A little plastic flower with hovering eyes stares at me. I approach it. I press its single button. «Sometimes it’s nice to space out,» the Talking Flower says. Yes. I agree. I stay quiet for once, pressing the Talking Flower’s button over and over. Now I know what it feels like to be talked at a lot.
The Nintendo Talking Flower isn’t a body-tracking smart device like the Alarmo. It doesn’t have a screen. It’s really just a little thing that makes sounds, like a talking Amiibo that isn’t an Amiibo. After playing with it briefly at a Nintendo preview event ahead of its launch on March 12, it seems very much like the sort of silly souvenir I’d get at a theme park. Or, another little gift at the Nintendo Store.
I wouldn’t expect much out of a $35 plastic toy, and the Talking Flower doesn’t seem ambitious. It has a bunch of prerecorded messages that come out, either automatically over time or at the press of a button. The Talking Flower sounded a bit quiet to me, but I don’t know if it has volume controls. I couldn’t activate other settings, either, including a music-playing mode. All I could do was press that button to make it say things.
You can’t talk with the Talking Flower. It just talks at you. But in a sense, that’s exactly how it behaves in Super Mario Bros. Wonder, where those flowers just make comments whenever you walk past them.
There are some ways this flower could be a sort-of-smart home thing. It tells time, apparently, sometimes, and has a thermometer to register some temperature (how, and to what degree, I have no idea). It can suggest it’s time for bed or give a wake-up call, it seems.
It’s cute, and annoying, and I sort of want to put it on a windowsill in my home. I bet I’d mute it real fast. Or turn it off entirely. But it’s another part of Nintendo’s ongoing quest to become a movie, toy and entertainment empire as much as a game company. Will this mean a talking Mario, or Bowser, or Peach, or Toad someday? Who knows. For now, you’ll just have to take the flower.