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[Confirmed] The Gold Mario Amiibo Is A Retailer Exclusive
Update: Nintendo has announced that the Gold Mario Amiibo will launch alongside Mario Party 10 on March 20. It will be available only at Walmart. It appears that pre-orders were available for a brief time on the company's website, but no longer. If you're interested, you may want to plan to be at Walmart early on March 20.
Original Story:
Earlier this month, listings for silver and gold variants of the Mario Amiibo from the upcoming Super Mario Bros. line appeared online. It seems that the latter of these is soon to be a reality and a retailer exclusive.
A Reddit user by the name of “pituvision” snapped the image below that labels the Gold Mario figure as a Walmart exclusive. Given Nintendo’s propensity for retailer Amiibo exclusives (Rosalina at Target, Lucario at Toys R Us, Meta Knight at Best Buy, and Shulk at GameStop - Disclaimer: GameStop is Game Informer’s parent company), this fits right in line with previous strategy.
Click to enlarge.
We’ve reached out to Nintendo for more information. We’ll update should we receive a response.
[Source: Reddit, Images: NeoGAF user Zonic (above), Reddit (below)]
Our Take
Given the run of retailer exclusives, this certainly wouldn’t be a shock. I hope it does signal a change in approach for the company, though.
Retailer exclusive variants are much more reasonable than limiting characters to specific chains. Activision does this well with Skylanders, with Legendary versions at Toys R Us, Nitro versions at other retailers, and even glow in the dark varieties at others. This helps ensure players find the characters they want, even if not in the exact deco they’d prefer.
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