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Nintendo has been playing it safe of late, whether it’s the conservative nature of its Switch successor or the squeaky-clean image presented in its museum. As the company has expanded its ambitions, it’s done so while largely trying to avoid risk, which can seem at odds with the playful Nintendo that brought us the likes of the DS and Labo. But that weird Nintendo still exists — and I have a strange Talking Flower on my bookshelf to prove it.
Nintendo’s most recent release isn’t a console or a game, but a toy. The Talking Flower is exactly what it sounds like: a physical version of the character first introduced in Super Mario Bros. Wonder that has the capability to talk. And that’s all it really does. You can set the real-world time, and on the hour it will announce what time it is, and it will also periodically say things at random. If you can’t wait, there’s a big button that makes it spout a phrase.
There is no real functional purpose for the Talking Flower. I already have plenty of ways to tell the time. And though you can set “sleep” and “wake” times, it’s not an alarm clock — Nintendo already has one of those — as those settings just ensure the flower isn’t annoying you at 1AM. So what’s the point? For $35 the Talking Flower injects a drip feed of whimsy into your home. Every so often the flower will just say things like “So exciting!” or “Feeling pretty great!” to create an overall positive vibe. Sometimes it feels prescient, like when it asked me yesterday, “Have you had lunch yet?” when I most certainly hadn’t. I also appreciate that it keeps saying that it’s “perfect weather for a nap” because I wholeheartedly agree. Likewise for the calming mantra I’ve heard a few times: “It’s gonna be alright. I like to take things slow.”
(Sadly, the flower has yet to answer one of my most pressing questions: what the goo in Mario Wonder tastes like. The closest I’ve heard is it saying “the ocean tastes like tears.” The mystery remains.)
It might seem silly to make a big deal about a one-off toy, but the Talking Flower is also indicative of Nintendo’s current incarnation. For one thing, while Nintendo treads safely with the big stuff to avoid another Wii U-scale disaster, it remains inventive and strange in lots of other ways. Mario Wonder itself is one of the weirdest games I’ve ever played, and one of the Switch 2’s first big games was about how good it feels to smash stuff. The next Tomodachi Life, which launches in April, looks even stranger than its predecessor, which is saying something. When the company decided to bring back its infamous Virtual Boy, it did it in the most niche way possible, with no real risk involved.
And as frivolous as something like the Talking Flower is, it’s also part of a broader strategy. It was released just before a major Switch 2 update for Mario Wonder drops next week, which itself is available not long before the next Super Mario movie hits theaters. It’s a goofy toy, but it’s an example of Nintendo streamlining its synergy, something that’s very important as it continues to expand to areas outside of games.
Nintendo is always a company that zigs when everyone else zags — remember when it launched a new Game & Watch at the same time Microsoft and Sony were kickstarting the current generation of consoles? — and that has largely served it well. In its current form, the company continues to show restraint, staying conservative around its core products, and getting weird and fun for everything else. And the cheerful Talking Flower has plenty to say about that.
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