Trivia / amiibo

• Adored by the Network: Capcom seems to especially love the concept. In addition to the three characters from the Super Smash Bros. series, they have made their own Mega Man amiibo, three lines of Monster Hunter amiibo, and added compatability to Resident Evil Revelations 1 & 2.
• Defictionalization: The Smash Bros. amiibo are real-life versions of the series' in-game trophies.
• Demand Overload:
  • amiibo were hit with this like a truck when the toys first dropped. Marth, Villager, and Wii Fit Trainer were infamous for it at launch — it only got worse as time went on, particularly with store exclusives such as Rosalina, Meta Knight, Lucario, Shulk, and Ness. Part of the issue was due to a port strike holding up shipments, and scalpers exploiting the situation just compounded the problem. Some of the rare-at-first ones became more common after the initial rush, but not all of them.
  • To give an example of overloaded demand was early on, when the Smash Wave 4 pre-orders opened in North America, GameStop crashed from the demand. Not just the GameStop website, but the entire GameStop system — even the registers in the stores went down.
  • Another example of how insane the demand was: A lorry (a truck for non-British) carrying the shipment of Splatoon + Squid Inkling amiibo for GAME (the British equivalent of GameStop) was stolen. This unfortunately screwed over all those people who pre-ordered the bundle from that store. GAME compensated for this by giving the standard version of the game, plus the Inkling Boy and Inkling Girl and having it at a discounted price, but the damage was already done.
  • It's even worse in countries such as Mexico and Brazil. Since they don't have their own Nintendo representation, the amiibo demand/stock problems are driven to a further extreme. amiibo that are considered uncommon in the US (for example, Pac-Man, Charizard, and Smash Bros. series Yoshi) are in small quantities and often not seen after their release dates. In Mexico, retailers are actually importing Japanese figures, and in Brazil, even common amiibo can cost more than the games they're used in.
  • Although demand gradually eased up, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild brought it back in full force and made it incredibly hard to find any Zelda-related figures.
  • You'd expect Animal Crossing amiibo cards to not have this problem, being, well, cards that are much cheaper to produce (after all, NFC cards are a very common technology nowadays, used for payment cards, hotel keys, and work badges), but unless you try to order them within minutes of being stocked, they're virtually nonexistent.
• Dueling Games: With the other toys-to-life lines like Skylanders, Disney Infinity, and LEGO Dimensions. In a subversion, Nintendo has actually collaborated with Skylanders to create special editions of Donkey Kong and Bowser. Disney, Warner Bros. & LEGO, and Activision eventually dropped out of the fight, the former despite leading at some point, ironically making Nintendo and amiibo the Sole Survivor of the toys-to-life genre, continuing years and years after the aforementioned companies dropped out.
• Fan Community Nicknames: "amiigos" or "amiibros".
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • Nintendo has specifically said that lesser-known characters will have more limited releases and be rotated out as time goes on. This has lead to a world of trouble for collectors and fans alike; see Demand Overload above.
  • However, there are occasional restocks, giving hope to fans who weren't able to grab the particular amiibo they wanted the first time around.
  • Many years later, even very common amiibo are considered to be extremely rare today due to being long out of print. In fact, stores stopped dedicating space to amiibo and just put them with other general Nintendo merchandise or accessories as they tend to release far more sparingly compared to 2015-2016. This bites many collectors who either didn't bother to collect "common" amiibo due to them not carrying any value and collectors who joined in really late who want to try to collect all of them. That being said, there's occasional reprints here and there, and some secondhand websites are nice about the price.
• Limited Special Collector's Ultimate Edition: Several games have launched with both a vanilla version and an amiibo bundle that included a relevant figure.
• No Export for You: There are a handful of amiibo, such as the Monster Hunter (Stories) line and the Jikkyou Powerful Pro Baseball cards that have not been released outside of Japan.
  • The Animal Crossing x Sanrio cards were released in Japan, Europe and Australia/New Zealand, but never in North America until March 2021. The Qbby amiibo, which was originally a Japanese-exclusive, also went for a limited-release in Australia/New Zealand.
  • The two Mega Man amiibo that came bundled with games (the gold one from the 3DS version of Legacy Collection and the one for Mega Man 11) were never released in Europe.
• What Could Have Been:
  • For The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask 3D, a Skull Kid amiibo was greatly considered.
  • A transforming Arwing amiibo was considered for Star Fox Zero, but was scrapped due to design issues (they couldn't acceptably hit toy safety guidelines). A non-amiibo toys-to-life Arwing would eventually be made for the Switch version of Starlink: Battle for Atlas.
  • For the Nintendo Switch release of Resident Evil: Revelations and its sequel, Capcom almost made amiibo based of Resident Evil characters (they considered HUNK and lady HUNK) until the phase where they made the 3D models and could pose them. The team scrapped it due to "various circumstances".
• Why the Fandom Can't Have Nice Things: Toys R Us occasionally has "Buy 1 Get 1" sales for amiibo ... which are typically for normal-priced amiibo ($13.99). However, some fans have taken it upon themselves to buy any amiibo, as the specials usually don't clarify which amiibo could be used for the sale. Some fans have apparently abused this to extremes and bought 3-packs and Mega Yarn Yoshis (some people have been reported to buy 2 Mega Yarn Yoshis for $20 total, when one of them is usually $39.99 each). The site has taken down the Mega Yarn Yoshi amiibo for this reaction, and it looks like it may just be temporary.

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