Peta attacks Super Mario for encouraging kids to wear fur

By November 15 2011, 10:09 am 1 Comment
Tagged: , ,

Someone needs to sit Peta (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) down and have a quiet talk. Its latest campaign attacks Super Mario for wearing fur.

Apprently in ‘Super Mario Land 3D’ one of the power-ups players can get is a “Tanooki Tail Power-Suit”, which according to PETA encourages players young and old that it’s okay to wear fur. It is worried that we will all want a real tanooki suit or raccoon dogs as they are known.

I’m worried that it sets kids up for a lifetime of disappointment that there are no power ups in the real world.

“When on a mission to rescue the princess, Mario has been known to use any means necessary to defeat his enemy—even wearing the skin of a raccoon dog to give him special powers. Tanooki may be just a ‘suit’ in Mario games, but in real life, tanuki are raccoon dogs who are skinned alive for their fur. By wearing Tanooki, Mario is sending the message that it’s OK to wear fur.”

Peta has done many odd things over the years like the time it offered to help keep Baltimore’s city-owned Edgar Allan Poe House open as long as it could display vegan ads.

Or the time it said it planned to launch a porn site in name of veganism, but Super Mario?

I worry that it is also worried about the number of dogs that have already been killed this last week in the latest release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, but to be fair some of those had bombs strapped to them.

  • Saman Mansourpour

    This is fanaticism and a distinct case of wood for trees, where clearly PETA are so engrossed in their world that they read signals into everything, even when they’re not there.

    Sadly I think PETA are missing the point and risk damaging their credibility further. Mario isn’t making a political statement on wearing fur, no one at Nintendo developed it with that in mind, there’s no advantage for them doing so, nor will anyone read that into it. It’s quite simply unbelievable.

    PETA should be concentrating on education not persecution. This is a sad reflection of some of the voices that PETA now have working for them. Their principals in the past were sound, but their campaigns are becoming tenuous and difficult to stomach. If they were honest about it, they were really looking for a hook to dress up a popular gaming character into a blood soaked symbol for PETA. An excuse for a campaign, not a reason.

Latest jobs Jobs web feed

Visit Brand Republic Jobs