I arrived to see a wide collection of Nintendo Super Mario merchandise, clothing, and toys, but was transfixed by the morphing image of Super Mario’s face on a nearby iPad screen.
Hello Mario, which arrives in the US on February 19 on the App Store and Google Play (and will be available in Japan after a few months), is a free and strangely attractive app that doesn’t do much, but somehow perfectly conveys the spirit of Mario’s prankster personality.
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Many of the toys that Nintendo and its partners showed off were aimed at young children, including very young ones. There were Fisher-Price toys like a Little People set that recreates Mario’s platform game interface, featuring a collection of Little People Super Mario characters, green plastic tubes, and physical buttons to activate familiar sounds from the game (look for the original Super Mario musical Easter egg), and another based on Super Mario 3’s Treasure Ship, complete with a launchable catapult.
Fisher-Price
Playset My Mario Adventure With Figures
Fisher-Price
My Mario Bowser Airship Figure Playset
There were adorable Super Mario onesies and bath toys for babies and toddlers that my kids would have loved. They are adults now, although they may still have fun.
Still, it was the app, which will also be available to run on the Nintendo Switch 2, that wowed me.
Hello Mario starts with just Mario’s face on a blue background, but you can grab any part of Mario’s face and pull and stretch it. One finger can stretch his iconic mustache to the extreme, and two fingers can move his face from side to side, playfully distorting his familiar visage.
At one point, we put a finger in his face and started spinning his head like a top. When we released our finger, Mario’s head would bounce across the screen: the more we bounced, the more points we earned, and suddenly we were collecting gold coins.
You can tap the screen to reveal a simple interface and, for example, access familiar game elements like a green pipe, Blooper (Mario’s squid-like enemy), or Toad. We grabbed Toad, moved him around the screen while Mario’s eyes followed him, and then dropped him on Mario’s nose to make him bigger.
It’s not a complex app, but it will clearly entertain young children. To that end, Hello Mario even has built-in screen time monitoring features. When it’s time to take a break from the screen, Maro will automatically cover his face and stop interacting. Mario will not play again until you close and reopen the app.
I found that I couldn’t stop pushing, pulling, and playing with the expendable Mario; Maybe I need that screen control.
All of this, the apps, the toys (no price has yet been announced), the clothing, and even a nifty board book are scheduled to arrive just ahead of schedule. The Super Mario Galaxy moviewhich will hit theaters on April 1, 2026. I wonder if it will be as fun as this app.
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