Quest for Pizza

The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! episode
"Quest for Pizza"
Production number	135
Airdate	November 6, 1989 (English) November 21, 1990 (French)
Writer(s)	Martha Moran
Plumber's Log #	1 - 0 - 9
King Koopa's alter ego(s)	Alley Koop
Cover song(s)	"Alley Oop"
Replacement song(s)	"Speedy Gondola"
Title reference	The Quest for Fire
Live-action segment	"The Painting"
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"Quest for Pizza" is the thirty-seventh episode of The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! This episode is the first one of the show where Luigi, Toad, and Princess Toadstool are the main characters instead of Mario. Its corresponding live-action segment is "The Painting."

Plot synopsis

Toad reads a book with a picture of a dinosaur.

Mario, Luigi, Princess Toadstool, and Toad arrive in Caveman Land searching for Mugga the Medicine Woman, who they hope will set the Mushroom Kingdom free. Alley Koop, however, shows up first, and is now causing dinosaur-sized trouble. Almost immediately, they encounter a Mousersaurus Rex. Their attempts to flee the pursuing creature are thwarted by a Birdo-riding Alley Koop, who introduces himself. When Mario and the gang run in a different direction, Alley Koop tosses a red, poisonous snake that proceeds to pursue the Mario Bros. When the Brothers trip on a bone in the ground, the snake bites Mario in the leg, causing him to fall unconscious. Luigi and the others run to Mario's side and remove the snake, but cannot get a response from Mario. Alley Koop, the Mousersaurus, and a group of spear-wielding Koopa Troopas arrive to defeat the remaining protagonists. When the group finds themselves cornered in front of a waterfall, a caveboy in from a vine and tells them in his own language to get behind the waterfall, away from the sight of their pursuers.

Behind the waterfall, the gang discovers cavemen and Mugga, who the Princess hopes can help Mario. Mugga is shocked and disgusted by Mario's poor state, and shows the group a hieroglyphic depicting the unconscious Mario. Luigi, wanting instead to help the real Mario, attempts to revive him with a number of his favorite foods, including pepperoni cheesecake, a meatball sandwich, garlic ravioli, and prosciutto spaghetti. All of these fail to wake him up, and Luigi becomes inconsolable and starts crying after realizing that he is unable to wake his brother up. Mugga, trying to comfort Luigi, mutters the word "pizza", to which Luigi brightens up. Mugga then shows Luigi the rest of the hieroglyphics, which depict Luigi giving pizza to Mario. Luigi, realizing that this is the cure, decides to order take-out, but Toadstool informs him that there are no pizza parlors in the primitive Caveman Land, and that they will have to make their own.

Luigi runs away as the Cowazaurus gives chase.

To get the milk necessary to make the cheese for Mario's pizza, Luigi goes to a Cowazaurus, using a stepladder to reach its udders. The beast's tail whips the ladder from under Luigi's feet, causing him to grab onto an udder. This squirts all of the milk they need into a conveniently-placed bucket. The Cowazaurus falls in love with Luigi, who now has to be rescued by a vine-swinging Toad. At a large tree, Luigi wonders if ground acorns would be compatible with a pizza. Right after Toad doubts Luigi's theory, a giant prehistoric squirrel confronts Luigi as he is hoarding the acorns. As the group is sent fleeing from the colossal rodent, Toad reminds the others that all they need is tomatoes for the pizza sauce, which should be easy to achieve compared to the previous ingredients. At a tomato patch, the group is discovered by Alley Koop and his gang, forcing them to take whatever ingredients they have behind the waterfall. Unfortunately, a trail of tomatoes is left behind, allowing Alley Koop to discover where the group keeps hiding out. As Luigi bakes an admittedly mediocre pizza, Alley Koop's Mousersaurus ambushes the waterfall with a giant log, flooding the secret city and ruining both the pizza and the fire. A triumphant Alley Koop is now sure of Mario's imminent doom.

It is discovered that the pizza survived the flood, but Luigi proclaims that it is not a pizza until it is cooked. With a char-covered stick from the ruined fire, Mugga draws a Fire Flower on her wall, informing everyone (through a translating Toad) that Alley Koop has a Fire Flower, but keeps it under heavy guard. Luigi then figures that if they can retrieve this Fire Flower, Mario can be saved. Alley Koop is already aware of Luigi's plan, and enlists his minions to stop him. At the end, Luigi gets the Fire Flower and turns into Fire Luigi and defeats Koopa when he lands in the marsh. Luigi is worried that the time is almost up and Caveboy finally tells the three to take a shortcut. Then, they finally cook the pizza to wake Mario up. After waking up Mario, he stuffs the whole pizza in his mouth and says, "Only one pizza?" as Luigi starts to talk in caveman language, Toad and Princess Toadstool laugh as Mario is embarrassed.

Characters

"Alley Koop"

• Mario
• Luigi
• Princess Toadstool
• Toad
• Alley Koop
• Cobrat
• Koopa Troopas
• Mousersaurus Rex
• Cowazaurus
• Mugga
• Caveboy
• Cavemen
• Giant prehistoric squirrel

Cast

• Lou Albano — Mario
• Danny Wells — Luigi
• Jeannie Elias — Princess Toadstool
• John Stocker — Toad, Mouser, mushroom
• Harvey Atkin — Alley Koop
• Diane Fabian — Mugga

Animation and continuity errors

• When Alley Koop throws a Cobrat towards Mario and his friends at the beginning of the episode, he has Mario's voice. This is fixed in foreign dubs.
• When Luigi misinterprets Caveboy's first line as being something about mashed potatoes, he has Princess Toadstool's voice. This is fixed in the Brazilian Portuguese dub.
  • In the Latin American Spanish dub, he instead has Mario's voice.
• When Luigi trips over a bone, the bone is layered over him.
• When Toad looks at the picture of the Mousersaurus, the book misspells it as "Mouseraurus."
• In a couple of scenes, the Mousersaurus's snout turns red like his body.
• When Alley Koop orders his army to attack, he is briefly layered over a Koopa Troopa.
• When Mario's friends first enter the cave, Princess Toadstool's brooch has its colors reversed.
• When Luigi cries, his mustache is the same color as his skin.
• When Super Luigi looks at his watch, his arm is bare, but in the next shot, the watch is over his shirt, with the sleeves being blue instead of green.
• When Alley Koop follows Mario's friends to the hidden cave, there are no tomatoes on the ground, but in the next shot, some appear.
• When Alley Koop mentions how the lack of fire means no pizza for Mario, his thumb briefly turns orange.
• While Mario's friends drive a dinosaur skeleton, the bones change color several times.
• Throughout the episode, the Mousersaurus's bandage swaps feet several times.
• In one scene, Alley Koop's bone is brown instead of white.

• 

  The misspelled caption

• 

  The Mousersaurus's miscolored snout

• 

  Super Luigi's miscolored shirt

Profiles

• Netflix: It's a prehistoric problem of delicious proportions when Caveman Alley Koopa poisons Mario, and the only way to save him is to bake a pizza.

Names in other languages

Language	Name	Meaning	Notes
Chinese (simplified)	寻的批萨 Xún De Pīsà	Quest for Pizza
French	Un Invité pour la Pizza	A Guest for Pizza
German	Suche nach Pizza	Quest to Pizza
Italian	Una cura per Mario[?]	A Cure for Mario
Portuguese	Uma Pizza Importante	An Important Pizza
Spanish	En busca de la Pizza	In search of pizza

Trivia

• As a running gag, the Mousersaurus Rex gets his foot hurt five times throughout the episode. His foot is hurt three times by Koopa, once by Luigi by a dinosaur bone on his foot, and once by Princess Toadstool, Toad, and Caveboy when their vehicle lands on his foot.
• The Fire Flower drawn by Mugga, as well as how it is depicted in many scenes with Alley Koop and his army, has a similar shape to its design in Super Mario World.