In Germany, the brand UHU is arguably the most common type of glue and the brand name is, or at least was, synonymous with glue.
As part of their back to school seriesUHU has now released Super Mario editions of their products and they even provide PDF at https://www.uhu.de/de/back-to-school-2020 you can print to make some Super Mario decoration. Their English web site doesn’t have these PDFs (yet?) so I link to the German web site.
UHUスティックのりマリオキャラクターシリーズ！
— STAEDTLER マニア (@Sebastian_1835) June 23, 2020
8キャラクターでキノピオが好きかな^_^ pic.twitter.com/tnTWK7ajHA
Oh, this is kind of neat! While I don’t remember UHU Glue Sticks being branded with video game characters (it looks like the ‘moustache’ and ‘hat’ shown on the left, and worn by the young fellow on the right, are special gift items either supplied with a package of multiple sticks as bonus items) here in Canada, I clearly remember when we had ‘purple’ UHU Sticks (and I believe depending on the region, they’re a standard option to the ‘white’ or clear small or large glue sticks) arouind school supply time (most of August, which led up to the next formal school year beginning)
The Japanese script translates directly to “Stick glue Mario character series!
Do you like Kinopio with 8 characters?” ‘Kinopio’ I believe separates into ‘kino’ and ‘pio’ using the _katakana_ verbatim translation as reference, ‘kino’/cinema and ‘pio’/picture, which is a reference to Mario being an animated character (and animated cartoons) The ‘8 Characters’ is referring to the eight character ‘brandings’, each for a glue stick in the package of 8 sticks shown.
-G.
Thank you very much for this detailed and great explanation.
Their company slogan is “Don’t say glue, say UHU!”. The stuff is UHUbiquitous here in the U.S. too. And remember it’s “UHU Stic”, not “Stick”.