If you’re at all interested in picking up Legend of Zelda legacy amiibo figures, out June 23, 2017, Nintendo’s message to you is a swift kick in the balls. Yes, if you love amiibo figures — and have been siphoning money from your bank account and into Nintendo’s deep pockets — then Nintendo hates you. Passionately.
I don’t understand what we collectors did to draw Nintendo’s ire, but for the past three years, they’ve been slamming our heads in doors, tripping us on the sidewalk, and giving us swirlies at every opportunity.
Obviously, I’m being hyperbolic here, but Nintendo’s latest shenanigans in the amiibo world definitely sting.
Those wonderful legacy Legend of Zelda amiibo figures — announced back in April — ended up being retailer-exclusive items. The Skyward Sword amiibo was available exclusively through Amazon, the Twilight Princess amiibo was exclusively available through GameStop, and the Majora’s Mask amiibo was available exclusively through Best Buy.
I did some digging back in April to discover that these figures seemed to be retail exclusives, but I couldn’t confirm it with 100% certainty. At around the same time, the folks at Zelda Informer did some digging of their own and managed to confirm that at least two of the figures were retailer exclusives, with many speculating the third would be exclusive to Best Buy.
As we found out on June 23, it was all true. All of it.
As legacy figures celebrating some of Nintendo’s most popular video games of all time, I cannot fathom why these would be short-run retail exclusives. And further, I can’t believe that Nintendo — and the retailers in question — would be so bad at communicating that to potential buyers. The only thing that ended up happening was that a vast majority of those looking for these items were left confused until the very last minute, when it became suddenly clear that there wasn’t a chance in hell they’d be acquiring any of these.
Brand loyalty can only go so far, and for a lot of people, Nintendo’s must be wearing quite thin.
At least there’s still a narrow window of time in which to reserve some of the Breath of the Wild Champion amiibo figures, though I doubt that will last.
