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By and large, these Pixel Pal toys are pretty lame. Most of the items in the now defunct Pixel Pals line were just boring recolors of Mega Man sprites. Understandable from a cost perspective, but drab and boring if you actually plan on convincing people to want to have multiple toy lamps in their home.

I received a Super Mario Bros 3 Raccoon Suit Mario Pixel Pal for Christmas a few years ago though. I thought, this is pretty cool, I'm a fan of Super Mario 3, and these sprites aren't as played at as Mega Man or original Super Mario Bros sprites. Now that I own one, the collector part of my brain lit up. So I investigated exactly how many Super Mario 3 characters there are in this little toy lamp line. Turns out they are all just Mario, in the exact same pose, but with a quick pallet swap. Raccoon Suit Mario is a relatively unique design, but Super Mario, Super Luigi, and Fire Mario are all just different colors of Mario's jumping pose. So cost effective.

Learning that, I decided I definitely don't need to collect them all, but I was immediately intrigued by one specific Pixel Pal though. I've always been a fan of that one-of-a-kind fiery glow of SMB3 Fire Mario. Unfortunately, I am apparently drawn to rare items without even knowing it. Despite tons of Pixel Pals at every Gamestop from here to the next Gamestop, none of them had that specific Fire Mario in stock. I searched online as well and nobody had this one for sale. Plenty of Pixel Pals everywhere, but the specific one I want turns out to not really exist, or exists in quantities so low it practically doesn't.

As both the toy line, and Gamestop itself started to fade away, it's only become even harder to hunt one down. While writing this article I decided to check if there were any obtainable Pixel Pals online. It's easy enough to find some of the not Super Mario Pixel Pals for fairly cheap, the least popular going for less than ten bucks on Amazon right now. As for the specific Fire Mario Pixel Pal, I discovered two eBay listings starting at $85. I really want one of these, but they were fifteen bucks new. I do not want one so badly that I would pay almost seven times retail for it though, and I hope you don't either, if you ended up here in search of some of those highly sought after Pixel Pals.