The Super Mario Galaxy Movie came out this week and immediately set records despite mediocre reviews, confirming that Mario’s cultural footprint is just as big now as it was when I was a kid. I grew up with the Super Mario Brothers Super Show, which MeTV Toons began airing this week (with an unfortunately terrible AI upscaled version, which got enough backlash for the show’s current owner WildBrain to put out a non-apology apology). Fortunately, Tubi still has the original standard-def prints. I’ve been revisiting the show there, and was reminded of a favorite piece of trivia.

The live action portions of the Super Show were unpredictable, to put it mildly. The guest stars were all over the map, including WWF wrestlers, a Cher impersonator, and even Ernie Hudson as a legally distinct Ghostbuster. But one of the most interesting was fellow DiC character Inspector Gadget, who appeared in two episodes of the show and made his first live action appearance a full decade before Disney’s 1999 movie. In his first appearance, “Defective Gadgetry” (embedded below) Gadget asks the Mario Brothers to repair his malfunctioning gadgets. In his second, “Treasure Of The Sierra Brooklyn“, Gadget is called in to help find a treasure that is inexplicably hidden in the Mario Brothers’ office.

If you watch the clip, you’ll notice that Gadget’s voice is perfect. And that’s what makes this crossover especially fun. Who played Inspector Gadget?

Famed voice actor Maurice LaMarche, in one of only a handful of live action appearances across his career. LaMarche likely got this role because he’d already worked on Inspector Gadget, taking over the role of Chief Quimby in the show’s second season. While these two Super Show appearances were, at the time, the only times LaMarche voiced the character he would eventually inherit the role of Inspector Gadget full-time after Don Adams retired.

While trying to find the clips for this header, I discovered there’s at least one more time Mario and Inspector Gadget crossed paths – and it’s a bizarre one. On a 2002 “Mario’s Greatest Movie Moments” DVD collecting episodes of the Super Show, Gadget was there to…teach you how to use the DVD menu. No, really.

I think, after reading all of this, you’ll all reach the same conclusion I did: Inspector Gadget needs to be in the next Super Smash Brothers game.

Have fun posting!