Supper Mario Broth: Special Zone, Issue 42 (Patreon)

Welcome, everyone, to the 42nd issue of Supper Mario Broth: Special Zone.

For all patrons at the $3 and higher tiers: the podcasts will resume this week, and will be published every week from now on. The e-book for the $6 tier will be released after the 20th of each month. Thank you very much for your patience; I hope that the content will be to your liking.

Yoshi's Branded World

Yoshi's Crafted World was released for the Nintendo Switch in 2019, first being showcased at E3 under the working title of simply "Yoshi". Even in the first trailer, one intriguing detail about the handcrafted world was that the backsides of some objects appeared to be made out of packaging for products that appear to exist within the Mario universe. 

The finished game contains many such products, which can mainly be seen in the "Flip Side" versions of the stages, which shows the papercrafts from the back (as they are usually decorated from the front, obscuring the packaging used to make them). Before I begin showcasing the products found in the game, here is a development photo of some early versions of the products, seen in a Japanese interview:

This photo contains incorrect English on the packaging that was corrected for the release version (e.g. "ritch in nutrition", "reflash tablets", "jerry beans"), as well as showing one product that did not make it into the finished game: Chain Chomps Chocolate. The othes ones seen here are present, although two of them are very sparse and only appear once or twice in the entire game.

I will go through all of the products in the game by showing a single collage image of instances of that packaging for each of them, as well as some commentary. Note that due to the game's frustratingly prominent tilt-shift effect (the photographic effect whereby items close to the camera and far away from it are very blurry, with only ones being a specific middle distance away having a clear focus), background objects are often so blurry that details are near impossible to discern. In some instances, it is possible to shift the focus by aiming at an interactive item next to the object; however, those items are rare and this is not possible in most of these scenarios.

The screenshots presented in this article are at the resolution that the console displayed them; I did not attempt to shrink or enlarge them. To view each collage in its original resolution, you may need to right-click the image and open it in a new tab, as Patreon's site design fits them into a relatively narrow column.

 1. Yo'ster Cookies

This is one of the most prominent brands in the game and appears in most levels. There are four kinds of these cookies: Squares, Hearts, Flowers and the very rare Rings. These contain two references: the "Yo'ster" in the name is a very unexpected reference to Yo'ster Isle from Super Mario RPG, a game that is almost never referenced due to rights for various characters from it belonging to Square-Enix instead of Nintendo; while the shapes of the cookies are references to four out of the six cookie types from the Yoshi's Cookie puzzle game:

Out of the types, the Squares are the most common:

Note that unfortunately, the nutritional information on all packaging, as well as most other non-logo text, is presented as illegible lorem ipsum-like scribbles. However, we can glean from the packaging that the cookies are produced by a company or brand called "Yo'ster Sweets". 

...followed by the Hearts...

...the Flowers (note that one piece of packaging says "Flower" in the singular instead)...

...and the Rings, of which the front is not shown.

Since Yoshi's Cookies are the de facto piece of confectionery associated with the Mario series, and they happen to be Yoshi-themed, they were a natural fit for being one of the most prominent products in the game. 

There is one detail that is only apparent when the relationship between the products and the stage they are in is considered. For some stages, the products are strategically chosen to reflect something about the nature of the stage. For example, Yo'ster Cookies Squares are prominent in the space-themed level Space-Hub Hubbub, as it features a square design aesthetic fitting for a futuristic space station. I will point out more instances of these as I continue with the brands.

2. Moo Moo Meadows Milk

The second most prominent type of product seen in the game is Moo Moo Meadows Milk, which is a reference to the Moo Moo Meadows track in Mario Kart Wii, itself a reference to the Moo Moo Farm track in Mario Kart 64. Since Mario Kart is such a prominent influence on the Mario series, cows in the entirety of the Mario series have been known as "Moo Moos" since.

The packaging depicts a Moo Moo standing in, presumably, the meadows in question. Interestingly, we can see that the gibberish text appears to start with "Moo moo", one "M" being uppercase and another lowercase, but the next word, if it is "meadows", does not have the "o" symbol in it, so it is either not "meadows" or the code is more complex than just a substitution cipher (or the text is actual gibberish that the designers made to look like it started with "Moo Moo"). 

There are also other Moo Moo products, like this yogurt:

There are also products that only appear as unlockable costumes for Yoshi and not as elements of the stages. One of them are the various "creamer" costumes. The frustrating part about these is that they have logos on the tops, but there is no way for Yoshi to put on the tops in the costume selection screen, while doing it during regular gameplay is both too far away from the camera and shows it at an angle so it is not readable there, either. As such, all we can do is look at the very brief glimpses of the tops seen in the selection menu:

"MooMoo" can be seen underneath the bend.

3. Super Popcorn

Super Popcorn is a brand that is not referencing anything pre-existing from the Super Mario series. It appears in four varieties: salted, curry, basil and blueberry. I was unable to determine whether these are common flavors of popcorn in Japan, where the game was developed, but for me as a European, basil and blueberry popcorn seem rather exotic. 

Super Popcorn appears prominently in the circus-themed Hoop-Jump Hop stage, as popcorn is generally associated with being consumed while watching entertainment such as a circus performance or a movie.

4. Power Nuts

Power Nuts is a brand of canned salted peanuts. The peanuts on the cover have a smile with a slightly protruding upper lip, which can be seen in other places in the Yoshi series with the Yoshi's Island Boo design or the Marching Milde design.

5. Grain Land Corn Flakes

These corn flakes are produced by Grain Land, a company that also produces the product after this one, the bran flakes. They appear to come in two varieties, unflavored with a "VITAMINS and IRON" label, or cocoa flavored. Their slogan is "MORNING POWER!"

Together with the bran flakes and the Moo Moo Meadows Milk, they comprise the entirety of the packaging that appears in the "Exploring the Animal Kingdom" stage, to underscore its nature theme, as these three products are what the designers believed to be the most "natural" out of the ones in the game.

6. Grain Land Bran Flakes

Unfortunately, despite many different sides of the packaging of the brain flakes being shown, the only time its front is shown is from extremely far away. I have provided both a regular and an enlarged version. It appears to depict the same sun from the corn flakes, but yellow and higher up in the sky instead. The brown designs around it appear to be ears of wheat or some other cereal.

7. Blueberry Jam

This one requires sleuthing to find out the name of the company for: while both jars of blueberry jam and a Yoshi costume for it appear, both have the name of the company (around the flower) cut off or not readable. However, the company logo (Natural Fruit Gardens) appears in a readable form on some cardboard boxes that do not mention blueberry jam. As such, the player must connect the two together to figure out that Natural Fruit Gardens makes the blueberry jam.

8. Baron Potato Chips

These come in three varieties: salted, cheese and spicy. Interestingly, the front of the spicy ones is never shown, but luckily the back spells out the flavor in the top left. Baron Potato is a brand that appears very often as just the logo on cardboard boxes, but much less frequently as the actual product packaging of the chips.

Interestingly, in the prototypes shown at the beginning of the article, the green packaging is "sour cream" flavored instead of spicy.

9. Caramel Blocks

Another very frequently appearing packaging is Caramel Blocks, apparently a candy based on the Question Blocks and Brick Blocks from the general Mario series and Turn Blocks from Super Mario World in particular. The concept of caramel blocks and Mario series blocks seems so natural to combine that these would undoubtedly be very popular food items in the real world if Nintendo decided to license the idea out to a candy manufacturer.

10. Sunshine canned fruits

These cans of fruit are difficult to discern. These could be anywhere between 1 and 3 different products, which is not possible to tell as no can is ever seen fully from the front. One kind of these says "Sunshine Pineapple" on the back, one says "Sunshine Fruits" on the front, and one says "Tropical Mix" on the front. At any rate, these seem to be a reference to Super Mario Sunshine both in the name and in the company logo, which seems to be based on a Shine Sprite (seen in the bottom left).

11. Jelly Beans

These are boxes of fruit-flavored jelly beans (known in the prototype version as "jerry beans"). The mascot is a jelly bean with a bow, and the slogan is "Delicious & Cute". While very hard to discern, the logo in the top right depicts a monochromatic rainbow, and says "Rainbow" underneath, so they appear to be made by the "RAINBOW corporation" (see next image) together with the next product, Rainbow Chocolates.

Jelly bean packaging appears frequenty whenever bouncy stage elements are present, due to the bouncy nature of jelly.

12. Rainbow Chocolate

Rainbow chocolate also appears to be made by the same company, "RAINBOW corporation" (bottom right), as the jelly beans. These appear to be based on the real-world glazed chocolate candy like M&M's. In the prototype, they were called "Colorful Chocolate".

13. Whole Peeled Tomatoes

These appear to be regular canned tomatoes without any cartoony aspect to them. Interestingly, the logo of the company making them is much too blurry to discern on the cans themselves, but...

...it appears exactly once in the game, by itself without the tomatoes, upside down. Luckily, this one is barely readable enough so that we can determine that the brand is called "Delicioso Foods".

14. Cloudy Tissues

Cloudy Tissues are the only non-food product in the game, being presumably, paper tissues, since they are packaged with an opening to pull through like most tissue paper. In the Hoop-Jump Hop stage, one of them is edited to make the cloud on the packaging into a mouse (bottom).

The (relative to the rest of the game) unsettling Be Afraid of the Dark stage, which takes place in a city at night, has an overcast sky. To underscore this, most of the packaging visible in that stage is Cloudy Tissues, as they also have a cloud theme.

15. Fruit Juice

Fruit juice appears very commonly, but does not seem to have a company associated with it, unless "Fruit Juice" is also the brand name. It comes in three varieties, the common apple and orange juices, and the very rare grape juice. The first two also have their own costume versions, while the grape juice does not.

16. Undecipherable Frozen Fish Brand

This brand is very bizarre. Instead of the name being in English and the small print being gibberish, here, the logo is gibberish as well. It seems to depict two fish in a circle, and appears mainly in the ice-themed Slip-Slide Isle stage, so it is likely a frozen fish brand. There is also a polar bear image and a snowflake with similar unreadable text associated with it. Only logos are visible, no fully illustrated packaging exists. I theorize that the gibberish is intended to give the products a "foreign" or "imported" feeling, as frozen fish is often imported from other countries. The gibberish also appears to read "ICY" on one end, upside-down, supporting this.

17. Melon Splash soda

This is a rarely-appearing brand of melon-flavored soda by "Super Soda", whose logo is a Super Star.

18. Starbeans Iced Coffee

This brand of iced coffee is a possible reference to Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, though it also likely to be simply a reference to the real-life Starbucks coffee shop chain instead, and merely happened to use the same pun (the logo of the Starbeans Café in Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga is E. Gadd's head, which is not present here; also, the logo here is literally a star and a bean, suggesting the name is referring to the logo instead).

19. Kooky! Kooky! Cookies

These are another brand of cookies, unrelated to the Yo'ster Cookies brand. I imagine the developers wanted to show that this world is so rich with different brands that no single company is monopolizing the manufacture of certain foods, like cookies. They were known as "Cook! Cook! Cookie" in the prototype, and appear much less frequently than Yo'ster Cookies, despite also coming in different varieties. The ones seen are a "Mario mix" with various cookies shaped like Mario series objects, and a "mushroom mix".

20. Koopa Wagashi

Wagashi are a type of decorated Japanese dessert that is traditionally served with green tea. This is the only packaging that is in Japanese instead of English or gibberish, and being a traditional Japanese product, appears only in the Japanese-themed Ninjarama world.

21. Mint products

These are very rare products that all have the same logo consisting of a circle divided into quarters. They appear to be breath mints, or "reflash tablets" in the prototype, and a mint-flavoured soda by the same brand. 

22. Pretzels

These pretzels are so rare that I was unable to find any instances of the front being visible at all. All we can see is that there is some sort of illustration on the can, as well as the word "salt".

23. Various minor drinks

Finally, there are some drinks that appear only on a single bottlecap or costume each. These include:
-Leaf Tea
-Punch Soda Orange
-Soda Pop Pink
-Soda Wave
-Peach Splash
-Soda Pop Lemon
-and the enigmatic "Drink Drink Triangle", which suggests absolutely nothing about the nature or flavor of the drink in question.

In addition, an Easter Egg exists where a Fountain Café sign appears in the Go-Go Yoshi stage:

This is a reference to the Fountain Café sponsor who first appeared in Mario Kart Wii and then reappeared in every Mario Kart game since.

This concludes the brand showcase. As many of these are very hard to find in-game, it is possible that I have overlooked some during my search. If you notice any missing brands, please leave a comment and I will take screenshots of it and edit the article.

Thank you very much for reading.