Super Mario Bros. Super Show: Koopa Klaus / Santa Claus is Coming to Flatbush

Hey, paisanos! We warp back to 1989 for a double dose of Christmas segments from “The Super Mario Bros. Super Show” — the live-action “Santa Claus is Coming to Flatbush,” featuring Santa losing his “transportation” in Brooklyn; and the animated “Koopa Klaus,” featuring a plot to… freeze the North Pole.

On This Episode

1. Mike Westfall (@fallwestmike), tiny selfish mushroom baby.
2. Adam Pope (@hojukoolander), another fun guy, fresh out of Retro Detention, from Retro-Daze and The Retro Network.

Topics and Tangents

1. Nintendo Power’s Preview of “The Super Mario Bros. Super Show,” as tweeted by Adam, and preserved on the Internet Archive (for now) (it’s on page 93).
2. I didn’t realize till recently the music in the “Back to the Future” Nintendo game is a sped up version of “The Power of Love.”
3. “King Koopa’s Kool Kartoons,” a live-in-studio spinoff show local to Los Angeles and hosted by King Koopa, performed at one point by Christopher Collins, the voice of Cobra Commander.
4. Captain Lou Albano’s Wrestling Hotline 1-900 number.
5. We map out where Mario and Luigi lived in Brooklyn.
6. “Stunt Dawgs,” an obscure 1992 cartoon featuring Harvey Atkin playing another character with the same King Koopa voice.
7. A brief discussion on the term “teeter-totter,” used by Mario here, versus “see-saw.”
8. How tall is Mario? Captain Lou was 5-foot-10, though other sources range from 5-foot-1 to 3-foot-8.
9. Preview of Super Nintendo World, coming to Universal theme parks.
10. Finally, I get to talk at length about The Legend of Zelda!
11. Adam’s SequelQuest episode on the “Super Mario Bros.” movie, featuring a parody of the Super Show theme song.

Previous Podcast Episodes Mentioned

• Frosty the Snowman (Season 1, Episode 1)
• Mickey’s Once Upon a Christmas (Season 2, Episode 19)

“The Super Mario Bros. Super Show,” “Koopa Klaus,” and “Santa Claus is Coming to Flatbush” © 1989 DiC Entertainment.
“Super Mario Bros.” © Nintendo Co. Ltd.

Commercial Break:

• Pepsi Nintendo Holiday Game Commercial, 1989, preserved by Dinosaur Dracula.
• Nintendo Power Commercial, 1990, preserved by RobertDigitalGames.

The Advent Calendar House is on the web at adventcalendar.house, on Twitter @adventcalhouse, and part of the Christmas Podcast Network.