Parts:
WWF Captain Lou figure
sculpy
belt from Playarts Kai Naked Snake
tools made from parts of Kai weapons
styrene
paint
super glue
hot glue

History:
A staple of the late 80s Nintendo marketing machine Captain Lou was the live action star and voice of Mario in the half hour show that also featured a Legend Of Zelda cartoon once a week, every Friday I think it was. The show had numerous stars of the time on including other WWF wrestlers. Captain Lou later went on to voice Mario in the pilot episode of the Super Mario Brothers 3 cartoon. For more information check out the wiki.

Preparing the figure:
Like most wrestling figures the body was way more muscular than Captain Lou really was and if it wasn't for the hair and goatee on the figure I’m not all that sure it would have looked like him. To prepare I trimmed off the rubber band from his cheek and moved on to removing the goatee. If I had to do this again I’d trim part of it off and sand the rest down to be his chin instead of removing it all like I did.

I then decided to pick a pose that I could work with when it came to either of my ideas for displaying him: wrench in hand and foot up on a pipe with pizza slice in the other hand since all those appeared in the show or I'd go with him having a fireball in one hand and a bomb in the other with his foot up on a Koopa Troopa shell. I locked the pose into place with superglue as I knew I would have to sculpt over it.

The Sculpting:
I started with thin layers of sculpy to order to not add too much bulk in areas but have enough to start it to look like clothing. The first parts I started on were the sleeves and they were the easiest. I later sculpted the tool bag and added the tools, made from Kai Arts Yuffie's throwing star and a FF13 figure's weapon. I made the pizza and the bomb out of sculpy as well. Mario's hat was a tough one as the hats in the show are never always the same.
The logo on it tends to either be on center or off center depending on which hat it is so when I placed the logo circle I went with the off center one from the best picture I had. In a last minute choice I decided to add a Bob-omb to his empty hand and a hot glue fireball on his other hand. I had to be careful with the hot glue as it actually softened the hand and made it flex during sculpting so I had to do it in layers.

Painting:
I know what you're all saying “Mario's shirt is white not blue” which is normally true in Fire Mario form and for some episodes of the Super Show it was white and then others it was a pale blue like you see a lot of dress shirts come in. I went with that, after some mixing, because it covered better than white paint. Plus the quality of the old show episodes even on dvd are pretty faded.

I didn't use anything super fancy, the overalls are painted with red craft paint as is the hat. His mustache is black craft paint and I used Game Workshop paints for the little skin tone needed. The painting took the longest between mixing and testing and then having to paint carefully around parts and then repaint them if I messed up which happened a good bit in some of the tighter spots. I also learned from this project that there is a point you reach where you just need to leave well enough alone painting or you'll drive yourself insane.
I apparently ran out of clear paints as I couldn't find them anywhere so I had to resort to trying to do it the old fashioned way.

Finishing:
Since the Super Show was a mix of Mario 1 and Mario 2 in the cartoon I decided to use the Bob-omb as it showed up in SMB 2 in 1988. I also gave him a pipe fitting tool made of the handle of a Kai Final Fantasy 13 figure's sword.
Hopefully it'll get some attention even though it isn't a super hero.