Postman Pat was never the most mature fellow. He's always making "pussy" jokes about his black and white cat.

lol, stof. Him and me both.

You're exactly right. It doesn't always have to be something relevant to the product or even something that the person seeing it would want or want to see (though that's done too). The trick is to subconsciously get the brain going "something isn't right here." That's enough to draw the mind, apparently... to capture attention. Not sure how much it all actually works, but I guess it might. They do it all the time in magazine ads and such. Note that I don't personally imagine that that's what we have here. But you are right; subliminal messages can work the way you described.

I don't quite get what's so unbelievable about it being done on purpose? History is full of examples of disgruntled/bored employees hiding silly little messages and other things into their work. Wasn't there a Disney picture where some of the people in the background didn't have pants on? I won't mention all the tiny little pictures and messages written in the layout of a microprocessor that no one without special equipment can see.

I don't see why it's so infeasible that some designer in the Super Mario Galaxy boxart team that was either pissed off with work or just plain bored thought "It'd be funny if I highlighted the message 'U R MR GAY' in some subtle way so that no one notices until it's too late". History is full of similar examples, so I don't understand why suddenly this one is so unimaginable for some of you. It's not meant to be a subliminal message that's going to turn all Nintendo fans into raging homosexuals, but it's quite likely to be a prank pulled by some disgruntled employee.

Uh, if it's a "prank", it probably would have been changed by now, as there was plenty of time to do so. It's just random sparkles.

Frankly if N had heard the rumors, and I wanna think they did but maybe not, I'd imagine they'd want to change it just as much if it had been intentional as they would if it hadn't.

Well I mean, they found the rumors spreading about Krystal being in Brawl because of whats-her-name doing the voice for her, Samus and Knuckle Joe....it got removed after a few days...it's likely Nintendo contacted her.

What a legacy.

"Man, I designed the Box Art for Super Mario Galaxy!
So you're Mr. Gay?
Yeah...."

Well, I'm not sure if it's intentional or not, I know I don't care, I know only retarded people believe it will affect sales, and I know I'm glad that the Mr. Men series only included Mr. Tickle, and not Mr. Gay. Now that would cause an outcry from the fundamentalists!

I think you missed Ben.

Surely if it's accidental it would also have been changed by now? How is anyone except the original person who put the sparkles there going to know that it was on purpose, and if they did know, I very much doubt they would admit to it! Whether it was a prank or accidental changes nothing on the reaction from Nintendo.

As for why they didn't change it, I imagine they thought it would have just drawn more attention to it.