Although, the plush stopped being used due to a cease and desist from Nintendo in February 2021. This resulted in all Mario themed characters being removed and replaced by generic custom plushes with the same name.

The bootleg of this plush has a very noticeable dip in quality. The embroidery on the eye and nostrils is much cheaper and the bib is a soft, paper-like fabric with the mouth being printed on instead of embroidered (though some later releases have an embroidered mouth). The face is much fatter and the eyebrows are shaped weirdly, usually being too small or too big. The soles of the feet are a darker color and are made of a strange, rubber material that doesn't match the rest of the plush (very few use a material that matches the rest of the plush though). The spikes on the shell are stuffed a lot more and are usually pointing in a different direction from one another. The size of the belly and hands are noticeably smaller than the official plush as well. Overall, the bootleg is signifcantly cheaper and is easy to point out from the