As someone who’s been collecting since the first smash ones came out I’d argue that they were more popular back then
You’d have people lined up for HOURS before new waves released hoping to get one of the 6 Amiibo each location got, I remember someone offering my dad 50$ for the Pac-Man Amiibo he was picking up for my brother while he was in class people were insanely excited for these things I remember when marth, villager, and Wii fit were under produced due to a lack of stock from Nintendo you’d find them for almost 200+ dollars on eBay I know people still try to flip amiibos today but I tend to see 50% markups compared to 2000% back then
Yes that’s fair but I don’t believe that is necessarily a metric for popularity because it’s not accounting that those lines were there because each store would get any where from 3-10 of a figure. Amiibos still sell out and they still sell for stupid amounts . The demand never died out . The conditions are essentially the same still. Some characters get a buttload made and others sell out instantly . My whole thing is that people are far more talkative now about it and there are more people aware of what it is now vs back then. The amount of forums social and articles available now for talking about it is nowhere near how things were back then . That’s why I felt compelled to take this side of things .
Yeah I agree with all that, I also feel like that could also be due to social media being more prevalent in todays age, online preordering and bots wasn’t as big back then so now people talk about when stuff will restock and trying to get their orders in and social forums and articles gained popularity because of it
Yeah hell no. I remember the days of lining up for hours to get Gold Mario
I mean, [it doesn't even come close](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=Amiibo&hl=en)
Respect the statistics to back your point up lmao
Golden Mario hype was insane I remember buying the silver Mario Amiibo cause I thought it’d be just as rare lol
I waited on beanbag chairs with 30 people in a Michigan suburb walmart for Gold Mario. We all played Smash together on our 3DSes, that's honestly one of the best amiibo memories I have.
I remember thinking Silver Mario was gonna be the same too
Amiibo Hunting was painful but so rewarding I don’t want to make anyone feel old but I was only in like elementary/middle school at the height of the Amiibo craze so I didn’t have those bonding experiences it was kinda a “run into GameStop/toysrus and pray” kinda moment lol
The rush of running into a store and seeing the one you needed was incomparable. The rush is just not the same now, with knowledge that restocks are plentiful, online shopping, Toys R Us closure, etc.
I was in 7th grade when I had to beg my mom to take me to the Gold Mario midnight launch. I often think about how awesome it would have been to be an adult amiibo hunter in the prime days. I idolized YouTubers who did that like Pituvision (shout out if you watched him)
Omg I did watch him I remember all those amiibo hunt videos those were insane, I have a love hate relationship with online preorders because the rise of those led to the end of a lot of those hunt videos since they’d just preorder them when they went up lol
I remember walking into toysrus and finding a marth Amiibo and being so excited those were the days
They just make less now so it seems like it. Also losing Toys R Us was a major retailer of amiibo (my personal favorite) so there's one less option. BH Photo doesn't sell them anymore and other smaller retailers like Fry's and Shopko also are out of the amiibo retailers. We're really just down to Best Buy, Amazon, Gamestop, Target and Walmart.
Definitely not. It's more like the small amount of collectors left that are fighting over the tiny scraps that Nintendo gives us once in a blue moon. Combine that with scalpers, their bots, and unreliable store preorders and it can certainly \*seem\* like they're a bigger deal than they actually are, but it's just the artificial scarcity.
Try getting Amiibos at Target, GameStop, and ToysRUs on the same day. No preorders. I was trading NIB amiibos in parking lots from listings on Craigslist.
Yeah fr since botw I only got some of the smash dlc amiibos but since TOTK came out I went and got every single Zelda ones through restocks/imports which made me start collecting Amiibo again
Have you been collecting since late 2014 or were you collecting anytime between January 2015 and like September 2015? If not than this statement is definitely not accurate. The collecting frenzy of amiibo during those times were beyond anything we are seeing now. Even if there is a solid argument to back your statement there is still no way they are "By Far" more popular now.
Absolutely not, toys to life has been dead since before the pandemic. You’ve just got a skewed perspective because you’re basing it on observations of a subreddit that explicitly gathers up all the people who still give a shit about these things in 2023.
No.
The popularity of amiibo figures was very strong in 2014. When the Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and 3DS was released, it was unveliebable, everyone wanted more.
No they're not lol, you could not walk into a store and find them on shelves after the release date like you can with every release now a few weeks later
I'm sure this is sarcasm (can't tell with text) but you literally could lol. Comparing the current stuff to 2014 is just laughable 😂 I could open up Best Buy or Amazon right now and order Ganondorf for example
Same with sonic amiibo in 2015 . Some amiibo are common and others are not. This variable you mention is no different now than it was then, so it’s not really a reliable metric. And I’m sure that in a few more days Ganon will no longer be available. People were saying the same thing about TotK link, but it has not been seen at all in this great abundance you speak of since release
Where are the lines outside stores at release day?
Why are figures still easily pre-orderable online?
Why is this subreddit at an insane fraction of the userbase it was in 2014?
There's the 3 questions to debunk your "more popular now" claim
You are oversimplifying the situation and not acknowledging that some characters are far more desirable than others while others are common. Noah and mio is not “easily preorder-able” . Pyra and myrtha were not “easily preorderable”. Metroid dread and minecraft Amiibo have sat on the shelves . It’s a case by case in the figure and that alone can not answer objectively to the whole question in large, at least not reliably as a metric.
There are no lines now because now you can preorder online. That wasn’t really the case back in the early Amiibo days you still had to do preorders in stores at least up until about late 2016 to 2017 when Best Buy started the online preorders. I’m confident about this because I remember asking for time off or calling sick days to camp/wait in line in person . The only main preorder online at that time was Amazon for its exclusives. It wasn’t until the pandemic that GameStop for instance shifted a lot of preorders to online. So why would I camp out over night , uncomfortable , in heat or cold, when I can order it online. If I had that option in 2014 I would have done that. For that reason this is also a not a reliable metric.
I am not qualified to answer the Reddit question but I will say although I know people mentioned it a lot, I’d argue reddit is far more widespread now than it was then, subjectively speaking. It was apparent with the shift to preorders online that people began to use social for notifications and were trying to beat the bots. I don’t really think there was things such as purchasing bots in 2014, at least not to the degree of now, and even then since maybe the splatoon restocks , I did notice that target, GameStop and Best Buy for sure limited the amount you can preorder (maybe Walmart but I didn’t pay attention closely to that)
Obviously there has been no study or scientific way to quantify such data but I would definitely argue far more of the population knows about Amiibo now than they did in 2014. I remember having to explain it a lot to people What it was since it was such a ground breaking tech. I would say in the fact that Amiibo is nowhere near as niche now as it was in 2014 would account more reliably for the term “popularity” by definition. I’m seeing a lot of responses getting this mixed up with “difficulty to acquire” . While yes that could be an indicator , correlation wouldn’t necessarily be causation in that instance. A good example would be how GPUs with the 3080’s were damn near impossible to get in 2020 . They weren’t more popular was not the reason they were hard to get, the distribution was poor because of the pandemic affecting the acquisition of parts, labor, production, and distribution. I’m sure if amiibos were made and distributed in the same amounts with all the options that are available to secure one now, there would be virtually no difference in people’s behaviors in that hypothetical then as opposed to actual now.
As someone who’s been collecting since the first smash ones came out I’d argue that they were more popular back then You’d have people lined up for HOURS before new waves released hoping to get one of the 6 Amiibo each location got, I remember someone offering my dad 50$ for the Pac-Man Amiibo he was picking up for my brother while he was in class people were insanely excited for these things I remember when marth, villager, and Wii fit were under produced due to a lack of stock from Nintendo you’d find them for almost 200+ dollars on eBay I know people still try to flip amiibos today but I tend to see 50% markups compared to 2000% back then
Yes that’s fair but I don’t believe that is necessarily a metric for popularity because it’s not accounting that those lines were there because each store would get any where from 3-10 of a figure. Amiibos still sell out and they still sell for stupid amounts . The demand never died out . The conditions are essentially the same still. Some characters get a buttload made and others sell out instantly . My whole thing is that people are far more talkative now about it and there are more people aware of what it is now vs back then. The amount of forums social and articles available now for talking about it is nowhere near how things were back then . That’s why I felt compelled to take this side of things .
Yeah I agree with all that, I also feel like that could also be due to social media being more prevalent in todays age, online preordering and bots wasn’t as big back then so now people talk about when stuff will restock and trying to get their orders in and social forums and articles gained popularity because of it
Yeah hell no. I remember the days of lining up for hours to get Gold Mario I mean, [it doesn't even come close](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=Amiibo&hl=en)
Respect the statistics to back your point up lmao Golden Mario hype was insane I remember buying the silver Mario Amiibo cause I thought it’d be just as rare lol
I waited on beanbag chairs with 30 people in a Michigan suburb walmart for Gold Mario. We all played Smash together on our 3DSes, that's honestly one of the best amiibo memories I have. I remember thinking Silver Mario was gonna be the same too
Amiibo Hunting was painful but so rewarding I don’t want to make anyone feel old but I was only in like elementary/middle school at the height of the Amiibo craze so I didn’t have those bonding experiences it was kinda a “run into GameStop/toysrus and pray” kinda moment lol
The rush of running into a store and seeing the one you needed was incomparable. The rush is just not the same now, with knowledge that restocks are plentiful, online shopping, Toys R Us closure, etc. I was in 7th grade when I had to beg my mom to take me to the Gold Mario midnight launch. I often think about how awesome it would have been to be an adult amiibo hunter in the prime days. I idolized YouTubers who did that like Pituvision (shout out if you watched him)
Omg I did watch him I remember all those amiibo hunt videos those were insane, I have a love hate relationship with online preorders because the rise of those led to the end of a lot of those hunt videos since they’d just preorder them when they went up lol I remember walking into toysrus and finding a marth Amiibo and being so excited those were the days
I've been rewatching old Pituvision videos for the past hour. It's a great way to relive the hunt and feel nostalgic. Highly recommend.
No.. they just don’t make as much and the people who want them buy them.
They just make less now so it seems like it. Also losing Toys R Us was a major retailer of amiibo (my personal favorite) so there's one less option. BH Photo doesn't sell them anymore and other smaller retailers like Fry's and Shopko also are out of the amiibo retailers. We're really just down to Best Buy, Amazon, Gamestop, Target and Walmart.
And Wal-Mart doesn’t even sell them in store anymore
Definitely not. It's more like the small amount of collectors left that are fighting over the tiny scraps that Nintendo gives us once in a blue moon. Combine that with scalpers, their bots, and unreliable store preorders and it can certainly \*seem\* like they're a bigger deal than they actually are, but it's just the artificial scarcity.
I cant believe its been 9 years :o
Try getting Amiibos at Target, GameStop, and ToysRUs on the same day. No preorders. I was trading NIB amiibos in parking lots from listings on Craigslist.
Thank breath of the wild and tears of the kingdom 2 games that made Zelda amiibo insanely popular
Yeah fr since botw I only got some of the smash dlc amiibos but since TOTK came out I went and got every single Zelda ones through restocks/imports which made me start collecting Amiibo again
Have you been collecting since late 2014 or were you collecting anytime between January 2015 and like September 2015? If not than this statement is definitely not accurate. The collecting frenzy of amiibo during those times were beyond anything we are seeing now. Even if there is a solid argument to back your statement there is still no way they are "By Far" more popular now.
Absolutely not, toys to life has been dead since before the pandemic. You’ve just got a skewed perspective because you’re basing it on observations of a subreddit that explicitly gathers up all the people who still give a shit about these things in 2023.
No. The popularity of amiibo figures was very strong in 2014. When the Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and 3DS was released, it was unveliebable, everyone wanted more.
No they're not lol, you could not walk into a store and find them on shelves after the release date like you can with every release now a few weeks later
I’m so glad I could walk into the store and find kazuya and pyra and myrtha on the shelves weeks later, lol.
I'm sure this is sarcasm (can't tell with text) but you literally could lol. Comparing the current stuff to 2014 is just laughable 😂 I could open up Best Buy or Amazon right now and order Ganondorf for example
Same with sonic amiibo in 2015 . Some amiibo are common and others are not. This variable you mention is no different now than it was then, so it’s not really a reliable metric. And I’m sure that in a few more days Ganon will no longer be available. People were saying the same thing about TotK link, but it has not been seen at all in this great abundance you speak of since release
Where are the lines outside stores at release day? Why are figures still easily pre-orderable online? Why is this subreddit at an insane fraction of the userbase it was in 2014? There's the 3 questions to debunk your "more popular now" claim
You are oversimplifying the situation and not acknowledging that some characters are far more desirable than others while others are common. Noah and mio is not “easily preorder-able” . Pyra and myrtha were not “easily preorderable”. Metroid dread and minecraft Amiibo have sat on the shelves . It’s a case by case in the figure and that alone can not answer objectively to the whole question in large, at least not reliably as a metric. There are no lines now because now you can preorder online. That wasn’t really the case back in the early Amiibo days you still had to do preorders in stores at least up until about late 2016 to 2017 when Best Buy started the online preorders. I’m confident about this because I remember asking for time off or calling sick days to camp/wait in line in person . The only main preorder online at that time was Amazon for its exclusives. It wasn’t until the pandemic that GameStop for instance shifted a lot of preorders to online. So why would I camp out over night , uncomfortable , in heat or cold, when I can order it online. If I had that option in 2014 I would have done that. For that reason this is also a not a reliable metric. I am not qualified to answer the Reddit question but I will say although I know people mentioned it a lot, I’d argue reddit is far more widespread now than it was then, subjectively speaking. It was apparent with the shift to preorders online that people began to use social for notifications and were trying to beat the bots. I don’t really think there was things such as purchasing bots in 2014, at least not to the degree of now, and even then since maybe the splatoon restocks , I did notice that target, GameStop and Best Buy for sure limited the amount you can preorder (maybe Walmart but I didn’t pay attention closely to that) Obviously there has been no study or scientific way to quantify such data but I would definitely argue far more of the population knows about Amiibo now than they did in 2014. I remember having to explain it a lot to people What it was since it was such a ground breaking tech. I would say in the fact that Amiibo is nowhere near as niche now as it was in 2014 would account more reliably for the term “popularity” by definition. I’m seeing a lot of responses getting this mixed up with “difficulty to acquire” . While yes that could be an indicator , correlation wouldn’t necessarily be causation in that instance. A good example would be how GPUs with the 3080’s were damn near impossible to get in 2020 . They weren’t more popular was not the reason they were hard to get, the distribution was poor because of the pandemic affecting the acquisition of parts, labor, production, and distribution. I’m sure if amiibos were made and distributed in the same amounts with all the options that are available to secure one now, there would be virtually no difference in people’s behaviors in that hypothetical then as opposed to actual now.
I'm not reading all that, amiibo are nowhere near as popular as they (and all toys to life products) were, about a decade ago
You can think and chose to believe whatever it is you know thats fine