I was never too keen on having any of my own Amiibo since Nintendo launched them back in 2014. They seemed like expensive figurines to me with extremely limited use for your games. Then, Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild came out. I love having customization in games and in Breath of the Wild, one of the customizations is the different armors you can equip. This feature is cool. What I do not find as cool is that to unlock certain costumes, you need to have a specific Amiibo.

Now I would be tempted to get one or two, but there is a problem. They’re next to impossible to come by. Well, at least non-bootleg ones are. Nintendo didn’t make a lot of Amiibo for some strange reason and now that is causing problems in the market. There is a high demand for these figures and very little supply. If you want a bona fide Amiibo, chances are you are going to need between $20 and $90 depending on which one you want and what condition you want it in.

Some gamers have found these prices a little crazy and have decided to take matters into their own hands. They’ve started creating their own bootleg Amiibo, and some are selling them for less than originals. This is causing a great flood of fake Amiibo to hit the market and Nintendo are the ones to blame. Like how they struggled to meet the demand for the NES Classic before discontinuing it, Nintendo continues to fail to meet the demand for Amiibo. However, I have a solution to propose. Amiibo cards.

The Amiibo figurines will retain a portion of their value as collector’s items, but more people will be able to access content they didn’t know about when the Amiibo were available. Also, I imagine a card is a lot more affordable to make than a plastic figure which means they could be sold at a lower price, so more people will buy them. Plus, many (if not all) of the bootleggers are selling their Amiibo as cards already. If you make genuine Amiibo cards, people will more than likely stop supporting bootleggers and support Nintendo.

So, Nintendo, please bring back the older Amiibo relevant to your newer games. Whether that is making more figures, or switching to cards, or a combination. We shouldn’t be punished for not getting them 6+ months ago before we knew what they could do.