Robin lives
And with Robin, all is right in the amiibo world again. Wait, are you still there? Am I in an empty figurative room, talking about amiibo stock, while everyone else scattered after the horror that was Wave 4? That seems to be the case, and looking back, Nintendo really blew it in the US when it came to long term support for amiibo sales with their “tried and true” scarcity tactic.
Yes friends, On April 2, 2015, that was the day the amiibo died for a lot of you out there. As a refresher, you had to get into a GameStop store at a specified time (in the afternoon), wait in a line, then pre-order a toy that was coming out in May. But not just one toy — eight of them, two of which sold out within seconds of going live. That’s partially because nation-wide GameStop’s servers crashed, and only the few people in the front of the line were guaranteed bundle sets for all eight. Many of you on the west coast were still at work, wondering what the hell happened.
It sucked, because Lucina and Robin (the two aforementioned “Unicorns,” as they came to be known), were instrumental in two major Nintendo releases — Code Name: S.T.E.A.M., and Fire Emblem Fates. The figures unlocked full-on extra characters for each game, with the former allowing players to use a team comprised entirely of Fire Emblem characters (consisting of two other rare figures, Marth and Ike). As a collector I was ready and had backup plans, and let me tell you, using the entire Emblem squad fundamentally changed Code Name and made it much more enjoyable for me. But the fact that it had to be a rare occurrence was absurd.
Fast forward to roughly a week ago, and now, Robin has been restocked across the US along with earlier initiatives for Marth, Lucina, and Ike. But at this point, many once bustling amiibo marketplaces and communities are less active than they once were. It “only” took Nintendo a year and a half to fix the problem, and it was too little too late.
Consider this an ode to those people that helped me procure so many of these stupid things (some of which call themselves “amiibros”) — you’ve probably sold or offloaded all of your in-box collections at this point, but you rock.
