The Importance of Video Game Merchandise Preservation

The following is a reworked written version of a presentation given at Save The Games: A Digital Preservation Symposium held at The Strong National Museum of Play. The written version has some extra content that was removed due to time constraints, though some images are exclusive to the original presentation. The original presentation can be viewed HERE!

There is a growing amount of talk these days about preserving video games. This includes mostly the games and hardware, but also extends to everything involved in the development, how these games will be played in the future, what they will be played on, and much more. Along with that also comes the need to preserve the culture around video games.

Merchandise is something I feel is a major part of gaming culture and history, and we are clearly not doing a good enough job at preserving it. Throughout this Feature I will define what gaming merchandise is, explain why it’s important, detail what’s being done to preserve it, and offer suggestions as to what needs to be done to save this important part of our gaming culture.

Game Merchandise Defined

So, what is game merchandise? For the purpose of this feature I will use a broad definition. Video game merchandise can include things such as items sold in stores, toys, clothing, promotional items, store displays, employee items, digital goods, food items, and more.

Why is Game Merchandise Important?

1. Merchandise Gives Insight into Game, Brand, and Character Perception

First, Merchandise can give insight into how companies perceive their games, brand, or characters at different time periods. We can look at the original Donkey Kong arcade games for some early examples of this.

When I first read the book The History of Mario by William Audureau it was brought to my attention that Donkey Kong was a much more popular character than Mario at the time. Mario was more of a side character while DK was the main attraction despite being the antagonist. This was a game released before I was born, so this was something I had never really considered before. That said, game merchandise can help corroborate claims like this.

When studying early Donkey Kong merchandise you can see there is a greater focus on Donkey Kong as a character. On this mug Donkey Kong is referred to as Mr. Donkey Kong, while Pauline is The Beautiful Girl, and Mario is only mentioned as The Brave Carpenter. Mario did get some merchandise at the time, but Donkey Kong was clearly the star. For instance, there were several Donkey Kong plush toys made in this era of different sizes but none of Mario.

Though, it is argued that a Mario plush was considered as some people think there is likely a prototype that’s been found. Regardless, DK was clearly the star and merchandise can be used to support claims like this.

Licensed Board games are another example that we can look at to see Nintendo’s changing attitude towards the use of their Intellectual Property. In the 1980’s there were several original licensed board games for games like Donkey Kong, Super Mario Bros., and The Legend of Zelda.

Original Board Games have continued over the years, but have always come across as way less ambitious with an exception here for 2007’s Big Brain Academy game. So why have original board games become more basic over time? At New York Toy Fair one year I asked USAopoly about this since they were making many licensed Nintendo board games. They told me that Nintendo is very protective of their brand, and that Nintendo is much more open to having their IP inserted into already existing board games.

That is why these days you’re much more likely to see games like the ones shown above as opposed to newly designed games based on the Nintendo IP. However, these games do sometimes have special rules that match up with the Nintendo IP. And yes, there are a plethora of Nintendo Monopoly games as well, some also with special rules.

The point is that even if I hadn’t specifically asked USAopoly about this, researchers would have been able to come to similar conclusions about the use of the Nintendo IP based on studying these types of products.

Within this space we can also see how companies could be wrong about how they are trying to interpret their products. In the mid to late 2010s many Game Boy products started to hit the market, but there was a problem with how the product was being depicted on licensed merchandise. You see, on the merchandise the color of the power light on the Game Boy was green, but on actual Game Boy hardware it’s red. This issue was happening across the entire product line.

I asked several companies about this at New York Toy Fair and they all told me that the style guide given to them by Nintendo all depicted the power light as green. Style guides are a set of rules and guidelines that a licensor gives to licensees to main standards across many different products and from different manufacturers.

So Nintendo was telling everyone incorrect information about their products through their style guide. I politely told several different manufacturers about this sad mistake, and about a year later I started to see the power light turning red on several pieces of Game Boy merchandise. I don’t know if I’m the reason behind the change or not, but the fact is we can use merchandise to also see when companies may not care as much about correctly representing their products at certain time periods. It gives us a slight glimpse at the behind the scenes goings on and teaches us things about the company that would otherwise not be known.

Ultimately, there is a lot to learn about companies over different time periods by researching game merchandise.

2. Helps Us Understand Promotion & Marketing

The second reason why game merchandise is important is because it helps us understand the promotion and marketing of a game. Promotion and marketing of a game is arguably just as important, if not more so, as the game itself, and we can look to merchandise to partially see how this was done.

First we can look at store point of purchase displays and other marketing material that would have been around during a game’s launch or during specific promotions. This helps us understand what customers could have been looking at in the actual stores, if anything at all, and helps us understand how these products were sold.

There are also pre-order bonuses or purchase incentives to look at to understand what would have helped entice prospective buyers to pick up a game or what helped retailers sway sales to their store over another. Using Pikmin 4 as an example there was a water bottle from Walmart, a keychain from Target, a pin set from GameStop, and a tote bag from Best Buy. These incentives can also vary between other countries or regions so there is a lot to look at when games have this kind of push behind them.

Continuing with Pikmin 4 as an example we can also see different promotional gifts & prizes that were offered at the time. All of the above are My Nintendo rewards or contests. So we can see printable digital reward hats, purchasable shoe charms and a hand towel, and a Piknik Sweepstakes that people could enter to win exclusive items.

All of these types of things were put up around the release of the game to build awareness and excitement for the game. Studying these objects really does help us understand the landscape these games were being released in and what companies were doing in order to promote and sell their games.

3. Merchandise Can Expand Game Lore

The third reason why game merchandise is important is that it has the ability to expand and in some cases, alter, game lore. Some obvious examples of this are Art & Lore books. Above you can see The Zelda: Breath of the Wild: Creating a Champion book which has an entire History section dedicated to explaining a ton of lore for this version of Hyrule in greater detail than the game. This includes history, geography, and more. The Legend of Zelda: Hyrule Historia is one of the most famous examples of this. It gave us the first printed Zelda timeline from Nintendo. It’s still discussed and debated a lot to this day since it includes a major retcon that I personally don’t like, but it’s a major part of history nonetheless. And finally The Xenoblade Chronicles 3 Official Artworks Aionios Moments book has a Q&A section in the back with the Executive Director of the game Tetsuya Takahasi that reveals a lot of information about the series plot so far that isn’t found directly in any of the games.

Aside from the obvious stuff, merchandise itself can impact the knowledge and understanding of a game’s lore. The first example I’d like to mention has to do with Metroid Dread. Above is a Metroid Dread shirt manufactured by Sportiqe for sale in North American Nintendo Stores. Prior to its release fans noticed there was some sort of Chozo text found within the game but nobody could decipher it. Chozo are a highly advanced bird-like race found within the series and these glyphs, seen behind Samus, are representative of their language.

When the above shirt went up for sale I shared it with my friends over at Nintendo World Report and our Site Director John Rairdin noticed that the text behind Samus likely spelled out the main character’s full name, Samus Aran. John then asked me if there were any other shirts with glyphs on them and I told him yes!

I knew this shirt above was only available to Nintendo Employees and influencers, but it had more glyphs on it. John assembled a team to work on deciphering this and they eventually figured out this text on this shirt said Metroid and Bounty Hunter.

After working further the team was then able to basically piece together the entire Chozo alphabet, which led to further discoveries in the game. If you want more info on this I know there’s a video on our site’s YouTube Channel: Nintendo World Report TV. This is further proof of merchandise’s important impact on game lore even when it’s probably not intended.

One final example is the Xenoblade Chronicles 2 Siren Model Kit that was released in Japan. Siren is a giant machine that plays a role in the Xenoblade 2 story. So, what does a model kit have to do with any lore details?

Well, the model kit’s instruction booklet had a page containing some extremely important story details that affects the entire Xenoblade Trilogy thus far. It may even, arguably, connect the Xenoblade games to other Xeno games. This important information can’t be found in the games and is only from the merchandise.

4. Merchandise Can Help Gauge Cultural Impact

The fourth reason game merchandise is important is that it can help researchers gauge the cultural impact of games, characters, and brands. For example, if we were able to more easily track how much merchandise for a specific game there was, and when it was being produced, we may be able to draw certain conclusions about overall cultural impact over time and at specific points in time. It’s extremely difficult to show this because it’s hard to do research on game merchandise in large quantities, but one small example I have is with the original Super Mario Bros. game.

So these are socks you could recently get from Hallmark featuring the original Super Mario Bros. logo and in game artwork. And I’ve seen similar socks being sold at other retailers. My point is there is something to be said about the longevity and cultural impact of a game that can still move merchandise like this nearly four decades after its release. With more research in this area I think we could actually learn a lot.

While on this topic I want to say that I feel as though many people view the history of a game as what took place roughly around the start of development to the time at which a game shipped, or in modern times when the final update was released. I, however, view the history of a game as continuing through merchandise like this that can be released long after a game is complete. Things like this are part of a game’s cultural impact and are part of the full story of a game’s history.

5. Merchandise Is Used In Development

My final reason why Video Game Merchandise is important is that it’s used in development.

I only have one example of this but Masahiro Sakurai, the Director of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, has talked several times about how he and the artists used official game figures as reference material in the production of the game. Sakurai has also mentioned that it’s a great way to see what the bottom of some character’s feet should look like.

What’s Being Done To Preserve Game Merchandise?

So what’s being done to preserve game merchandise? If you do a quick Google Search on the topic not much comes up. Which is frightening. Even though the results are limited, the truth is there are several scattered attempts.

One website I’ve found called The Gaming Shelf has attempted to make a list of game merchandise. Some of the info it has on items is good, but it’s very limited.

Some websites dedicated to specific franchises also track game merchandise for said games. Above you can see a page from the Metroid Database, however this is from a copy of their old site that’s still accessible, though a bit hidden as their updated site dropped this great information. Unfortunately, some of these old pictures are broken which is a shame. These sections are also clearly not complete.

Game Wikis occasionally have incomplete lists of merchandise for the series they cover. Above is a picture from Inkipedia, a Splatoon wiki, showing off various items.

Then you have some sites like Kirby Informer that reports on new merchandise releases which helps preserve the memory of these items.

Pokéshopper.net is another site that tracks new and upcoming releases for the Pokémon franchise.

Then we have some printed media that can help preserve such items. The World of Nintendo by Andy Cunningham is an excellent book that covers the history of Nintendo of America’s early in store merchandising initiatives. While the text of the book focuses more on the story behind it, there are plenty of great pictures showing off the in store displays of the era. And if you look around these images you can get a glimpse of many of the other Nintendo goods that were for sale during that time as well. I highly recommend this book.

The Mario Goodies Collection is another book by collector Mitsugu Kikai which shows off many Mario items. While this makes a fun coffee table book I think it’s lacking information that would make it a lot more useful. This book is also extremely rare. The good thing about it is that it does show off a lot of Japanese exclusive goods that many people outside of the region may not be aware of.

One initiative I’ve found especially exciting is from the Twitter account @KeshiCorner. Mr. Talida, the person behind the account, has been 3D scanning one of these Japanese gaming Keshi figures a day and uploading them to Archive.org. I’m not aware of anyone else doing work like this and I think this is one direction game merchandise preservation needs to go in on a larger scale in the future.

You may be wondering what’s being done at the Institutional Level. I reached out to many organizations that are considered to be in the games preservation space. Sadly, of those that got back to me I found most to focus almost exclusively on video game hardware and software. However, two have taken an interest in obtaining some game merchandise. They are the Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York and the National Video Game Museum in Frisco, Texas. While both are accepting items in this space I don’t know how in-depth their collections are, or how detailed their information is on this class of items. That said, I am happy to see some Institutional work being done in this field.

Ultimately, the heavy lifting in this field is actually being done by individual collectors. These people have a depth of knowledge in their areas of expertise that is completely unmatched. Collectors are part of the key to unlocking long term merchandise preservation and their dedication and knowledge is extraordinarily impressive.

These include collectors like a guy that goes by the name of Super Smash Collector online with an incredible Smash Brothers collection.

Christian Ponte who has a great Fire Emblem collection.

Anne Martha Harnes who holds the Guiness World Record for Largest Collection of The Legend of Zelda Memorabilia.

And Brett Martin, who holds the Guiness World Record for Largest Collection of Video Games memorabilia.

Video game merchandise collectors are really going above and beyond to obtain some of this stuff. For instance a Mario collector in 2021 won this Japanese Mallow plush, from the original release of Super Mario RPG, at auction for the equivalent of about $21,000. Game Merchandise is serious business.

Is This True Preservation?

So looking at all of this I still have to ask, is this true preservation? I’d say some of it is and some of it isn’t. I’ve seen many merchandise sites come and go, some without a trace, and while the Internet Archive is a great tool it doesn’t catch everything.

At the institutional level, as mentioned, we seemingly only have two places actively seeking some of these items, but there is a lot more to saving these items than just collecting them. The act of collecting isn’t necessarily preservation, but it can be a start.

Ultimately, a lot of the pressure of trying to save these items currently falls in the hands of individual collectors that save these objects out of pure passion. But that likely isn’t enough on its own.

Which is why I ask, “Where can you even learn about game merchandise?” Sure you can try to do web searches, but the results are very limited as I mentioned before. Sites like eBay can give some clues but many times descriptions are often incorrect or made up to try and add value to items. Ultimately, the knowledge is in the brains of the dedicated collectors and a lot of that information isn’t easily found.

If you want to learn about game merchandise you really need to track down experts and look in many places like Subreddits, Discord Servers, Facebook Groups, and other various places on the web. This is a real problem because more than just the knowledge of the items themselves are at risk.

What do I mean by that? Let me give you some examples.

Context Matters

Just looking at an item like this you would probably assume it’s not a big deal. Just some toy sold on a store shelf. So what is it really It’s a Jakks Pacfic World of Nintendo 2.5 inch Fire Toad figure. While it may not seem like much it’s highly sought after because, for whatever reason, it was only available in Mexico.

Here we have a White and Black Yoshi BD&A plush that were only available as part of a mail in gift with a cut out UPC label for Yoshi’s Story on Nintendo 64.If people sent in the label and I think $5 they could get one of these. They are extremely rare today.

These crystals were sold exclusively at the Nintendo World Store in New York City. One was made available to celebrate the anniversary of the store for the first three years. They initially retailed for $400 a piece. Mario is from 2006, Peach from 2007, and Twilight Princess Link from 2008.

These items are Splatoon rubber trinkets. I don’t know exactly what they were supposed to be used for but there is a small rubber loop on the back. What makes these incredibly important is that they might be the first pieces of Splatoon merchandise ever produced.

After trying the Splatoon demo at E3 2014, where the game was announced, a person would be given one of these. I haven’t really found info on these items elsewhere and I don’t think it’s even possible to play as a White Inkling in the final game, so these also give us an early glimpse into the game’s development as well.

And finally here we have an NES controller tin of mints. It may not seem like much, but these are still being manufactured. The reason why it’s important is that, as far as I can tell, this is currently the last item being made that uses the famous Nintendo Power branding.

What I’m getting at here is that it’s not only the objects that need saving, it’s the deep and crazy context behind these items that needs to be preserved as well. And the knowledge behind many of these objects are only found within the minds of experts, and those experts won’t last forever. Time is running out to mine these minds for this valuable information so that it may be made available for generations to come because if we don’t find a way to save the context along with the items, we may misinterpret some of the data these items could give us.

Misinterpretation of Merchandise

Without the proper context behind certain items it can be very easy to come to incorrect conclusions about what specific items could be teaching us. One example of misinterpretation is with the Kellytoy Mario Plush Line.

Before I detail this story I just want to make it clear I’ve heard this from a reliable source, however they heard it passed down through several others. So if any of the information is incorrect I do apologize, as some of the details may be off. That said, based on the end product results, I do believe it.

Anyway, the Kellytoy line of Mario plush is notoriously bad within collector’s circles. However, if you were to just look at these items at face value you may think Nintendo’s licensing department just didn’t care too much about quality at the time of their release. This actually isn’t the case.

You see Kellytoy acquired the license to make Mario Toys for amusement around 2004. Those that know anything about the plush industry know when you have a license for amusement toys they are meant to be given out as prizes at carnivals, boardwalks, claw machines, and things of that nature. They are not sold at retail and are generally cheaply made to guarantee that when they are won the operators lose very little money.

That said Kellytoy, allegedly, broke their contract and sub-licensed the Mario license to another company that manufactured and released these low quality plush under the Kellytoy name. Additionally, they were found in some retail spaces as I remember seeing some at GameStop around this time.

Eventually Nintendo found out what was going on and stripped the license away from Kellytoy. I think Good Stuff has been making the amusement Mario plush since.

Above you can see some of the poor quality work from the Kellytoy line of Mario plush. In this example you can see the dotted material cut line around Mario’s ear, his oddly shaped face, poor construction, and poorly designed mustache. Provided are pieces of art that were available for the character as reference around the time of the plush’s release.

One more example here is the Kellytoy Wario plush. You can see the hideous design all over the place. Sideburns confusingly shooting straight out of Wario’s ears, poor eyebrows, a lump on his head that’s supposed to be between his eyes, and more contributing to the cheap and shoddily done design.

Again, if we just looked at these products without context we may think Nintendo was looking for a quick and cheap cash out. However these products, while licensed, were likely never officially approved, especially the ones that made it to the retail space where they didn’t belong.

Time & Other Problems

Earlier I said that time was running out to save game merchandise. However, time isn’t the only problem.

In 2015 Satoru Iwata made it clear that he wanted Nintendo to increase the use of their IP in many different areas including merchandise. As a Nintendo collector, hearing this made me curious what was going to happen as there were already many items being licensed out. However, after this statement we have definitely entered a boom period of Nintendo merchandise.

Since then Nintendo has partnered with many different brands to create and sell limited time products to help increase their brand awareness. Above are just a few of the examples I could remember, but I’m sure there are more.

The merchandise doesn’t stop here though as Nintendo has expanded its store program to many locations globally. Here in the US the Nintendo World Store was converted to Nintendo New York in 2016. There is a Nintendo company store within Nintendo of America known as Nintendo Redmond, and Nintendo San Francisco is slated to open sometime next year.

Japan also has three stores now. There is Nintendo Osaka, Nintendo Tokyo, and Nintendo Kyoto. I expect the store program to continue to grow and expand to new markets in the future. All of these stores carry exclusive items.

Additionally, just detailed a few weeks ago, the Nintendo Museum opening this October will have exclusive merchandise as well.

Then there are stores and other merchandise items coming in at the various Super Nintendo World theme park locations opening up globally. New items are made available somewhat frequently.

My point behind these examples is just to illustrate that it will be impossible to document everything, especially with the number of items being produced drastically increasing, even in regular stores, but I think it’s important, if possible, to try. There is a lot of work to be done to really save what has already been made and more stuff than ever is in the pipeline. It’s a completely uphill battle to save this important part of our history and gaming culture.

What can be done?

On a personal level I think it’s important for people that do care about game merchandise to do a better job at saving it. I’d recommend people start:

1. Take pictures of merchandise, including packaging.

2. Document how the merchandise you do get was distributed, especially at events or as promotional items.

3. Take care of what you do have, because you never know what dumb thing could be extremely scarce.

4. Try to get these objects in the hands of people that are passionate about them.

On a professional level a lot more needs to be done.

1. More organizations need to start acquiring interesting and important game merchandise.

2. Organizations need more experts recording data about game merchandise.

3. Important and interesting items need to be stored professionally to ensure long term survivability.

4. Organizations need to work more closely with collectors and merchandise experts and maybe new organizations need to come into existence in order to help specialize in this field.

I do feel like, over time, all of this can be achieved at some level, but we need much more collaboration at the professional level with dedicated collectors that want to save these historically important artifacts. I don’t know of any major merchandise collectors that have donated portions of their collection to established institutions, but I think it could go a long way for a good organization to take these items in and treat them with the highest of respect to show the serious merchandise collectors that there is a good path forward if they want to have these items available for future generations. Strong trust between merchandise collectors and established not for profit institutions needs to be developed to advance this field.

I should note that while visiting The Strong National Museum of Play, when I originally gave this presentation, I did learn about the Paul Sams Collection the museum acquired. Paul Sams was the Chief Operating Officer at Blizzard Entertainment and he donated numerous memorabilia and merchandise items from the company’s history. This is promising news for the future, but it’s just a start and we really do need to see more of this moving forward, especially from less connected private collectors. You can learn more about the Paul Sams collection here!

Another possible solution is on the digital front. Something I’d like to see in the future is one or several professionally run online databases that experts can start filling in to help save these items. This could save both the existence of the items as well as the context behind them.

I’m admittedly not very knowledgeable in the database field but there are clearly lots of risks and challenges here as well. Challenges such as money, data storage, portability to future platforms, who should be filling information in, will people want to collaborate on such a project, should bootlegs and knock offs make it in, and many many more issues.

I’ve brought this idea to a few developer friends of mine and I think they just wanted to tell me I’m crazy. Which, I know I am, but this may be one of the only ways to attempt to save this stuff and I’m just someone who cares and wants to do the right thing in this space while I can. Getting well designed, backed up, and future proofed professional databases is likely one of the most important ways to preserve the knowledge of game merchandise and these need to start happening as soon as possible.

Conclusion

Ultimately Video Game Merchandise is Awesome and I don’t think we are doing enough to preserve this unique aspect of gaming culture that has several potential research benefits. If we, as a community, don’t start to come together to take this more seriously we are in danger of losing a lot of gaming history and culture, and that on a higher level is a loss of human culture.

Sadly, it seems like many institutions have blinders on and only focus solely on the hardware and software side of gaming history which I feel is a complete mistake. That said, we still have time to start saving Merchandise before it’s too late. We can start making a difference but the merchandise collectors and preservation communities need to come together, and that needs to happen sooner rather than later.

As for me, I’ve amassed quite a substantial collection and I can’t keep collecting at the rate I have been. At its surface, collecting can be a selfish hobby, as many people are vying for limited resources. I’m at a point now where I’d rather work with other serious collectors and do the right thing for the long term, but it’s hard to find avenues forward as this really does feel like a new frontier in games preservation. When you have collected as many things as I have you start to realize nothing you own is yours forever, so you start to wonder what doing the right thing is about. In the coming months and years I’ll have to start downsizing my collection by either donating or selling items. I’m sure that day comes for many collectors, but I’d still love to do something positive to make a difference in this area of study.

I hope you walk away from this Feature with a greater appreciation of the importance of game merchandise to our gaming history and culture. If you do I’ll feel as though I did my job and made some sort of impact in this field that means so much to many people. I strongly urge everyone to start taking this and many other lesser appreciated areas of gaming more seriously because together we can make a positive impact on truly preserving things like game Merchandise on both a physical and digital front for future generations.

If you’d like to get in contact with me about this topic I have some ways to do so listed below!