Promotion and Reception
Since his debut in Super Mario Bros., Toad has been met with mainly positive reception. As a character who appears frequently in the series, Toad is considered to be one of the major Mario series characters. Toad appears in much of the Mario merchandise in products ranging from toys to plushies and keychains. Toad is featured in Nintendo's board games such as being on the protagonist side in the Mario themed chess set, as well as being a purchasable character in the Nintendo-themed monopoly game. In Animal Crossing: City Folk, Toad's hat is available after getting 3000 points in Tom Nook's Point Tracking system. The American Club Nintendo website currently offers a special reward featuring Toad and some other major Mario characters in a folder set reward named as the "Toad & Friends Set with Bookmarks". The quote repeated by the Toads in Super Mario Bros., "Thank you Mario! But our Princess is in another castle!", was ranked one of the most repeated video game quotes.
Toad ranked in the seventh slot on GameDaily's top 10 Nintendo characters that deserve their own games list; the site explained that he has a strong appeal that Nintendo has yet to tap into. GameDaily also listed the "neglected guy" on its list of top 25 video game archetypes, listing Toad as an example. Toad is listed as number two in the most neglected Mario Bros. characters list as he has been described by the site to have been ignored by Nintendo for quite a while due to his lack of starring roles in the more recent games. IGN editor Matt Casamassina criticized Nintendo for including the two generic Toads over more notable characters (including Toad himself) in the Mario series for New Super Mario Bros. Wii, arguing that the developers were being lazy to not include other characters because the Toads were easier to make. IGN also listed Toad as one of the top 10 characters needing a spin-off. In an Oricon poll conducted in Japan from 2008, Toad was voted as the eighth most popular video game character in Japan. Another poll (of over 1000 votes) conducted in Japan by NintendoWorldReport in concern to Japan's favorite Mario Kart racers listed Toad as the second most favorite Mario Kart racer in the country (only being beaten by Yoshi). Toad has also been credited for being one of the celebrated characters in the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Super Mario Bros. games. MTV, when commenting on the wackiness of Super Mario 2 (Super Mario Bros. 2), called Toad "so awesome". UGO.com listed Toad on their list of "The Cutest Video Game Characters," stating "Once you get over his misleading name, you’ll find Toad to be quite the adorable mushroom."
Read more about this topic: Toad (Mario)
Famous quotes containing the words promotion and/or reception:
“Parents can fail to cheer your successes as wildly as you expected, pointing out that you are sharing your Nobel Prize with a couple of other people, or that your Oscar was for supporting actress, not really for a starring role. More subtly, they can cheer your successes too wildly, forcing you into the awkward realization that your achievement of merely graduating or getting the promotion did not warrant the fireworks and brass band.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)
“But in the reception of metaphysical formula, all depends, as regards their actual and ulterior result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of human nature into which they fall—the company they find already present there, on their admission into the house of thought.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)