Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island "Still the Big One" Commercial

"Still the Big One" is a circa 1995 commercial promoting Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island. It has gained infamy for its depiction of obesity and has since been widely regarded as one of the worst Nintendo commercials of all time.

Why It Isn't The Big One

1. To address the elephant in the room, the stomach-bursting scene. It's not as disgusting as it is in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, but even so, no words can describe just how repulsive and grotesque it is.
2. The overweight man in the commercial (who is supposed to be an allegory of Yoshi, by the way) appears to be extremely naive, as he repeatedly chows down on various foods until his stomach swells up to maximum capacity, and he seems to only just notice that. When he says that his stomach is full, the narrator easily coaxes him into taking one more bite, which inevitably results in his stomach bursting.
3. When the man's stomach balloons to maximum capacity, it's abundantly clear that he's wearing an inflatable suit underneath his clothing.
4. As an ad for Yoshi's Island, it feels inappropriate since the game is mostly targeted towards a younger crowd and since this commercial is targeted towards adults, it comes off as ill-suited and depressing since many people back then would've been so repulsed by this advert that they might've never brought the game to their SNES library despite strong sales numbers, thus giving the game a bad look in the west at the time.
5. It's extremely disgusting whenever the man shoves all of the food in his mouth since he often crams so much food in his mouth that it causes him to become fat in the most barf-inducing way imaginable and can make the viewer uncomfortable as a result.
6. It tries way too hard to be edgy and cool but fails due to awful writing and trying to replicate the Sega Genesis ads, which is out of character for Nintendo to do something like that in the first place.

Redeeming Qualities

1. The narrator does a fairly decent job highlighting the game's high points, which wasn't common for American commercials for Nintendo products before the mid-2000s.
2. The other versions (e.g. the GBA port, New Zealand, UK, and/or Canadian version) didn't have stomach bursting.
   • The Japan version has better ads because it did have animation. So, why just dub from the Japanese version instead?

Comments

Loading comments...