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How is it possible that at one time, American children found Mario more recognizable than Mickey Mouse?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario#Reception_and_legacy



"In the 1990s, a national survey found that Mario was more recognizable to American children than Mickey Mouse."



It sounds like a lie to me. Everybody knows who Mickey Mouse is, regardless of whether they play video games. You basically have to play video games in order to know who Mario is, and not everybody does. Besides, Mario has only been around for about 30 years, and Mickey Mouse is like three times that.
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Back in the late 1980s/early 1990s, Mario was just about everywhere, and not just in the video game. He had appeared in a cartoon series called the Super Mario Brothers Super Show, which featured a couple of actors portraying a live-action Mario and Luigi, who owned a plumbing business, and their favorite food was pizza. The live-action adventures segued with animated adventures of the video game characters.



It also deals with how much exposure children at the time had to Mario.



The video game was very popular, and of course toy companies love to cash in on fads any way they can. Back then you couldn't go into a toy store without seeing Mario Bros. action figures, stuffed toys, shirts, candy, and the like. At one point there was even a Super Mario Bros. cereal!



There wasn't a kid alive back then that didn't own the game, had a friend or family member (brother, sister, cousin) that didn't own the game, or knew nobody that owned the game. I knew three people in two different towns at the time who all owned the game. On the other end, Mickey Mouse didn't have a lot of "modern" face time, since he was featured only in cartoons produced 40 to 50 years prior, and were aired on the Disney Channel, which at the time was not as widely available to cable subscribers as it is now. Back then Disney was part of the "Premium" or "Pay" package, right along with HBO, Cinemax, and Showtime. The channels that most cable subscribers did receive didn't air the classic Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck cartoons; they aired the more modern Disney cartoons that made up the "Disney Afternoon" block, with cartoons such as Ducktales, Chip-N-Dale Rescue Rangers, Tale Spin, Darkwing Duck, and others. Mickey might have made a cameo in at least one of those cartoons (Donald did in Ducktales), but he wasn't as predominantly featured on TV as he is today, with the Disney Channel, and any show he may now star in (Mickey Mouse's Clubhouse on Playhouse Disney, Mickey's House of Mouse that aired in the early 00s) being more widely available.



A similar study was done about the same time with more shocking results: Kids were able to identify cigarette mascot Joe Camel, of Camel brand cigarettes, a lot quicker than they were able to identify Mickey Mouse or Bugs Bunny. It's not because they smoked or their parents smoked, but it was because Joe was featured more predominantly on billboards, magazine ads, and merchandise, than Mickey or Bugs. The cigarette companies ate this up, knowing full well that this would get young children to smoke. The Joe Camel character is said to have gotten a lot of children hooked on cigarettes back in the 90s.



@Song: The purple monster is named Grimace, but danged if I can remember what the bird's name was. The robber guy was called the Hamburglar, and his catchphrase was "Robble-robble!", while trying to steal McDonald's brand hamburgers. Nowadays the only character who really makes an appearance on any of the commercials is Ronald McDonald. All the others have fallen to the wayside.



1949 TV commercial from Camel cigarettes. You can order a More Doctors Smoke Camels T-shirt at: yowzers.com.