Remember a few years back when Nintendo welcomed the summer by naively combining the words "Mario" and "Sunshine" over a picture of everyone's favourite plumber enjoying a slice of watermelon? The internet was quick to make a mental leap between the two with cries of "Mario Sunshine 2 confirmed!!", and while this year's post might not produce quite the same reaction, Nintendo has gone back to the watermelon theme once again.
Nintendo's summer socials post for 2023 was always going to be Tears of the Kingdom-based (come on, Horace the Horse was never going to headline the holiday message, was he?) and this one, predictably, sees Link front and centre. Rather than his natural display of heroism, however, the image instead shows the Hero of Hyrule kicking back with some refreshing watermelon — hence why we were reminded of the former Mario Sunshine fiasco.
The art was recently used in Nintendo's official magazine for summer 2023, but it's too sweet to just use the once, right?
You can check out Mario's 2019 summer post below — what is it with all these watermelons?
As it turns out, the humble watermelon is more closely related to summer activities in Japan than we had assumed. The fruit is used in a summer beach game called Suikawari, an activity similar to a piñata where blindfolded players take turns to try and smash open a watermelon with a wooden bat (thanks, Wonderland Japan). There we were wondering why the fruit keeps reappearing in Nintendo's summer marketing and it turns out that it's no coincidence after all — the more you know.
The seemingly close association between the two in Japan might hint at more watermelon-based summer posts from Nintendo in the future. Which character will be the next to chow down on the summer snack, we wonder...