Talk:Jammin' Toad

Same Toad?

Are both of the headphone wearing Toads here really the same? They're given different names, are wearing different headphones in different ways (pressed to spots on cap, vs wrapped around cap), and have very different roles in each game. --PopitTart (talk) 23:06, December 29, 2024 (EST)

Yeah, they should be split. PrincessPeachFan (talk) 12:31, December 30, 2024 (EST)

Arguing for the opposition: "The first of these characters does not have a name. It is a very informal description of what this character looks like, even if it is a consistently used description. The second character has a name, and their defining characteristic is that they have headphones. This conveniently is the defining characteristic of character 1, therefore we can plug character 2's name into character 1's empty slot." Do I agree with that line of thinking? Hmm, I'm not entirely sure where I fall. (It uh, is probably relevant that character 1 here appears to reuse the model of the Toad character wearing headphones from the Headphone Mario feature, therefore it could also be argued that character 1 also does not have a deliberately made visual appearance, which means the visual differences between character 1 and 2 are insignificant. Also not sure where I land on this, but given some other splits, intent also matters in terms of things sharing pages or not. Salmancer (talk) 12:04, January 5, 2025 (EST)

Let's split

This talk page section contains an unresolved talk page proposal. Please try to help and resolve the issue by voting or leaving a comment.

Current time: Saturday, February 22, 2025, 19:59 GMT

These two Toads are completely different as the Run one has a generic name and lets you play music on your mobile device while the Odyssey one has a proper name requires you to find a track from the Music List that he wants and hands you a Power Moon and as such should be split.

Proposer: PrincessPeachFan (talk)
Deadline: February 14, 2025, 23:59 GMT Extended to February 21, 2025, 23:59 GMT

March to their own beat (Support)

1. PrincessPeachFan (talk) Per proposal.
2. Salmancer (talk) We have two similar characters, not two identical ones, and we aren't supposed to speculate.
3. FanOfYoshi (talk) Per all.
4. Hewer (talk) Sure.

March together (Oppose)

1. Nintendo101 (talk) I agree they are not really the same subject, but I do not really think they warrant having articles of their own. I would rather the one from Super Mario Run be merged with Headphone Mario (or at least the information pertaining to him) since this Toad does not really have a name or identity of his own, so he does not really qualify as a minor NPC. I'm not honestly sure the Jammin' Toad from Odyssey should be elevated to the status of a unique NPC either since he is simply referred to as a "Toad" in-game, so the name "Jammin' Toad" may be a misperception from Prima Games staff, but at least he is tied to some specific Power Moons in Odyssey. Maybe both would make more sense lumped with Toad (species).
2. Arend (talk) Per NintendoFan101; should've added the option to move the Super Mario Run Toad to Headphone Mario instead, when you still got the chance to edit your proposal in the first six days.
3. Blinker (talk) Per both.

Comments

@PrincessPeachFan While I agree that the way these two are covered together is odd and should probably be changed, I still can't support your proposal. First of, you haven't given any argument for why the Toad for Run should have a dedicated article. Also, I'll point out that most information in such an article could easily be covered on Headphone Mario. I'd suggest adding an option to move the information on the Toad from Super Mario Run to that article. By the way, you should probably also mention your proposed title for the split article (I only just saw it on the split template) in the proposal text itself, as it's not immediately obvious. Especially since Toad wearing headphones and Toad (headphones) are both valid options. Blinker (talk) 10:06, February 1, 2025 (EST)

Headphone Toad do be looking exactly like "Toad wearing headphones" over here, so I'd rather move the SMR information from this article to Headphone Mario. rend (talk) (edits) 14:32, February 1, 2025 (EST)

I think I would support that before splitting off the SMR Toad into his own article. - Nintendo101 (talk) 17:15, February 2, 2025 (EST)

Headphone Mario is heavily promoted as a "feature" and the Toad wearing headphones activates that feature. I feel like splitting the toad, instead of mentioning it as a toad that resembles Jammin' Toad, would be like if we split off the coin rush button. Coin Rush is a feature, and the button activates that feature. I don't think there's enough evidence to support they're different characters, or even enough information on what is just a glorified button.-- SComic^(T|C) 09:26, February 9, 2025 (EST)

But we do split the coin rush button. It's Coin Rush Star. And "character as button" feels different than "button as button" Salmancer (talk) 09:38, February 9, 2025 (EST)

I was mainly referring to the one in Super Mario Bros. 2, sorry for the confusion as we were talking about Run. Either way, the Coin Rush Star feels more like a mechanic in a level rather than just a button. Not the best argument on my part, but I still stand with the idea that putting Toad wearing headphones information in Headphone Mario would make a lot of sense.-- SComic^(T|C) 09:52, February 9, 2025 (EST)

I'm going to raise Worldbot as a "character as button" with a page. Okay this isn't exact, as Worldbot is a "character as menu" and there's not really a place to merge Worldbot to, but still. Salmancer (talk) 17:04, February 18, 2025 (EST)

I highly doubt that Prima calling him by this name is a "misperception" as it's a more unique name than Toad and @Nintendo101, you said yourself he's related to a few Power Moon missions, which makes him unique. PrincessPeachFan (talk) 13:40, February 15, 2025 (EST)

When we say Prima made a mistake, we usually have more than one game's worth of evidence to swing at Prima. (See: Crow vs Crowber). The Toad with headphones depicted in Super Mario Odyssey is only in one game, meaning it's Nintendo's word against Prima's word. On any other wiki Nintendo's word wins easy, but on this wiki MarioWiki:Canonicity means we can't say Nintendo's video game is the more accurate depiction because that means saying Super Mario Odyssey is more canon than Super Mario Odyssey Prima Collector's Edition Guide. Salmancer (talk) 13:58, February 15, 2025 (EST)

Allow me to elaborate: I would not say the editors/authors of Prima Games made a "mistake." Rather, I think, at minimum, they recognized this headphone-wearing Toad is tied to specific Power Moons, and it made more sense for their purposes to relay that by giving the Toad a unique designation for their guidebook. That is understandable. However, I think our goal is to cover the games first, and I do not want to misrepresent the creative choices made in them. For this NPC, the name "Jammin' Toad" is not employed within the in-game English script, the Japanese material for this game (including the original in-game script and guidebooks), or the thorough Art of Super Mario Odyssey. He is simply called "Toad," and we know they did not have to do this because of the Desert Wanderer and a few other NPCs in Super Mario Odyssey. If this was a character that was supposed to be distinct from general Toad NPCs, I would have expected "Jammin' Toad" to appear in-game, or at least on their official Twitter account or in The Art of Super Mario Odyssey if this was a choice made by the game's makers/publisher after it was released, but it does not.

The Prima Games guidebook for Super Mario Odyssey is missing a lot of names employed in other official material published for Odyssey and ones even used in-game, and it is overall weaker source material than their guides for New Super Mario Bros. U or Super Mario 3D World. I suspect Prima was not afforded the same resources from Nintendo that they were in prior games, or maybe they started working on it before Nintendo of America had finishing translating the material themselves. However, it had lead to what seems to be independent inferences on what subjects are distinct in the game, as well as their own monikers for those subjects.

I can live with "Jammin' Toad" having his own article as means of conveying a specific subset of Power Moons in the game. However, I do not think he was created with the intention of him being an independent, named NPC to be distinguished from other Toads. (Do we even know if the headphone-wearing Toad found in various kingdoms is the same individual every time, or are these multiple different Toads that are wearing headphones? iirc, that is not relayed in the game itself.) - Nintendo101 (talk) 14:35, February 15, 2025 (EST)

It should probably be noted that the PRIMA guide authors probably came up with the "Jammin' Toad" name because of the Power Moon missions he's associated with, as they're all following the naming scheme of "Jammin' in the [kingdom name]". I think they would've simply called this guy a "headphone-wearing Toad" or a "Toad wearing headphones" if the missions all had distinct names, or used a different naming scheme such as "Listening to Music in the [kingdom name]". rend (talk) (edits) 15:09, February 15, 2025 (EST)

We do respect at least one other case of "not original creators making names for unnamed characters": Okusan. Super Mario is a team effort, so Team B doing stuff when Team A isn't aware of it is valid. Salmancer (talk) 17:04, February 18, 2025 (EST)

I was not involved with the creation of the Okusan article or anything involving that character, so I cannot comment on that. However, I will say it seems like a character that was mentioned in passing within the script of Donkey Kong Country 3. There is no character named Jammin' Toad within any version of Super Mario Odyssey. It begs the question: do we want to accurately and sincerely cover the games or not? - Nintendo101 (talk) 17:43, February 18, 2025 (EST)

I would also like to point out that the question of if these two Toads were the same guy was brought up in the section above this proposal around the end of last year. PrincessPeachFan (talk) 08:20, February 16, 2025 (EST)

Nobody's saying they are, so I'm not sure what you're trying to get at here. Blinker (talk) 16:41, February 16, 2025 (EST)

I think they saw the amount of oppose votes and assumed (for some reason) that meant these opposers disagreed that the two Toads were different Toads, even though they suggested to move the Super Mario Run Toad info to Headphone Mario, since it looks identical to Headphone Toad, which is a form already covered there. These oppose votes may have been added after the proposal was forced to extend (meaning it's already past the six-day deadline to make any changes to the proposal), but I'd still like to say that this suggestion was already made in the comments section on the very first day of the proposal, meaning that PrincessPeachFan had ample time to edit their proposal to include an option to move the SMR info to Headphone Mario... and yet they didn't do ANYTHING at all, instead (they didn't even attempt to argue why moving the info to Headphone Mario doesn't make sense). Which is why there are now three oppose votes. rend (talk) (edits) 18:26, February 18, 2025 (EST)