Pappy Mario? Pario?
It’s been thirty years since the NES launched in the U.S., and all that time we’ve not known a whole lot about the Mario Brothers’ home life. The closest we’ve gotten was in incidental scenes in the Paper Mario and other RPG series that alternatively depict Luigi as a coward or an evil mastermind. It follows that Mario and Luigi must have parents, but they’ve never been mentioned. Even in Yoshi’s Island, which gave the Yoshi tribe the mission to reunite the baby Mario brothers, their parentage is uncertain.
That’s why it’s so interesting when a previously unknown artifact from the brothers’ past comes to light. The eighties were a decade of rampant consumerism, and the Mario Brothers were merchandised for everything under the sun when their game became a runaway success. Recently, redditor L33tredrocket posted a picture of a child’s food tray from the mid-eighties that depicts a previously unknown Mario relative.
The Bowser and the Toads are especially off-model. Luigi has his fire flower colors on, and Mario seems to be standing on a giant NES Advantage joystick as Bowser reaches out of the TV like Samara in The Ring. Toad frantically tries to alert Mario to the situation, but he’s otherwise occupied adjusting his suspender straps. A Goomba is about to climb in the window, despite the protestations of an angry fire flower. A submissive Koopa, thoroughly defeated, holds a flag in a pose of utter submission. Meanwhile, Lumas on the left and right try to hide behind the couch or call for help from an antique phone booth.
It looks like this Mario and Luigi might live inside a T.G.I. Friday’s since there’s a barber pole, a stoned-looking cloud with a barcode mustache (or possibly a radiator), and a staircase to an impossible realm of madness all attached to the walls. But what really caught the internet’s attention was the small portrait to the top right of the painting depicting a bearded, pipe-smoking man who wears a familiar painter’s cap and overalls outfit.
Since the tray’s discovery, another redditor, Inkwild, has inferred what the rest of that figure might look like, and created a full-body portrait.
While the original image didn’t show what was written on the character’s hat, if anything, the artist decided that “SR” was a good fit for the elder Mario. Whether this stands for “Senior” or for something else is left up to the viewer.
It’s unlikely that anyone at Nintendo gave a thought to the character or his history before signing off on the tray’s artwork, but it’s kind of fun to see what’s come of it. On the other hand, Luigi did sport these same colors in the Japanese-only anime movie Super Mario Bros.: Peach-hime Kyushutsu Dai Sakusen, which released in 1986. It’s probably the result of looser standards, but maybe he actually borrowed the suit from dear old dad.
