From the Wikipedia article on Goomba:
In 1990, a few Mario characters became part of a series of McDonald’s Happy Meal’s toys, as part of a way to promote the release of Super Mario Bros. 3. The Mario toy set featured Mario (in his Raccoon form), Luigi, Paratroopa, and Little Goomba. The Goomba toy is spring loaded and has a hinge between its head and feet. There is a small suction cup at the front of the Goomba’s head and sticks to the top of its feet when pressed down. Once pressed down, the toy backflips a few moments later by way of a compressed spring inside the casing of Goomba’s head.
I had all four of the SMB3 Happy Meal toys. Though I was just four years old, I was already totally hooked on all things Nintendo, and especially all things Mario. My mom and I had just moved to LA; we had fled from Japan, my alcoholic father, and his über-misogynistic family. We were holed up in a crummy apartment in Koreatown (about a three-minute drive from where my mom lives now) on a street named Mariposa. I will learn about a decade later that the name of our street means “prostitute” in Spanish, and that perhaps this was what attracted the sort of business that was carried out by some of the other tenants in our building. My mom had scored the position of apartment manager in our building, so she was able to take care of me and work simultaneously. I remember these days as the glory days of my childhood, when my mom and I were partners in crime, and I still smiled shyly for pictures. This was all before she started dating my stepfather, all before I turned into a sullen five-year-old. This was when she still let me be a stupid little kid and eat junk food just for the purposes of collecting pieces of plastic made to some likeness of a video game character.
When we got home from McDonald’s, my mom and I played with my Goomba, making it flip over all sorts of things in the apartment. My mom grabs the Goomba at some point and tells me that she’s going to eat it. When she eats it, she says, she’ll die from some poison inside of the Goomba because it’s a baddie. Horror and dread fill four-year-old Emma, and she begs and begs that her mom doesn’t eat the baddie. Mom refuses to listen and says that the Goomba looks so tasty. She makes a move to eat it and opens her mouth wide.
At this point I realize that nothing I say will convince my mom to stop, so all I do is accept what will be inevitable and start sobbing. I can’t stand the thought of my mommy dying, and I’m even more upset that I can’t do anything to stop it. My mom stops kidding around at this point and tells me it’s ok, she’s not going to eat the Goomba.
There are a lot of reasons why this incident has lasted the test of time with respect to my memory, but I think what I like to hold onto the most is how relieved I felt when my mom started hugging me and I knew that she was going to be all right. That and how neat it is still when you get the Goomba to flip over itself in just the right way.
[The original television ad for the toys.]
emma :: Jan.15.2007 ::
misc ::
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