Toddler Terrors of Time Travel

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The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 episode
"Toddler Terrors of Time Travel"
Mario, Luigi, and Toad in their infant bodies.
Episode no.	8
Prod. no.	103
Airdate
Writer(s)	Rowby Goren
List of all Super Mario cartoon episodes

"Toddler Terrors of Time Travel" is an episode of The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3.

[edit] Synopsis

Inside his castle, Bowser, having yet again suffered defeat at the hands of the Mario Bros., is suffering from a headache, and complaining that if the Marios had never come through the warp pipe that brought them to the Mushroom Kingdom (as seen in the intro to the animated segments on The Super Mario Bros. Super Show), then he could easily have taken over it by now. Ludwig, however, has an idea - if they could go back in time to before that incident happened, they could prevent it from ever happening. So with Bowser's guidance, Ludwig creates a Time Tube with which to time-travel. Unbeknownst to either of them, Toad has been spying on them, and he brings Mario and Luigi to Darkland to stop the deed.

They stow away onto the Doomship just before Bowser and Ludwig begin to head off to the (never specified) date of the incident. Bowser, annoyed with Ludwig's slow speed, tries to make it go faster, despite his son's warnings; as a result of the turbulence, the Time Tube malfunctions and de-ages the bodies of the Mario Bros., Toad, Bowser, and Ludwig into baby bodies (hence the episode's title). The Doomship then crashes right in the middle of Brooklyn on the (still unspecified) date the Koopas were aiming for.

After a brief chase sequence, Bowser and Ludwig go back to the Doomship, where Ludwig repairs the Time Tube and uses it to return him and Bowser to their normal sizes. The Mario Bros. and Toad (who are not yet back to their normal sizes as they're too far from the Time Tube to be affected), meanwhile, come to the apartment wherein lives the lady who had called the Mario Bros. on that fateful day. But the woman mistakes the three for real babies, somehow completely failing to notice that they're talking normal English and that two of them have moustaches, and when Bowser and Ludwig drive up disguised as "costumed plumbers", she mistakenly believes them to be the plumbers she called for.

In their disguises, Bowser and Ludwig get to work clogging up the woman's drain even more so than it already is ("We're playing a little game we call 'Stuff Your Furniture Down the Drain'!"), but the Marios and Toad are wise to their plot and turn on the water valve, causing the whole apartment to flood. Bowser and Ludwig go down to the basement and trap the Mario Bros. in a spare pipe, but they forget about Toad. The Koopas return to the Doomship and begin to head off to the present, with Bowser confident that he's finally won. Toad, however, has snuck back on and, having been restored to his fully-grown body, directs the Time Tube's waves at the pipe Mario and Luigi are trapped in. Now back to their fully-grown selves as well, the Marios repair the woman's drain and then go down the warp pipe within (apparently not realizing the paradox this causes, see below). Back in the present, Bowser is just about to force Princess Peach to surrender her kingdom to him when Mario and Luigi arrive to save the day.

[edit] Trivia/Goofs

• When Toad leaves Bowser's throne room, he leaves behind the periscope he was using to spy on them. But near the end of the episode, as Bowser is starting up the Doomship, Toad uses the periscope to snatch the Time Tube, despite the fact that he left it in Bowser's throne room (unless, of course, this is actually a second periscope he had placed in the Doomship).
• Ludwig mentions that he and his father would get to Brooklyn "just before noon," but when they do arrive, it is 2 o'clock.
• Princess Toadstool has only one line of dialogue in this episode.
• While held captive by Bowser, the Princess strangely smiles at him.
• The featured song in the chase sequence, called "Baby Chase", is a parody of the song "Babyface" (which Bugs Bunny hummed in one theatrical short). During syndication reruns however this was replaced by an instrumental, but it is restored on the DVD release.
• Immediately after returning to their correct age-bodies, Mario and Luigi go down the drain warp themselves, which is in fact what should be happening to their past counterparts (who never show up during the episode). In other words, the present Mario Bros. seemingly become their past counterparts, which would mean this is a time loop.
• There are a few time-related errors in this episode. First, when the Time Tube sends the Doomship into the past, it should have disappeared immediately (as it does not exist at that time). Second, and most notable, Ludwig should have disappeared too as he did not exist at the time either. This creates an illusion that Ludwig is the same age as Bowser.
• This is the only time in this series in which Bowser wears gloves.
• When Luigi is giving his stroller more power, his is in his usual attire.
• During the chase scene where Mario, Luigi, and Toad are in the wagon, in the shot where Luigi tries to get the wheel back in place, he has his plumbing outfit on! But in the next shot, he's in a diaper again!
• At the end it shows Mario throwing a hairball at Bowser. When he throws it, it's white, but when it hits Bowser, it turns blue.
• When you see into the box Mario and Co. are wedged into, the box shuffles and moves because it's being lifted. But the background remains and it looks funny.
• When Koopa says "After those diapered dodos" Kooky's bonnet is orange when it's supposed to be yellow.
• During the chase, you can once see the skin on the backs of Mario and Luigi's heads when their bonnets aren't supposed to show that.
• When Mario and Co. reach the dead end, Toad is in his regular outfit.
• When Toad and Luigi turn on the hoses, the one on the far right turns on by itself.
• When Toad jumps onto the Doomship, he is in his regular clothes again.
• When Mario and Luigi come to save Princess from Koopa, Toad runs on top of Princess' dress. He's not standing on it; it's just drawn wrong.
• When the Mario Bros. pass the kids playing jump rope, the girl on the end has a gray bow and green skirt. When the Koopas pass them, she has a purple skirt and green bow.
• When the Koopas chase the Marios-on-wheels, we see a behind shot of the good guys. We then see Luigi in the stroller and Mario in the wagon, when in previous and upcoming scenes it's reversed.
• We see the good guys lose wheels and switch wheels with someone else. When they round the corner and reach the dead end, the wheels are normal again.

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