As I have mentioned in a couple other articles, Super Mario Bros. 3 is my favorite of the Mario games, if not of all time and my favorite power-up is the Tanooki Suit.  Since this is not well represented in Mario other than the First 4 Figures Tanooki Mario Statue which I don’t like enough for the cost to justify buying, I have never owned any Tanooki Mario figures and I’m really glad to add this one to my collection.  This is the first 4″ World of Nintendo figure I have purchased so it has been fun writing this review.  I hope you enjoy it and I will certainly be reviewing more of these figures in the future.

Box – As always, I try to give you a quick look at the box.  One of the highlights of the 4″ line is that each figure comes with an accessory.  I love accessories with figures and the fact that it is a mystery is fun if you can keep it that way before opening the figure.  I will be spoiling what the figure comes up with near the bottom of this review but I will put a warning before it in case you’d rather not know.

Size – While Tanooki Mario has a simple design, there is little doubt that Jakks Pacific can have more detail in a figure of this size, especially when compared to their 2.5″ figures or even Amiibos.  I took a quick picture of the Mario Amiibo next to Tanooki Mario to show you what I mean.

Articulation – As you can see in the picture of the back of the box above, the figure does come with ten points of articulation which is quite a bit more than the 2.5″ figures and that is definitely one attractive feature of Tanooki Mario.  With his legs and arms, it is easy to do a running or jumping pose.  Mario’s head swivels left and right and his tail can also be rotated though I didn’t find this to be all that useful or exciting.  The figure looks great from the side as you can see in the pictures above.

It is hard for me to say exactly how I feel about the articulation as a whole.  It is as good as any figure I’ve purchased, but you can’t do THAT much with Tanooki Mario.  His body and head are round and heavy enough that he can fall over pretty easily and there is no stand to make him look like he is actually in the air while jumping.  A few of the poses are not necessarily ones I would associate with Mario, like the one above where it looks like Mario is ready for a fist fight!  So overall, I would say that while Tanooki Mario is more articulated than other Nintendo figures I’ve reviewed, it is not necessarily going to lead to tons more exciting poses.  Part of this is because of the way Tanooki Mario is designed and a figure with a different design can probably be posed more than this one.

Paint – You probably already noticed this as you looked at the pictures, but Tanooki Mario has a very clean and simple design.  The advantage of this is that there are much fewer paint issues than with other World of Nintendo products.  The store had two of them and the one I didn’t buy had a small issue here or there, but still looked great.  Key details like Mario’s eyes look perfect as well.  I often talk about paint issues in my reviews so I can’t tell you how happy I am to say that Jakks nailed the paint on Tanooki Mario.

Accessory – If you don’t want to know what the figure comes with then either stop reading or skip down to the bottom for my closing thoughts.

Tanooki Mario comes with the modern design of the Tanooki leaf which is very cool.  Mario can’t hold it and the leaf will not stand up on its own which limits the usefulness of the accessory and makes it very difficult to display.  The plastic is also very thin and could be broken very easily so the Tanooki Leaf is a bit of a mixed bag but it is certainly a nice thought if nothing else.

Closing Thoughts – I am impressed by many aspects of this figure.  Not only is it a unique figure/power-up and it avoids a common problem for collectors where we get a repaint of Mario or Luigi too.  The articulation is nice and a step up from most Nintendo Figures and the paint is fantastic.  At $10 in retail stores, this is a really fair price.  As I have said previously, I will buy any World of Nintendo Figures that stand out from what else has been released and this is a prime example of how Jakks Pacific can lure Amiibo collectors and Nintendo fans to their product.