A few weeks ago, Nintendo announced a collaboration between themselves and Sanrio to feature a variety of items in Animal Crossing: New Horizons themed after Sanrio characters. The only way to actually obtain these items is to purchase a special amiibo card from a participating Target and scanning it on your Nintendo Switch, which would in turn bring special villagers to your island bearing gifts themed after characters like Hello Kitty and My Melody (no Aggretsuko, though, which is lame). The problem with these kinds of distributions is that they’re extremely easy targets for vigilant scalpers, a painful lesson that many learned this morning.
Those who were looking to purchase the Sanrio cards from Target stores when sales opened up this morning found the cards sold out almost everywhere. Like clockwork, listings for the card packs immediately began to appear on sites like eBay, with price tags going as high as $150. This has prompted a wave of frustration on Twitter from Sanrio and Animal Crossing fans who were hoping to get in on the promotion and, as was the case with the whole Pokémon cards at McDonald’s fiasco, were immediately shoulder-checked by scalpers.
I just wanted one (1) packet of the Sanrio amiibo cards and all I got was pain and no sleep pic.twitter.com/IwVNK4j9EV
— lauren (@rivendellacnhh) March 26, 2021
Target: You can’t buy the Sanrio Animal Crossing Amiibo cards in store. You can only order online
Me: I finally got my order thru on the app after 45 minutes!
Target: We can’t fulfill your online order because we sold them in the store pic.twitter.com/miLp3m9D4P
— Kari Marie (@SeriouslyKari) March 26, 2021
all of us forming together after waking up early and ending up automatically being robbed of any animal crossing sanrio amiibo cards to demand justice from target and nintendo pic.twitter.com/H2YHXzs57G
— ??? ♡ (@vampren_) March 26, 2021
Some lucky users have managed to snag the cards either by repeatedly mashing the buy button on Target’s website, or just going into the store in person and checking the shelves. Some Twitter users have suggested calling local Targets and asking about Sanrio card stocks, as apparently not all of the cards are being listed on their website. Hopefully, retailers will learn a lesson someday that limited-edition sales almost always attract scalpers, and scalpers will learn a lesson to just go away already.
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