I had arrived to see a wide collection of Nintendo Super Mario merch, apparel and toys, but I was taken aback by the malleable image of Super Mario’s face on a nearby iPad screen.
Arriving in the US on February 19th in the App Store and Google Play (and will be available in Japan in a few months), Hello Mario is a free and oddly engaging app that doesn’t do much but somehow perfectly conveys the ethos of Mario’s ancient personality.
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Many of the toys Nintendo and its partners showed were aimed at young children, including toddlers. There were Fisher-Price toys like a Little People set that recreates Mario’s platformer interface with a collection of Little People Super Mario figures, green plastic tubes and physical buttons to activate familiar game sounds (hunt for the original Super Mario music easter egg), and another based on Super Mario 3’s Treasure Ship, complete with a launchable catapult.
Fisher-Price
My Mario Adventure playset with figures
Fisher-Price
My Mario Bowser Airship Playset with Figure
There were adorable Super Mario baby and toddler shirts and bath toys that my kids would have loved. They’re adults now though, maybe they’d still get a kick out of them.
Still, it was the app, which will also be available to run on the Nintendo Switch 2, that caught my eye.
Hi Mario starts with just Mario’s face against a blue background, but you can grab any part of Mario’s face and drag and stretch it. One finger can stretch his iconic mustache to the limit, and two fingers can pull his face this way and that, playfully distorting his familiar face.
At one point we put a finger on his face and started spinning his head around like a top. When we released our finger, Mario’s head bounced around the screen: the more we bounced, the more points we collected, and suddenly we collected gold coins.
You can tap the screen to reveal a simple interface and, for example, access familiar game elements such as 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 Mario super-sized.
It’s not a complex app, but it will definitely entertain young children. To that end, Hello Mario even has built-in screen time control 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 I couldn’t stop pushing, pulling and playing with the fungible Mario; maybe i need that screen control.
All this, apps, toys (prices haven’t been announced yet), the clothes and even a smart board book are all timed to arrive just before The Super Mario Galaxy Moviewhich will be in theaters on April 1, 2026. I wonder if it will be as fun as this app.
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