As a kid I never understood for the life of me why Nintendo had such a small presence in the world of action figures. The first time I ever saw a Nintendo action figure was in the late 90s, and it was a small selection of very limited articulation figures based on Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time that were only sold in game stores. They never seemed to escape that trend, either. It if you want to get good articulation it's gotta be something expensive like Figma, and if you want something "cheap" ($20 for one action figure in 2022 is not cheap even with today's inflation, no matter what anyone tells you) you are going to get limited articulation. More importantly, all these figures are aimed at adults and you can forget things like vehicles, playsets or electronic gimmicks unless it's Lego's Mario line.

Did Nintendo see toys as competition for kids' money or something like that? Maybe they weren't that far off, because when I was a kid, if I wasn't buying video games I was buying Star Wars toys. In any case, it always saddened me that I could never walk into a toy store and get Star Fox, Zelda and Metroid action figures, let alone ones that were actually meant to be played with.