Of the big three platform holders, Nintendo is the ‘family-friendly’ one. Did you know that?
Of course you did – you’re an intelligent human being. And over the course of the Switch generation, with all the company’s eggs now in a single console basket, Nintendo has diversified its business, leaning into non-gaming areas and getting its IP under the noses of a broader audience with mobile apps, movies, theme parks, stores, and all that game. This has been a stated goal for many years, and the monster success of The Super Mario Bros. Movie worked as planned, funnelling interest back to its gaming hardware and software, resulting in revenue bumps across the board.
However, despite its colourful character roster appealing to kids across the age spectrum, the hand-eye coordination needed to operate a ‘proper’ video game is beyond the abilities of Nintendo’s youngest fans. Until we evolve as a species, that’s unlikely to change, so it’s that demographic — the one-, two-, three-year-olds — that Nintendo is aiming at with this suite of ‘My Mario’ products.
The Hello, Mario! app, which is coming to Switch as well as smart devices, looks to be a simple touchscreen toy where you can interact with Mario by bopping him on the nose, tweaking his moustache, and generally poking and prodding at the poor plumber like many of us did on the start screen of Mario 64 back in 1996. It’s extremely simple stuff on the face of it, but it’s designed to surprise, delight, and snare ’em young with that patented Nintendo charm.
Then there’s the wood block set – or sets, rather. This is baby toy 101, giving the smallest kids the chance to play around with Nintendo characters without jabbing themselves in the eye with the pointy limb of an amiibo or gnawing on and potentially swallowing a Master Sword.
Looking at the high-res PR pics of these blocks, they appear to have the quality you’d expect from Nintendo. The paint and glaze over the blocks let the woodgrain show through, and they would look right at home next to any number of artisanal wooden block sets on the shelves at your local free-range toddler toy boutique – with prices to match.
Of course, there’s the basic three-piece set offering Mario, a Question Block, and a Super Mushroom – that’ll only set you back 2,980 yen (around $20 / £15). The characters are also amiibo, remember, so I can see this appealing to people who don’t even have kids as a cute little display set.
The full 30-piece set, though — which also includes Luigi, Peach, and Yoshi, plus a wider selection of other items and blocks in a nice little case — comes in at a whopping 19,980 yen (around $135 / £100). There’s no word yet on the RRP Nintendo will set for these when they come to the West at a later date, but I can hear the “135 bucks for a bunch of wood?!?!” comments already.
As somebody who has spent more time and money in ludicrously expensive boutique kids’ toy shops than he’d like over the past few years, I can confirm that 100 quid for a bunch of glossy wooden blocks isn’t unheard of. The NFC tag in the amiibo characters adds negligible production cost in itself, but given the need to embed them in the character blocks and the quality of the paint job and materials…yes, unfortunately, I don’t see them coming in much cheaper when they arrive on our shores, either.
Thankfully, my own kids are a year or two past the point where these would appeal — we’re in the steering-assisted-Mario-Kart, giggling-and-shouting-“Ooh, ba-nana!” phase right now — but newer Nintendo (grand)parents may find these irresistible. You know, for the kids. And I feel sorry for amiibo fiends who simply have to have every last one. *glances furtively at the Billy bookcase*
Ahem. Then there’s the Mario book, with pop-out bits and pieces. Yes, seeing all the promo images of smiling parents indoctrinating their defenceless youngsters into the cult of Nintendo gives off disquieting vibes, even for the biggest Nintendo fans. The Pokémon Company has certainly gone further in this direction, with kawaii plushies and products more specifically designed for the youngest of people, but Nintendo’s never quite gone here before, never quite stepped into the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse like this, with a stop-motion animated short series and little romper suits and rattles aimed at tiny humans whose facility with a Joy-Con amounts to chewing on it. The Rosalina & Luma Observatory Cot Mobile can’t be far off.
Again, everything presented looks like a quality product, and it makes you wonder why it’s taken Nintendo so long to go full Disney like this, targeting the audience fresh from the womb in a way that not even self-driving, self-steering, auto-item-deploying Mario Kart World can manage. For the past decade or more, the Play-It-Loud generation has been phasing into parenthood, so I guess you can chalk this up to Nintendo’s slow-and-steady approach. But, slow starters as they are, they’re ready now – and they’ve got their marketing lasers trained on your toddlers.
And your wallets. But there’s nothing new about that.
