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The friendly ghost who just wanted a friend. Casper made history as the first feature film with a fully CGI lead character, and the 1995 merchandising blitz — Pizza Hut hand puppets, packed toy aisles — put him everywhere that summer. A Halloween cable staple ever since.
Mario's brother finally got top billing—as the nervous lead of Nintendo's GameCube launch. Luigi wins a mansion in a contest he never entered, finds it haunted, loses Mario inside, and armed with a ghost-catching vacuum cleaner, nervously hums his way through rooms of poltergeists. The Poltergust 3000 was ingenious enough to spawn a franchise.