When it comes to big movies, you might expect the official trailers to be the ultimate source of narrative information and plot detail. But when it comes to Illumination’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie, the McDonald’s leaks have been one of the most prominent outlets for letting us know what is going down in the Mushroom Kingdom.
From that initial reveal of Mario’s appearance to hinting at an unannounced character cameo, we have learnt far more from the fast food retailer about Mario and the gang than we would care to admit. Of course, the biggest source of this information has come in the shape of the famous Happy Meal toys, with the promo leaks gifting us a constant stream of rumour while we wait for the next trailer to drop.
Now, these Happy Meal toys have begun to appear out in the wild and we can finally get a closer look at just how truthful those leaks were. It seems that there are two regional releases for this promo with the US and Japan receiving a more conventional plastic range of toys and Europe getting a buildable cardboard collection.
In the case of the plastic range (the more superior of the two, in our humble opinion) there is a collection of eight toys available, each showing a different character from the movie with it’s own gimmick – Mario makes a jumping motion from a pipe, Bowser shoots a flame, Peach spins, you get the picture.
@nintendomerch snapped a picture of the full display and McDonald’s Japan provided a trailer with some of the toy’s movements in action, both of which can be found below:
The European range, on the other hand, is more about displaying the figures than it is providing something to necessarily play with. This collection of 12 “toys” is comprised of a series of kits where you have to slot together pieces of cardboard to create a small cutout figure from the movie – fun. An image of the full range was shared on Twitter by @RafaelM52985398:
While the cardboard cutouts might not be quite as enjoyable as the toys that we would normally expect from McDonald’s, they are certainly more detailed than the plastic ones and a closer look shows them to apparently be pretty good quality. Reddit user u/MissNintendoGirl shared their growing European collection so far consisting of some of the larger builds (Donkey Kong’s kart) and individual character pieces alike.
If we were still young’uns then we can only imagine our disappointment at getting one of these instead of the cool US toys, but as an item for display purposes only there’s a certain attraction there, we guess.
Which of the above collections is your favourite? Fill out the following poll and then take to the comments to let us know which of the new toys you are after!
