Toys’R’Us and Amazon are looking good
Hello darkness, my old friend. It’s almost time to again journey down the rabbit hole in pursuit of amiibo. September 11 is a big day for Nintendo. Super Mario Maker launches, a new bundle’s coming out (more on that), and, as it pertains to us, amiibo wave 5b of the Super Smash Bros. line is releasing in the US.
Wave 5b contains five amiibo — Zero Suit Samus, Ganondorf, Olimar, Dr. Mario, and Bowser Jr. Two of these, Dr. Mario and Bowser Jr., are store exclusives. Oh no! Don’t worry it’s not as bad as it sounds, probably. We’ll figure this out together. Let’s tackle all the major national retailers and see what our chances are.
(As a side note, I ordered the three non-exclusives through Groupon the other night. Groupon! Who would have thought Groupon would get in on the amiibo racket?)
Target is the only store that has put pre-orders up online thus far. Those sold out fairly quickly, except for Dr. Mario. At time of writing, he’s still available. Score! Rumor has it that Nintendo made around 150,000 of this figure for Target — 50,000 for online and 100,000 for in-store. It’s said that the other amiibo will have an average stock of around eight at most Targets on Friday.
In fact, that eight area is what you can expect from most retailers as far as Zero Suit Samus, Olimar, and Ganondorf go. Average-size stores seem to be getting about an allotment of eight each at GameStop, Target, and Best Buy. Walmart’s numbers don’t appear to have been reported on, but they’re usually never good anyway.
Toys”R”Us has the Bowser Jr. exclusive, and it doesn’t look like that’s going online anytime soon. Chances are you’ll have to make it into the store to pick that up. The good news is that reports of inventory are around 40 per location, with some going as high as 200-ish. For what it’s worth, Dark Pit (a Best Buy exclusive) wasn’t originally available online either, but hours after going on sale in stores, he showed up on Best Buy’s website.
Toys”R”Us also has a slightly sunnier forecast with regard to the non-exclusives. Instead of an average of eight, Toys”R”Us is closer to an average of 12 or 16 per figure. That might be your best bet if you’re trying to find most of them in-store on launch day.
As we’ve come to expect, Amazon has swooped in and been the face of reason among the amiibo calamity. It has neatly outlined the exact times on Friday when each of the amiibo will go on sale. Amazon does it right when all other retailers keep us in the dark.
So, here’s Amazon’s schedule: Ganondorf goes on sale at 1pm Pacific, Zero Suit Samus is at 2pm, Olimar at 3pm, and 30th Anniversary Mario (Classic) rounds out the day at 4pm. Amazon says that it has fair stock of all these figures, but not an outlandish amount. Show up on time and you’ll probably get it; wait for a few hours and you’ll be out of luck.
While most of the amiibo shouldn’t be too much trouble, there’s one that will cost a pretty penny. The 30th Anniversary Mario (Modern) figure is exclusive to a Super Mario Maker Wii U bundle at Walmart in the US. That’s a $300 amiibo (albeit, you get an entire console, too). Chances are that this will eventually be released individually, but if not, it’ll be the most expensive amiibo to acquire to date. And, it’s not even close.
Good luck and happy hunting, friends.
