Weirdness: According To McDonald's, Mario And Bowser Are Now Firm Friends

I like the animation, hope people aren't taking it too serious. It's just a game.

No they're frenemies. They can't do without each other. It would be like bread without butter- just wrong.

I have no problem with the animation, just completely confused that McDonalds are tweeting it, since it seems to have nothing to do with them…

One minute they can despise each other, and the next they can be playing tennis doubles. I don't see any problem with this animation.

The tweets people post on this are really foul and disgusting.
I just watched the animation and it was very lovely.

@Damo it's weird that they are still allowed to use the characters for promotion. Unless the range of NFC McDonald's toys that we all want is arriving soon...

What no one played any Mario RPGs? They work great together (until they go at it again)

This is actually from a recent commercial they've been running everywhere, where they take cartoon versions of famous rivals and make them friends due to McDonalds food. Its actually really adorable and the full commercial is right here.

They are allowed to do this without copyright as well. They are drawing their own characters, not the exact Nintendo characters, or referencing them by name. But just by drawing characters who remind us of Mario and Bowser, Grumpy Cat etc they manage to get their commercial across to everyone without having to pay a bunch of money to play it.

Really genius move on McDonald's part, and their other commercials in this series are also some of their best in years in my opinion.

@ChessboardMan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EShRCWOtNJ4

Edit: Beaten by 14 seconds, not counting the time he spent typing it.

I like to imagine that all the main Mario games are just movies done on a set (you know, like SMB3) and at the end of filming. Mario and Bowser hang out at a Bar while Peach gets back to keeping her kingdom running.

But that is just my own personal head canon

Mario and Bowser ARE friends.

I've seen them sharing a table in Burger King.

@TobiasAmaranth Ok, that makes a little more sense… but this is still an odd promotion, not because of the concept of enemies being friends, but because the concept still has next to no connection to McDonalds.

I mean, if someone gave me McDonalds as a peace offering, I'd think they were a cheapskate. Also McDonalds gave me Salmonella once.

LOL at those stupid angry replies. They are taking Mario vs Bowser rivalry seriously. I've been playing Super Mario since I was a kid and I've never hated Bowser nor took his actions against Mario & co personally. Bah, kids and the internet today.

It's going to take more than a cute tweet of one of my favourite characters to make me ingest their poison.

Cool I guess.....?

I saw that on TV yesterday. I was impressed. And it's a nice design.
Wonder why people are taking this seriously. The ad also shows other protagonists sharing [the burger] with their respective antagonists. I don't see anyone beefing about the Smurfs and Gargamel becoming friends for a moment. shakes head

Wish I could see one of Kirby and Dedede.

@Squid Or even worse.... Samus and Ridley.... X(

Love the animation. Also, I'm not surprised that people are taking this seriously. A lot of people do this crap on the internet

There's consistent Mario canon? Is that what we're claiming? Because this makes way more sense than the lead-up to Mario Sports Mix.

They are great friends. How cannot be? If someone invites you to go kart, tennis, golf and Party, so he's your friend

Better Keep them away from the "Mario & Luigi" Series where Bowser regularly joins party with the Mario Bros.

They could have done some serious damage to Bowser in "Bowser"s Inside Story". While they may be enemies most of the time they have gotten along on numerous occasions.

its cute, its small, and its something we shouldn't look into to much

I saw this on television a week ago. Laughed.

Adorable!

Yeah, I really liked that commercial when I saw it. Gave me feels and a laugh. Thanks for the heads up to not bother with the twitter replies. lol.

No subtitle!!

Really? They're getting angry over 'Mario canon'? I liked it.

@bouncer0304 I know what you mean - bread and butter can't stand each other!

I hate mcdonalds, but eh, the animation is charming.

It's actually very good, as Bowser looks puzzled, then briefly terrified as he sees the piranha plant and very happy for the heart explosion. I like it!!!!

I understood the whole commercial including the Mario/Bowser segment and I dunno, it was entertaining and kinda humorous. I didn't take it serious at all and just respected the nod McD's gave to the two iconic characters.

Looks like a pretty cool commercial. I can't see why people would be upset over M & B. Have they ever played a Mario spin-off?

Why are there people upset about this?

@Emaan
'Cause it's the Internet!!!

I seen the McDonalds animations like SpongeBob and Plankton but I must have missed the Mario one. There is a Pac Man animation too.

There's a lot of copyrighted characters in that commercial, Batman and Joker, the Smurfs and Gargamel, Spongebob and Plankton, Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote, I think Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger were there too IIRC. I was wondering how they got permission to use them.

Anyone remember Super Paper Mario for Wii? This animation art style reminds me of it.

Ya. They are friends, time to time. They play golf, tennis, kart racing, and like to play party games and s***.

It's like the relationship between Team Rocket and Ash, imo.

@FLUX_CAPACITOR But they didn't use any of Nintendo's character models or art styles. Or say it was Mario or Bowser. They just drew their own characters which tend to remind us of famous icons. How do you think companies can use characters that look near exactly like, say, Angry Birds and not get sued?
They didn't draw Mario. They drew a character that resembles Mario. And can't be sued for that.
If you don't think so, that's fine, but that's the law at least in the USA.

...and here come the shippers >heavy sigh<

@FLUX_CAPACITOR Parody can be defined as like you said, but also like this: "parody … is imitation, not always at the expense of the parodied text." This is by a relatively important person in the world of theories and criticism.

As for your arguments, you say using a different art style isn't changing the character. Well, duh. They did this and changed the characters in their proportions and sizes. They didn't use Nintendo's characters. Honestly just look at the screen. The 'Bowser' has less spikes on his shell than Bowser. 'Mario' has a brown moustache instead of a black one. 'Bowser' has no toes when Bowser does. This could be proven in court if taken this far as simple imitation, and if you don't think so you're sadly mistaken.

I'm not trying to be mean or ruin your day or anything, but what you're saying just doesn't make sense.

@FLUX_CAPACITOR
@Prof_Clayton is actually right, you know. You can make similar looking characters, but as long as they don't look 100% like whatever character they're copying, and don't actually call said characters "Mario" or "Link," then it's not copyright infringement. Parodies happen all the time. It's not against the law. Those guys may resemble Mario and Bowser, but they're not actually Mario and Bowser. There's lots of differences between them and the actual characters.

@FLUX_CAPACITOR Have you ever watched ROBOT Chicken on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim? They parody everything, including Super Mario Bros. And some of their parodies aren't kid friendly, unlike Nintendo's.

Yes, you can parody whatever you want. Star Wars has been parodied 100s of times...

One thing for sure. Atleast Bowser is way better than Eggman!

That is the cutest animation ever, don't know why people'd get upset over this. O_o?

@FLUX_CAPACITOR Get off your high horse. I'm sure that McDonalds lawyers reviewed the commercial before it aired and made sure that all the i's were dotted and t's crossed. If it was infringing, it wouldn't have aired.

IMO, McDonalds is disgusting and no amount of advertising will convince me otherwise, but I must admit this latest commercial is heartwarming, certainly better than the head-scratching "what's in out food" campaign. Artery-clogging trans-fat, that's what...

@FLUX_CAPACITOR Um, it's a public forum. Anyone can chime in whenever he/she wants. You were the only one seemingly offended by the charming commercial. Everyone put up good reasons why it would fall under fair use, or otherwise they got permission to do so, yet convincing you of that is basically like talking to a brick wall.

Can't accept that Mario and Bowser were friends? In Super Mario RPG, Super Paper Mario, and Bowser's Inside Story, they actually team up. And in The Thousand Year Door, Bowser is more a comic relief than a real villian. And that's not counting the countless kart/smash/party/sports titles they appear in.

@Bulbousaur They have even raced together in the same Kart in Double Dash. Of course they become friends every now and then but I'm sure it's not long before one backstabs the other.

As much as I loathe McDonalds (im a vegetarian), that animation is really nice. The same can't be said about that cancerous comment section.

For all the people arguing whether that is Mario and Bowser, I'm pretty sure Nintendo let them use the characters in their commercial. Nintendo and McDonald's have always done deals with each other on toys and promoting free WiFi.

I don't watch much TV so I hadn't seen the commercial until it was linked up above, but damn if that isn't one of the best commercials I've seen in years! Heartwarming and gets the point across. For everyone asking what enemies becoming friends has to do with McDonald's, their slogan is, "I'm lovin' it," so I take that to mean in this context enemies loving each other for a bit because McDonald's helped them set aside their differences. A bit weird but the idea was obviously to play on the word "love" in their slogan. Obviously the food is so powerfully delicious that you love not only it, but you become very receptive to everybody around you as well. XD

It's cute! A+, McDonald's. I can't eat your nasty food and I don't want to anyway, but you sure know how to put an ad together.

@FLUX_CAPACITOR "I am so confused. Are you mentally insane, or just too young to comprehend what I'm actually saying?"

I'm 34, how old are you? Quick way to see who wins or loses this round. Lying about age is not permitted!

Actually, a video game character is nothing more than an actor in a role. Same goes for Mario and Bowser (just look at SMB3). So, that's cool to me, why not.

Oh, you. You just couldn't let me go, could you? This is what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object. You truly are incorruptible, aren't you? You won't kill me out of some misplaced sense of self-righteousness. And I won't kill you because you're just too much fun. I think you and I are destined to do this forever. - King Koopa/Bowser :3

OMG, why are people flipping out over a commercial that promotes friendship? So they used Mario and Bowser? They have a famous rivalry. The same can be said for all of the characters seen in the commercial, they weren't in there but I would have expected to see Optimus Prime and Megatron hug it out too. McDonalds spends a bit of cash to promote friendship and it just generates hate from mindless fools.

Charming animation! People who saw the "Bowsers inside story" ending know it already: Bowser and Peach/the Mario gang are frenemies!