Red Wings talks about the toughest part of recreating Mario's iconic boots

You might remember that before The Super Mario Bros. Movie took the world by storm, Nintendo announced a special collaboration with Red Wings to promote the film. That resulted in Red Wings making exactly one pair of Mario boots that are now permanently on display at Nintendo NY.

The real-life Mario boots are certainly a unique attraction for Nintendo NY, and it turns out they were just as unique for Red Wings to create as well. In an interview with Game Informer, Aaron Seymour-Anderson, Red Wing’s head of brand and creative, talked about the work that went into bringing Mario’s boots into real life. It seems the project was a struggle from start to finish, but one area in particular caused the team quite the headache.

While Mario’s boots might look fairly normal, they’re extremely far off from what any real human would wear. This meant Red Wings didn’t have any base to create the boot from. This meant the Red Wing Team had to get Mario’s foot proportions from the animation model for the movie. After that, their team did a 3D print it, sanded things down, then molded and stitched the leather. This was all done in proportions completely unfamiliar to Red Wings.