by Rollin Bishop

What does a hero smell like? I've found myself pondering this question for over a week, ever since I purchased a frankly inadvisable amount of Old Spice toiletries that just so happen to have The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (that's the full legal title, mind you) branding for the upcoming Illumination animated film. I'd known it was coming for months and months — there was a whole to-do over leaks from the body spray — but had little interest in picking any up for myself despite being The Physical Ephemera Guy.

Something changed when I saw it there on the shelf while shopping. Who is this for, I wondered. There are plenty of actual toys for the movie, which releases April 1 in theaters, but staring at the Old Spice deodorant, body spray, lotion, body wash, and bar soap laid out before me suddenly felt absurd. More absurd than that, even, was the fact that it appeared to have been quite popular: the shelves were nearly barren. At this realization, some primal instinct bubbled up within me and, well, long story short, I'm good on deodorant, body spray, lotion, body wash, and bar soap for the foreseeable. (I couldn't find the 2-in-1 shampoo and conditioner, but I did look.)

In order to keep some semblance of scientific method in place, I've only been using the Mario-themed products — "Cosmic Quest," they're called — rather than mixing and matching. It seemed to me at least to be entirely uncouth to shower with Mario only to put Yoshi under my arms and spray myself with Princess Peach. I'm all for multiplayer, but a single whiff of the individual scents immediately led me to believe that combining them would only produce one thing: a headache.

Even with that subsectioning, the products are inscrutable. Basically every single one says "scent of star showers" on the label somewhere, but not what that means. When I asked my family to describe in detail what I smelled like after using all of them together in sequence, here's what they had to say:

• "...Mario? You smell like Mario?"

• "Yourself."

• "Mango. And peaches."

Of these, the last is the only one with specific scent notes, but even that seems to be fairly far afield. The bar soaps are the only ones with genuine smells attached on the side, and Mario's Cosmic Quest says JUICY PEAR & CEDARWOOD. It's worth noting that the Mario bar also states SOME GRIT while Luigi is ZERO GRIT. It's ultimately unrelated to my smell journey, but it makes me laugh whenever I remember.

The official press release from Procter & Gamble announcing the branded line is actually the clearest description of what Cosmic Quest actually smells like, so good luck to anyone else just buying it in the supermarket, I guess: "A clean fragrance with refined watery notes complemented with juicy sweet citrus notes and a rich base of signature wood and musk notes."

That's helpful! Less helpful, however, is the following quote from Kate DiCarlo, senior communications director at P&G. "We aren't just introducing a line of products; we're giving fans the ability to smell like a hero," said DiCarlo. "This collection combines the nostalgic joy of the Super Mario Galaxy game with the high-performance freshness men expect from Old Spice. It's for the guy who wants to turn his morning shower into a cinematic power-up."

In the immortal words of Daniel Craig's Benoit Blanc, it makes no damn sense. Compels me, though. DiCarlo gives the game away a bit here, however, as the clear appeal to nostalgia is deliberately targeted. You remember Mario? You remember how cool that was? Does that inspire you to spend money on inoffensive but also unnecessary bath and body products?

I'm hesitant to say this worked on me, but I did buy them in the end, so, the result is the same. Insomuch as this is a problem, I'm a part of it. A pear-and-cedarwood-smelling part.

/out of frame

👾 Rollin: Nearly all of my free time has been dedicated to playing Pokemon Pokopia, which has its pocket monster-sized hooks in me, but I'm excited for the new anime season. It's gonna be a banger!

🕵️ Toussaint: Been slowing inching my way through Resident Evil Requiem. Finally finished a big Clair Ashcroft section and now I'm sniping zombies as Leon Kennedy. Also, I just started The Posthumous Investigation, a new time-travel detective game inspired by an 1881 novel by Brazilian author Machado de Assis. Help a dead man solve his own murder! Fun times.

🧑‍⚕️ Kambole: The anime season just wrapped (as you might have seen from a couple of letters, for my sins Jujutsu Kaisen has recently won me back) – so been filling the small gap until the new season with John Woo films and the (surprisingly good) Scrubs reboot. In the meantime, I've been getting excited about this year's Annecy Festival, which recently announced shorts from Don Hertzfeldt and Koji Yamamura as part of its competition lineup.