“I was raising my hand as if to say, ‘I’m about to die; someone save me,’” Tim “Fireball” Lawrence says. He was about to drown in a swimming pool. While wearing a Yoshi costume, no less.

“The head was vacuum-formed, but Yoshi’s whole body was solid foam,” adds Kathy Lawrence, the costume designer responsible for creating the mascots for dozens of Nintendo’s TV spots in the ʼ90s and 2000s.

“It went from a costume that weighed about 35 pounds to over 200 pounds,” Fireball says. “The foam, like a sponge, just absorbed the water, and I just started to sink.” Mistaking his outreached hand for a thumbs up, Kathy and the crew were excited as they watched her husband fight for his life…