Doug Bowser

Submission 40,244

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About

Doug Bowser is a businessman best known as the current President of Nintendo of America, succeeding Reggie Fils-Aime. Since his introduction, people joked the coincidence that he shares a name with the main villain of the Mario universe, Bowser.

History

Bowser attended the University of Utah, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1984.^[1] After over a decade of work at Procter and Gamble, Bowser moved to EA, where he worked in senior roles for eight years. In May of 2015, he joined Nintendo of America as the Vice President of Sales. His hire there made national news as several publications joked about the coincidence that a man named Bowser had moved into a senior role, Vice President of Sales, at Nintendo.^[2]^[3] The day the hire was announced, Nintendo of America posted a picture of Bowser holding a sign which read "Thank you for the warm welcome" (shown below). In the background of the photo, stuffed dolls of Mario and Luigi sat tied up by the wires of Nintendo Gamecube controllers. This led to further jokes about how "Bowser" had immediately performed acts of villainy against the Super Mario heroes on his first day at Nintendo.^[4] In August of 2016, he was promoted to Senior Vice President, Sales and Marketing, where he helped oversee the launch of the very popular Nintendo Switch.

Promotion to Nintendo of America President

On February 21st, 2019, Reggie Fils-Aime announced he was retiring from his role as President of Nintendo America, and that Doug Bowser would be his successor, effective April 15th. In his video addressing the retirement, Fils-Aime praised Doug Bowser and joked that his last name made him qualified to run Nintendo of America (shown below).

Online Presence

After the announcement, a surge of jokes about Bowser's last name appeared online. User @fourscore64 tweeted a video parody of the announcement, placing Doug Bowser in Bowser's role in Super Mario 64, gaining over 570 retweets and 2,400 likes (shown below).

Other users joked about the hire by posting art of the Nintendo character Bowser crossed with the Nickelodeon character Doug. For example, user @bluelaserbeam tweeted art of the crossed characters, gaining over 200 retweets and 590 likes (shown below, left). User @videogameboypro did the same (shown below, right).

Doug Bowsette

Twitter users also Super Crown art of Doug Bowser, coining the character "Doug Bowsette." Some examples include art posted by @finalcake (shown below, left) and @axellianYT (shown below, right). The flood of Doug Bowsette posts led the term to trend on Twitter.^[5]