The Story Behind Mario’s Explorer Outfit Choco Egg Figure

Furuta Choco Egg Super Mario Odyssey Explorer Outfit Mini Figure

This compact plastic figure depicts Mario in his Explorer Outfit — wide-brimmed yellow hat, yellow jacket, and brown boots — from Nintendo’s Super Mario Odyssey (Nintendo Switch, 2017). It belongs to Furuta Confectionery’s Choco Egg series, a food-toy line produced under an official Nintendo license.

Inside Japan’s Shokugan Tradition

Shokugan — short for shokuhin gangu, or “food toy” — is a category unique to Japan. A candy or biscuit comes packaged with a small collectible figure, and the figures are detailed enough that collectors often care more about what’s inside than what they’re eating. Furuta launched their Choco Egg line in 1998 with a Japanese wildlife series, then expanded into Pokémon and many other themes: a chocolate egg encases a small capsule containing an assembled or snap-together miniature.

Because Choco Egg figures are classified as food packaging, they circulate very differently from standard toys. Outside Japan, they rarely appear in regular retail, which means international resale has become the primary way for collectors to track down specific figures from a series.

Super Mario Odyssey and the Costume That Sets This Figure Apart

Released in October 2017, Super Mario Odyssey became one of Nintendo Switch’s defining early titles and has sold over 20 million copies worldwide. One of the game’s central features was a wardrobe of more than 100 costumes for Mario to wear across its globe-trotting kingdoms — themed after deserts, forests, coastal ruins, busy cities, and more.

The Explorer Outfit suits the game’s travel theme directly: Mario visits kingdoms styled after different parts of the world and changes clothes to match. This figure shows him well outside his familiar red-and-blue look, making it visually distinct compared with most standard Mario merchandise. It also features what appears to be a rolled accessory on the back and a basket-like element at the waist; whether these details reproduce the in-game design precisely or reflect Furuta’s own sculptural interpretation isn’t confirmed from the listing alone.

Furuta Confectionery and the Nintendo License

Furuta Confectionery, founded in Osaka in 1952, produces the Choco Egg under an official Nintendo license — making this authorized merchandise rather than a third-party product. The company has collaborated with Nintendo on multiple Choco Egg releases over the years. The Super Mario Odyssey series most likely launched around the game’s 2017 release date or into 2018, following the standard pattern for tie-in food-toy releases in Japan, though the exact lineup and total figure count aren’t confirmed from the listing alone.

Collectors who follow the Choco Egg format regularly note the sculpting and painting quality relative to what was originally a candy-included price point. For Mario fans in particular, costume variants fill a natural niche: in a market already full of standard red-hat Mario items, an explorer-costume figure occupies clearly different ground.