Super Mario Bros 3 Luigi Happy Meal Toy Review

Here's a quirky little chunk of my childhood; the McDonald's "Happy Meal" Luigi toy, sold in 1989 to promote Super Mario Bros. 3 for the NES:

I'm fairly impressed with the overall sculpt-work here. The toy bears a fair resemblance to the artwork seen in most promo material and game manuals of the time. There are a lot of Happy Meal toys (even those released today) that flat out slum it in the aesthetics department. Luigi here came out lookin' damn fine, particularly when considering his mass produced, "pack-in" nature.

But listen here, there's more to Luigi than his looks! He actually has his own unique "action feature," as did all of the Mario 3 Happy Meal toys. You can see all four in motion in this old commercial:

Luigi is just a simple friction toy. Push him backwards along a flat surface, release, and off he goes! Twenty-five years later, I'm happy to report that the feature still works surprisingly well. However, it may just be the default nature of "pull-n-release" gimmicks, but the motion is anything but predictable. Sometimes it goes straight, sometimes it curves, and the rest of the time it zooms around in all kinds of crazy circles. This does have some charm, but I still mostly prefer to use the toy as a display piece.

Overall, the Super Mario Bros. 3 Happy Meal Luigi is a perfectly fun little toy and anytime I look over at him I get a nice little nostalgic kick. Maybe one day I can track down the rest of the set, but even alone, I'm more than pleased to still have this guy.

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