Why Mario’s Sailor Outfit Made It Into the Choco Egg Series

Mario in Sailor Costume, a Furuta Choco Egg Figure From Super Mario Odyssey

The Sailor Outfit and Super Mario Odyssey’s Costume System

This small, pre-painted plastic figure shows Mario in his Sailor Outfit from Super Mario Odyssey, the Nintendo Switch game released on October 27, 2017. The figure stands on a round, glossy reddish-brown base and captures Mario in a saluting pose — right hand raised to his forehead — dressed in a white sailor hat with a gold “M” emblem, a red long-sleeved shirt, blue overalls, white gloves, and brown shoes. It is an officially licensed Nintendo product produced by Furuta Confectionery Co., Ltd.

Super Mario Odyssey was the first mainline Mario title to fully commit to a costume system, letting players collect and wear dozens of outfits in place of Mario’s familiar red cap and blue overalls. The Sailor Outfit is one of those collectible looks, associated with New Donk City — the game’s New York-inspired setting in the Metro Kingdom. Because the design looks so unlike the standard Mario appearance that has been marketed worldwide for decades, it stands out clearly from the other figure variants released in the same Choco Egg series, making it immediately identifiable to anyone who played through that part of the game.

Furuta Choco Egg and Japan’s Food-Toy Tradition

Furuta Confectionery is a long-established confectionery company headquartered in Osaka. Their Choco Egg line launched in 1999, and its earliest releases — animal figures sculpted by Kaiyodo — set an unexpectedly high bar for food-toy craftsmanship that helped define the category internationally. The shokugan format, Japan’s tradition of packaging a small collectible figure alongside a candy or snack, grew substantially through the 1990s and 2000s on the back of improving sculpt quality and a broadening range of licensed properties.

In the Choco Egg topper format specifically, the figure sits directly on top of the chocolate egg rather than being enclosed inside it. The figure and candy separate easily, which is part of why these items circulate effectively as standalone collectibles over time. Furuta has worked with Nintendo’s properties across multiple Choco Egg waves, covering franchises that include Mario, Kirby, and Zelda. The Super Mario Odyssey series was part of that ongoing collaboration, produced during the period following the game’s late 2017 launch — the precise manufacturing window is estimated at roughly 2017 to 2019, though that range cannot be confirmed with certainty.

A Game With 20 Million Copies Sold, a Figure Distributed Only in Japan

According to Nintendo’s published data, Super Mario Odyssey has sold over 20 million copies worldwide, placing it among the top-selling entries in the entire franchise. That global reach means a large international audience is already familiar with the game’s worlds, characters, and costume designs. For collectors outside Japan, the Sailor Outfit figure represents one of the more visually striking costume variants in the Odyssey Choco Egg lineup — a version of Mario that many players remember from the game but rarely encounter in merchandise form.

Choco Egg products are distributed through Japanese convenience stores and supermarkets and have no official retail presence outside Japan. The only path for international collectors runs through import or secondhand channels. Furuta produced this figure under Nintendo’s official license, which places it in the same category as other formally sanctioned Mario merchandise from the Odyssey era — a distinction that matters to collectors who prioritize licensed goods over unlicensed reproductions.