Obviously, I think this is awesome. But at the same time, I don’t know that I understand this subculture of people who do stuff like this just to receive accolades online. I’m a relatively creative person but I don’t think I’ve ever sat upright in my chair and gone, “I’ve got it! I’m going to make a Mario made out of toast! Oh and with English Muffins for hands!” Sonic the Hedgehog made entirely out of Canadian bacon, sure, but never Toast Mario. But I guess that’s just what separates the winners like Toast Mario from the also-rans. Well, that and 20 pounds of Canadian bacon.

Toast Mario [Imgur]

I think this is so funny because it’s so far-fetched. Now if it were Doctor Mario, oh man, I’d be blowing a load in my own right eye right now. The way Mario took his honorary doctorate so seriously and somehow cured AIDS through the power of well-placed colored pills is something I can completely get behind.

Once you get past the fun of freebasing invincibility stars and injecting growth mushrooms into your penis, there aren’t a whole lot of perks to living with Mario. Like when you get a call in the middle of the night as Mario sounds all panicked and then you have to bury the body of another Goomba. And you try to break the tension with a Pulp Fiction reference and go, “What does this house look like? Is there a sign on the front that says Dead Goomba Storage?” But he doesn’t get the reference. Mario never gets the reference. Now Sonic the Hedgehog…once you get past all of the shedding and furry little animals walking in and out at all hours of the night after being “freed,” he’s not a bad guy after all. And he kind of sounds like Urkel.

Point: Being a Goomba sucks. Unless they have really good wages and a great insurance package because, even in a recession, this job kind of blows.

If it’s any solace to the Goombas out there reading this, if real Mario is like me, he’ll get bored of jumping on everyone’s head and just start to race through the level. I’m something of a pacifist whenever I’ve played Mario. I just want to survive and get some sweet royal poontang for my mustachioed Italian man. It wasn’t about the murder to me. It never was. Unless you’re one of those stupid beetle things wearing a football helmet, whatever they’re called. They know what they did. When you see one beetle thing in a football helmet drunkenly throw his whiskey bottle at you after sleeping with your mom, you never forget. No matter how many coins and magic mushrooms he leaves behind.

I’ve always said that Mario was woefully underqualified to do this job. Like if I were to get a pizza delivered to me or to have someone play an accordion while a monkey grinds a box, I’d hire Mario in a heartbeat. If I wanted someone to come in and mass-genocide millions of freakish Mushroom Kingdomites, I’d probably bring in someone with guns and knives and hand to hand combat skills. What were the odds that jumping on everything’s head was going to work? Has to be pretty slim, I’d imagine.

I’ve always wondered what made Mario think he was so special. He was pretty much a schmuck plumber in Brooklyn for his real life and all of a sudden he gets sucked into a toilet or some crap and thinks he’s a superhero. What if a black dude had gotten sucked into a toilet? Would the Princess have been horrified because she’s seen turtles and mushrooms and giant turtles and more f’ing turtles with wings walking around but never saw a black guy? And he’d have certainly been more athletic than an out-of-shape Italian dude so the game probably would have taken about 5 minutes to beat after you just punch a Goomba in the face and Bowser craps his pants (probably after angrily frothing while you yell things in a movie theatre). Also, just curious, but why did they have those power-ups locked into bricks so high off the ground? Who was using those before Mario? Did Bowser put them there just to f with the elfin people of Mushroom Kingdom but had no clue that someone tall enough to break them off would ever come? I have so many unanswered questions.

I don’t think it’s so far-fetched to say that Mushroom Kingdom is pretty much the worst place to be a human ever. It was like Princess Peach and a bunch of midgets. Which is great if you want to make the Mushroom Kingdom Olympic basketball team but doesn’t really embolden your view of humanity or offer you much of a selection on Match.com. Likes: Head with fungus attached. Dislikes: Apartments with high cabinets.

[original image via]

I’ve always contended that Mario is probably an awful human being. I mean it’s great that you got sucked through a pipe full of human waste, but that doesn’t totally give you the freedom to kill thousands of innocent simpletons in the dimension you go to in exchange for coins and frog costumes. Unless that was part of the Geneva Convention that I didn’t read. It was probably an addendum.

I bet Luigi’s got a big one. And if there’s one thing you can tell about Princess Peach, it’s that she’s a real size queen. Poor Mario though…I think we all assumed the Princess was probably giving Mario something on the side to make up for the fact that he kept sacrificing life and limb and dressing like a Furry for her. But who knows? She probably didn’t even give him a handjob. She’d probably dispatch Toad to do it and he’d do with just a bit too much vigor, looking Mario in the eye and smiling. Man, Mushroom Kingdom is a fed up place.

“The kids were convincing her that video games were more than just fun,” according to a source close to Angelina Jolie, 33. “They explained to her you can do anything from practice math to learn to read music and exercise.”

The source tells OK! that Angie’s eldest son Maddox, 7, was showing Angelina — who also has her hands full with Pax, 4, Zahara, 3, Shiloh, 2, and 4-month-old twins, Knox and Vivienne — the games for their Nintendo DS online when they discovered Let’s Pilates!.

“She tries to get in an hour of Pilates three times a week,” the source says.

“She’s picking it up pretty quickly and is already at the hardest setting!”

I wonder if Angelina’s kids always speak in advertising lingo. Maybe that’s how they learned English after coming from the Serengeti or Pluto or whatever, just watching mindless TV ads. I’m pretty sure Maddox’s first words were about how you only have to take 8 Valtrex pills a day to prevent future outbreaks and then you go out and live a normal life.

One can only hope that this leads to a scenario in which Angelina Jolie falls in love with Mario. It’s not entirely implausible…he’s a powerful man, he cares about other less fortunate peoples (as is evidenced by his aid to the people of Mushroom Kingdom). Sure, Angelina would have to ignore Mario’s tendencies towards exterminating entire races like the Goombas, but hey, you can’t love everything about a person right away.

[Via the new issue of OK Magazine]

Many people have dreams of being a chef. That’s not so bad. But being a chef who only makes burgers basically puts you in line with the greasy kid from the McDonald’s down the street. And being a chef who assembles these giant burgers by walking all over them makes you a crapty chef at that. Unless your feet are the special ingredient, in which case, that’s pretty impressive.

But even worse than that, Peter Pepper has to deal with Mr. Egg, Mr. Pickle, and Mr. Hot Dog, each a human-sized version of their last name (how convenient) trying to stop him from making his giant footburgers. It’s not really clear why they don’t want you to make the burgers since, ostensibly, that’d stop you from cooking them alive. But what do you expect from food that suddenly gained autonomy?

Ice Climbers (Popo and Nana)
Game: Ice Climber
Job: Climbing ice
Benefits: Getting to reenact scenes from Cliffhanger

In spite of their mallets and ability to do something very few people could do, it’d be hard to get excited to be an Ice Climber. Why? Well A) It’s much less scenic than all those free HD channels would lead you to believe and B) Because their job is to recover vegetables from a renegade Condor.

So you’ve got some asshole Condor who keeps stealing your vegetables while you’ve got to climb and climb and climb and then you have to kill other endangered species of bird and fight polar bears and it’s just like…how did these indigenous little Eskimos go so wrong? And just wait until PETA hears about this. Try explaining to them that the reason you attacked the Condor with a mallet was because he stole your eggplant. I don’t think they could relate to the plight of your simple igloo-loving ways.

Mario
Game: Super Mario Bros
Job: Plumber
Benefits: Feces. Lots of feces.

Forget all his other temp jobs as a tennis judge, referee, doctor, there’s one job that Mario had in the real world that he really owned: Plumber. And sure, if you’re to believe the Super Mario Brothers Super Show, as seen in the clip below, a supremely faulty drain (how fed up do your fixtures have to be to open up a gateway to another world) that Mario was plumbing somehow resulted in him being sucked into Mushroom Kingdom.

But forget that, do you realize how many drains Mario and his broke ass brother were cleaning out of pubes and sludge and mucus before they got to that Mushroom Kingdom? No wonder he never said, “Hey Princess, mind sending me back to Brooklyn?” Stomping on the heads of some evil mushrooms with shoes and dealing with a firebreathing turtle is a picnic next to a stopped toilet in a Williamsburg homeless shelter.

B.D. Joe
Game: Crazy Taxi
Job: Taxi Driver
Benefits: Substantial tips, no way to get charged with vehicular manslaughter

I’m going with B.D. Joe for this one because he seemed far more above it than the other characters in the game. Joe had dreams, hopes, a Jamaican accent. But he also engaged in a profession which kind of blows. Did you know that you know that most male cab drivers pee in a bottle to keep going and maximize fares during shifts? I’m pretty sure I didn’t just make that up, though I suppose that’s always a possibility.

So not only does he have to piss in a Snapple bottle (Snapple Fact: Don’t drink me), but he has to endanger his life, and everyone else’s, to get more money from his patrons. Yeah let’s see, let me drive up on this roof and leap off all so I can shave 2 seconds off your trip to KFC. Awesome. And then you can’t even take your aggressions out by steamrolling innocent pedestrians because they always leap out of the way. What’s the point of being a cab driver if you can’t commit a bit of vehicular manslaughter?

Zangief
Game: Street Fighter II
Job: Bear wrestler
Benefits: Communism treated its bear wrestlers like Kings

No matter where you are in life, there are very few times where you’d think that being thrust into a tournament where you fight to the death against some of the best fighters of the world, some of whom are capable of conjuring up balls of fire to launch at you, would be an upgrade. But one of those few times belongs to Zangief.

Nevermind the fact that the guy couldn’t throw a fireball or break the sound barrier with his fists or spit flame or, really, do anything of note like his competitors; this is a man deserving of your respect. The guy wrestled BEARS. And not tussling around with a stuff teddy while pretending you’re the Ultimate Warrior like you and I may have. He wrestled full on grizzlies. And lived. And not only that, but he had to do it while in Soviet Russia (where BEAR gets mauled by YOU). You try wrestling a bear under any circumstances, let alone hopped up on steroids, vodka, and potatoes while the KGB insist that an 8-foot tall bear is a threat to your glorious regime.

Paperboy
Game: Paperboy
Job: Paperboy
Benefits: MILFs

This kid who was the Paperboy always struck me as a bit too old to still be a Paperboy. I guess that’s neither here nor there though since he clearly had a passion for slinging the news at the homes of customers. Better than those lazy kids in movies set in the 1920s standing on the corner shouting out headlines. Get some wheels, slacker. But anyway, the Paperboy had a tough road just to make enough money to take a girl out and hopefully get some boob. Check out a list of the obstacles from the Paperboy Wiki:

The player must stay alive by avoiding obstacles that appear along the street. Some obstacles include everyday nuisances such as bees, fire hydrants, storm drains, break dancers, cars, skateboarders, drunks, and kids playing with radio controlled toys and even rather bizarre foes such as a tornado, oversized house cats, and even the Grim Reaper himself.

You know your job is fed up when “break dancers” and “drunks” are considered an everyday nuisance while an oversized house cat is a bizarre foe. Such is the life of the Paperboy. Up is down, black is white, it’s your job to make sense of it all…and deliver the news to the world.

Dante
Game: Devil May Cry
Job: Demon Detective
Benefits: Meeting interesting people, Hellspawn

Yeah, Dante looks all cool up there with his white emo hair and his guns, but being a detective hunting down demons isn’t what I’d consider fun. Especially when your father (whose death you’re trying to avenge) was a demon. Where I come from, that’s called being a self-hating demon. And then while he’s trying to do his whole demon murdering thing, which is slightly more difficult than delivering newspapers, he’s always getting demons trying to kill him. Or confuse him, like Trish below.

She’s a demon, but she’s cool, so Dante fights her and then they become friends or some crap. And he’s probably like, “She’s a demon, I hate her” but then he looks at her and he’s like “Heheh boobs’ and kind of forgets where he is and accidentally discharges his gun and apologizes profusely saying how it never happens to him and he’ll make it up to her somehow, but she’s all turned off by that point and he just has to clean himself up. …it can put a damper on hunting demons, trust me.

Doc Louis
Game: Punch-Out!!
Job: Boxing Trainer
Benefits: Ringside seats; Not much actual time spent training

Think about it this way: You’ve dedicated your whole life to boxing. This is all you know. You saw a match on TV once, instantly fell in love, begged your parents to get you into a boxing gym. You grew up around the sport, know it inside out. You tried to make it on your own but didn’t have the physical tools. So you decide that your knowledge can be put to better use as a trainer. So you comb the ends of the Earth looking for a talent whom you can put over the top. And you end up with Little Mac.

Yeah. That guy who’s approximately the size of Mike Tyson’s genitals. Your protégé is basically just a midget with a complete lack of talent. The appropriate response would probably be: Fuck.

But then somehow, thanks to your guidance, he overcomes the odds and starts racking up wins, first against other scrubs, then against legitimate contenders. Despite a mismatch in every sense of the word, he overcomes the Champ. And then, you realize…”I could have been a contender.”

WWF Thumb Wrestlers

What boy didn’t grow up and enjoy a flirtation with wrestling at some point in his life? And what boy doesn’t enjoy a good bout of physical competition of any sort? So you tie those two things together, add one plastic Hulk Hogan and one plastic Roddy Piper (because it’s logical to make one of the only free games people can play less cost-effective) and presto! You get this:

At first glance, you’d think Hogan and Piper must have also spent some time in the showers with Kamala because there’s no way of explaining their overly generous rectums otherwise. Fortunately, it’s okay…the holes are actually in the spine of the toys, not the bung. Still, thumb wrestling seems so much less innocent when there’s shirtless men involved and victory seems to entail forcibly sodomizing your opponent.

Spider-Man Web Shooters

One can only assume that Hasbro bought companies that had an excess of both rubber gloves and silly string when releasing this poor excuse for Spider-Man’s web. Or they just wanted a quick buck, which is stunning for a multinational corporation.

You could certainly see the appeal as a child of wanting to be like Spider-Man, with his web slinging him around, sticking from building to building. Then you can see less of an appeal when you actually buy the product and end up with one gloved hand (like Michael Jackson) shooting a sticky fluid at young young male friends while pretending that it’s web (also like Michael Jackson).

BOARD GAMES

The Simpsons Don’t Have a Cow boardgame

Of course, the first thing that comes to mind with The Simpsons is how careful they are with their brand. Matt Groening and 20th Century Fox were never ones to latch the Simpsons name onto any old piece of crap, of course. So clearly a Simpsons dice game is going to be as revolutionary and unique as the show was.

Roll the 8 cubes which have pictures each of the 5 Simpsons. Try to match classic combinations like Homer and Marge, Bart and Homer or the 3 Simpson kids.

Players bet either against or with the dice roller. Losing bets go to the roller, winning bets come from the bank.

So hold on. This isn’t even a board game…it’s not even craps. It’s basically you rolling dice with little yellow people’s faces on them (which, for the record, you had to STICK ON YOURSELF…lazy child laborers at the factory not doing it for me), hoping that certain combinations come up. You wouldn’t see Ashy Larry with such an inferior product in the back alleys of Brooklyn or at the World Series of Dice, I guarantee you that much.

FOOD AND SNACKS

Ninja Turtles Vanilla Pudding Pies

Image: X-Entertainment

I might be completely off base here, but I remember a different version of this pie pictured above that was yellow on the outside with green ooze on the inside. And even if that was just one of my drug-fueled 5 year-old hallucinations (of which there are many), this is still pretty heinous. Green foods of any sort are just gross, even if you’re a little kid and you really enjoy heinous things. Even ketchup, which is pretty much as simple a sell as you can get, couldn’t get something green off the ground…Heinz’s green ketchup line was discontinued in 2006.

Honestly, I don’t know why the Ninja Turtles made such a strong push towards food. I’m not sure how much stock I can put in the flavor habits of mutants who enjoyed thing like peanut butter and sardines on their pizza. Check out some of their other heinous foods here.

Hannah Montana Concert Candy

Sure, they’re delicious and not at all nutritious, but what immature tween with a hankering for sugar wouldn’t immediately start giggling when they see these? Then again, this was a pretty good compromise for Miley Cyrus. She’s probably not a huge fan of gummy treats but she certainly seems to have a hankering for boys and all their worldly goods, so for all we know, the phallic design may have been intentional.

BEAUTY

Mario Bubble Bath

Granted, I’m not big on “bubble baths” or “personal hygiene” but this Mario bubble bath just seems like something I wouldn’t want. Mario could endorse a lot of products that I’d buy; Overalls, self-help books on how to overcome shortness, spring-loaded sneakers, even a grocer’s line of mushrooms…I’d line up for any of those. But when I picture a hairy Italian plumber having to run through a kingdom for days on end, eating all kinds of foreign foods and just working up a perpetual sweat, it’s not my first instinct to go, “Man, I’d love to smell like that fictional guy!”

Meanwhile, Bowser was powerful, daring, successful (he owned multiple castles, boats, AND flying ships) and probably smelled of the finest colognes and spices. I’m not saying Princess Peach should have picked him over Mario, but maybe she should have put a little more thought into it.

My Little Pony Ponyville Fancy Fashion Boutique

Girls are sugar and spice and everything nice. Apparently, the “everything nice” portion of things includes hay and horse crap because this little girl beauty kit with stuff like hair ties, shopping bags, hangers and other crap includes two perfume bottles. You can show me the prettiest pony in the world with the most lush mane and the most gorgeous physique and I can show 730 gangrenous bums who will still smell better than that pony. It’s basic Hobonomics.

HOME DECOR

Wonder Woman Lava Lamp

I’m doubting there are many kids who went after this one. Wonder Woman did some cool crap, sure, but I don’t think as a child anyone out there is trying to advertise their dedication to her craft.

But clearly someone out there has to have bought this. And to that person, I’m not going to say that there’s something wrong with Wonder Woman. I’m not even going to say that there’s something wrong with owning a lava lamp (it’s got lava, it supplies light, what more can you want). But when you think you need to get something to enrich your room’s ambiance and settle on a lava lamp adorned with Wonder Woman’s visage, you may need to reevaluate your priorities in life. Unless you’ve totally committed to the theme and also feature a bed made out of lassos and an invisible car that you ride to work every day. Though that may open you up to larger problems.

GENERAL CRAP

Hulk Hands

Image: Massless.org

Hulk Hands could cure cancer and you’d imagine yourself looking like this guy above (assuming you’re equally as partial to tunics) and you’d probably think twice before wearing them around. On the plus side, they do awesome things like…make sounds when you hit them against things. So if you ever wanted to hear a silly growling smashing sound while hitting someone in the groin with padded hands, this might be the right purchase for you. Though I despise you for finding a way to take the humor and whimsy out of hitting someone in the groin.

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Anything that you regrettably wasted your hard-earned kid money on? You know, the crispy dollar bills you got from that stranger in the van who called them “Keep A Secret” payments? Share them below! The suggestions, not your traumatic memories.

The Princess is kind of right…it’s not like it’s Mario’s place to say what she does with her body. If some fat Soviet chick with a beard rescued my Prince-ly ass from a dragon turtle dude, I’d be like “Awesome, thanks” but I wouldn’t really be willing to bring her back for a romp on my castle floor.

Bonus Mario video because it’s Friday and utterly transparent that I’m posting this out of a lack of news…a strategy session with Mario villains and Bowser: