Yogurtland is a chain of frozen yogurt stores, and now they’ve partnered with Nintendo for some summer fun.  From now until the end of August, you can go to participating Yogurtland locations to get flavors based on popular Mario characters!  They decorated their stores and everything, so I took some pictures so you all can see what they did!

I think last summer Yogurtland did a promotion with Nintendo for a couple of flavors to endorse the new-at-the-time game Splatoon.  I didn’t check that out last year and I don’t really remember why I missed out.  I don’t know if the stores around me just weren’t doing it or maybe the flavors didn’t entice me enough to go or what.  But it must’ve been a successful promotion since Nintendo is doing it again this summer with Mario characters in a bigger way!

First, here is the outside of the closest Yogurtland store I went to.  It’s in a shopping center about six miles away from where I live, so it’s local, but not that close.  It’s actually in a big strip mall that has been around for a long time.  I used to go there a lot as a kid because it was the only nearby place to see movies.  They also had a bookstore I went to a lot and later an arcade.  I also got a majority of my clothes there as a kid.  The shopping area has changed a bunch since then, but I’m glad they’re still around doing business at least.

They had a big poster out front advertising the promotion.  Sorry it’s not such a clear picture, the window was rather reflective.  But you can still tell what it is.  It looks like Luigi is saying, “Hey, where’s the yogurt?”  And Mario says, “It’s-a right behind you, Luigi!  See?  I’m-a pointing at it with-a my finger!”

They also decorated the door.  Here’s a picture of that.  The employees on the inside were wearing Yogurtland shirts with Mario & Luigi on them as well.  But I didn’t take a picture of them because it was probably already weird enough that I was taking pictures of a yogurt place.  But they were pretty cool shirts.

They also had a sign listing all the flavors.  They’re not doing them all at once, but releasing one new flavor each week until the beginning of September.  I don’t know if they’ll replace flavors with other ones as time goes on, or if they’ll have all the kinds at the end.  The picture I took of the sign may be hard to read, so I’ll list the flavors and the release dates here as well.

Mario’s Chocolate Gelato (July 1)

Bowser’s Dragon Berry Tart (July 1)

Toad’s Rocky Road (July 8)

Yoshi’s Honeydew (July 15)

Goomba’s Iced Coffee (July 22)

Princess Peach Tart (July 29)

Donkey Kong Banana Cream (August 5)

Shy Guy’s Pineapple Lime Coconut Sorbet (August 12)

Koopa Troopa’s Lemon Cupcake (August 19)

Luigi’s White Chocolate Pistachio (August 26)

Poor Luigi, he has to be last!  When I went, they only had the first two flavors.  Mario’s was a strong chocolate, and I’m not sure if Bowser’s flavor had real dragon fruit in it, but it did taste pretty fruity.  I’d like to go back and try some of the other flavors sometime, especially Toad’s since he’s my favorite Mario character.  Anyway, here’s the sign:

The cups even have Nintendo characters on them!  I couldn’t keep the cups since they were made out of paper and were not salvageable after eating yogurt out of them.  But I took pictures of them anyway.  Here’s the front:

The back had other Nintendo characters running around it.  Not shown here is Mario, but we see enough of him on a regular basis anyway.

But the neatest thing is they also came with Nintendo themed spoons!  The press release I got says they’re biodegradable so it’s OK if you throw them away, but I’m keeping mine!  They had one with Mario (red) and one with Bowser (yellow).  I don’t know if they’ll have other character spoons later on as they add flavors, so I guess I’ll have to go back and find out!  Here is a picture of the spoons I got.  Sorry they’re not as easy to see in the picture, but you can get an idea at least.

And that’s all I did!  Pretty nifty promotion, I’d say.  Too bad Wario didn’t get his own flavor.  I wonder what kind of frozen yogurt he’d be.  And what about other non-Mario Nintendo characters?  Kirby would be perfect for yogurt.  Heck, the name “Yogurtland” even sounds like a Kirby stage!  And what about other characters like Samus or Link?  What kind of flavors do you think they’d be?  What Nintendo characters do you think would make good yogurt flavors, and what kind?  Let me know in the comments section!  Later!  –Cary

Tags: Misc