you make Mario's em look more like the McDonald's arches alright thank you so yes you heard that right according to Yuri Checotah Bay McDonald's actually requested that he redesigned Mario's m to look more like the McDonald's arches now as for what they were offering in return Kota Bay has never ever said maybe there's some kind of non-disclosure agreement in place or maybe he's just a respectful guy who wants to give McDonald's their privacy either way I can only assume that McDonald's were offering something in exchange for their proposal some big lump sum of money or maybe a marketing partnership between the two brands it would be a rather forward request to make otherwise actually it's a pretty forward request either way to redesign your company mascot to more closely resemble a fast food chains logo that's pretty out there you can't say McDonald's didn't have guts that's for sure so all of this leaves just one question what did Kota Bay do did he turn down the offer did he ignore McDonald's or did he take them up on their request well Kota Bay actually kept his lips sealed on all of us for the next two decades he didn't tell a soul but finally in 2018 Kota they felt ready to tell the whole story to a French newspaper called Lamont and when he was asked about his redesign of Mario he had this to say I kept the characters thick contour line on the other hand I accentuated the features on the M of Mario's cap to clearly distinguish it from the McDonald's logo who asked us on the other hand if they could be more alike so no Kota bait and Nintendo ended up turning down McDonald's request in fact perhaps out of spite Kota Bey went out of his way to make this new M even more distinct than the old one you can pretty clearly see the difference if you compare both versions of Mario side-by-side however this incident did not end up completely burning the McDonald's Mario bridge because a few years later the two companies partnered up to release these Mario figures inside the McDonald's Happy Meals and this partnership has actually continued on up until this very day but if you look closely of Mario's hat that M is still very much red thanks to my amazing patrons for making this whole thing possible if you want to help support the future of Thomas game Doc's plus gain access to my exclusive discord server you can join at patreon.com slash thomas game docks and i'll see you next time bye

Channel: Thomas Game Docs

Views: 1,568,089

Keywords: Thomas Game Docs, gaming, Super Mario, Super Mario Bros, Nintendo, McDonald's

Id: xgNRi2sOhV4

Length: 7min 8sec (428 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 12 2020