Super Mario valentines!

My eldest daughter was getting excited about the approach of Valentine's Day, and I was searching my brain last night for some apt way I might express my love for her on this occasion. I asked myself what was a bond we shared and the answer came up quick: I have played a lot of Nintendo games for her spectator benefit. Surely there must be some old Super Mario Bros. valentines I could print out and customize for her! I went to Google Images to see what I could find, and decided that you, O anonymous Internet audience, might enjoy the curated report:

Yes, yes, that is what I had in mind. Except... suiting their original target audience, these are really more appropriate for giving on a kid-to-kid basis, occasionally with kid-to-teacher ones. Is there something a little updated out there?

Yes, there is some useable material here. But still, all the emphasis on "friend" and "pal" is not quite the way I feel about my firstborn child. Anyhow, now my curiosity was piqued, what else was out there?

This is ... getting there...

Leave it to the fans to deliver! Her recent stock of children's magazines has given her a taste for early wordplay, and the puns in effect here are a little less toothless. (the "so mushroom" one mos def made the cut.)  But you always have to be careful where the grown-up fans are concerned, because they have a way of adultifying something (NSFW) that was never intended to depart the realm of innocence.

Here the cream rises to the surface -- people not just hoping for a meme joyride by slapping a caption on game sprites, but craftsmen specifically angling to get you to pay money for their copyright infringements. The context explicitly framing the game's most pervasive sexist trope is regrettable, but it's at least well executed!

Also well-played, though if we could play down the "every breath you take" stalker subtext from valentines, that would be ideal.

Bonus! Anything Nintendo did, Sega could do better... so I also found some vintage Sonic the Hedgehog valentines. Did you know that Sonic was a real extreme '90s party animal type character? It's true. Indeed, that's about all there is to him: Sonic the Hedgehog, the "Poochy" of the video game world.

The fans are able to do a little more with the material.

Being a big lover of wordplay myself, I couldn't resist including these ones, even if the characters, puns and sentiments would go over my 4-year-old's head. At least you can enjoy them!