Richard Kain

They should have made Animal Crossing amiibo do something cool in the game... or even just appear... if they wanted to clear those out.

There actually is some decent integration with the 3DS proper Animal Crossing game. But this was added after-the-fact, and did not come out alongside the release of the amiibo. Instead we got Happy Home Designer and a weak Wii U entry, both of which leaned more heavily toward supporting the cards. If we had gotten a proper Wii U Animal Crossing entry, the figures would probably be more popular.

Of course, it's only a matter of time before we see a Switch Animal Crossing game. The demand for those figures will likely bump when a proper Switch Animal Crossing title is released.

I have to ask what's with the surge in amiibos again? Is it because of Zelda? 

It's mainly because of Zelda. It's partially because of the Switch. Zelda came out, and was wildly popular. It got crazy high reviews and people have been playing it like mad. And thanks to it's game structure, the amiibos actually had a decent contribution to the game. They provided gobs of in-game items, quite a few of which were useful and many of which could be used as ingredients or to get more in-game money.

Initially, there was no extra demand for the amiibos. At launch, it was actually quite easy to get the Breath of the Wild amiibos in stores. I saw them all over the place, and honestly felt a little silly for having pre-ordered all of mine off of Amazon. At the time, no one really knew how popular the Switch was going to end up being, or how good Zelda was going to turn out. So the Switch sold out at launch, but the amiibos didn't. But after a week or two, people had started playing the game, and enthusiasm started to skyrocket.

Now we're looking at a situation where the Switch is likely to sell more than half of the Wii U's lifetime figure in a single year. This time next year, Mario Odyssey will be out, there will be millions more Switch owners, and amiibo mania is going to be in full swing again. For anyone who still has sealed Mario amiibos on your shelf, it might be time to dust them off and sell them.

Got my Prime Skyward Sword (naturally). But when I stopped by the local Best Buy and GameStop, they were both out. Best Buy had sold out of their stock, and GameStop had only received 4 units that were all assigned to pre-orders. (never any chance)

The after-the-fact scarcity of the Breath of the Wild amiibos has re-invigorated people's interest in amiibo collecting. It's also rung the dinner bell for all the abitious flippers out there looking to make a quick buck. I expected a reaction like this, but it is still a little galling. I have a morning meeting that I have to attend for my job everyday, and it lands right around the same time that these stores open. Job takes priority, there's no getting around that. But it also means that I can't get away to pick up items like this when the stores open. So I'm always about half an hour behind. It's not so bad when the amiibos show up at all the stores, because then I at least have the chance to try picking them up at Target or WalMart before I go into work. (both those stores open before 10 AM) But when they have GameStop and BestBuy exclusives, I'm pretty much screwed.

Got my Amazon order in for the Skyward Sword. I was lucky. I was actually in the middle of my morning meeting. Just dumb luck that I refreshed the page.

Yeah, that is a really whiny original post. Also, this is a single store-exclusive amiibo. Why are you lining up at Best Buy at 6 AM? That's four hours before it opens. It's not a new console, it's just a single plastic statuette out of a very large collection of other plastic statuettes. It kind of just sounds like you are full of bitterness and angst.

Calm down and get some perspective.