I feel as if I’m in the minority here, but the Talking Flowers are easily one of my favourite new things to have come out of 2023’s Super Mario Bros. Wonder. There’s something about the disparity between their cutesy, Nintendo-coded look and incredibly straightforward line delivery that really tickles me. In a game where pretty much nobody else speaks, why is this otherwise unremarkable flower talking at me like a regular guy?
Well, luckily for me and everyone else that has good taste, it seems like the Talking Flower is here to stay in the Mario universe. Just recently, they made a new in-game appearance in Mario Tennis Fever, although I’ll admit that they’re a fair bit more annoying in Camelot’s Switch 2 tennis offering. I don’t think that’s their fault.
But perhaps more novel is the release of the Nintendo Talking Flower, a physical collectible/toy that brings these chatty blooms into the real world.
After having one of these in my house for around a week, I can say that these are a wonderful little gadget that serve as a reminder of the kinds of simple joys to be had in a non-invasive, screen-free toy. Also, I am taking the damned batteries out of this thing.
Getting set up with the Talking Flower is simple enough. Out of the box it comes ready to display, if all you want is a nicely-modelled and detailed (or as detailed as these flowers ever get in-game) statue to put with your other Nintendo curios. To get any further than that you’ll need two important things – a pair of AA batteries and a size 1 Phillips screwdriver to get the battery casing off. Annoyingly, I didn’t have a screwdriver that small on hand, and had to get creative with the pointy end of a kitchen knife, and there’s nothing really to suggest Nintendo couldn’t have used a more standard-sized screw.
The base of the pot is at least nice and easy to twist on and off, and underneath along with the battery compartment you’ll find a small LCD display and three buttons, which you can use to set the language you want to the Talking Flower to speak in, the time, and also give it your desired sleep and wake up times so that it knows when not to disturb you.
The Nintendo Talking Flower supports an impressive 11 different languages with a huge catalogue of phrases. These languages include English, German, French, Spanish (Spain), Spanish (Latin America), Italian, Dutch, Portuguese (Brazil), Japanese, Chinese and Korean.
Once you’ve set it up, well, there’s not much left to do with this other than find a good spot to place it and let it do its thing. Left alone, the Talking Flower will spit out a phrase a handful of times an hour, outside of the sleeping hours you’ve set. These phrases are mostly original with a scant few quotes taken from Wonder, and mostly come at random with a bit of variation depending on the time of day, where it might ask about your lunch plans at midday or mention homework in the afternoon.
Crucially, there is no microphone or motion sensing or anything that you might not want for a device that’s largely going to live in kids’ rooms. This means that the Talking Flower can’t offer any kind of active responses, other than a big button on the front that’ll make it blurt out one of its phrases on the spot, but if anything that’s almost a relieving change of pace from the kinds of “smart” features inhabiting just about everything at the moment.
This does leave you at the mercy of the random-ness of it all, and the potential for this thing to interrupt any moment with something as innocuous as “I think you’re neat” or as existentially concerning as “Where am I?!” In a pinch, holding down the main button will mute the Talking Flower until its next wake-up time, and there are six volume settings. But after a week of having it in my hallway, I think I’m officially done with being caught off guard by enthusiastic but unexpected chattering happening just out of sight when I’m trying to work or play something.
Especially when it’s just after dinner time and I’m settling in to a quiet read, and from around the corner I hear an echo-y “They say the ocean tastes like tears…”
There’s also shockingly little here for actual Super Mario Bros. Wonder fans, or fans of anything Mario. I’ve heard at least one mention of Bowser, and you can get a few seconds of an assortment of Wonder theme music by un-muting it with another long-hold of the main button, but that’s about it.
So yeah, this is the kind of thing I’d recommend for a kids’ bedroom or playroom, over your standard young-adult-to-millennial geek decor. Where the Talking Flower’s need to announce the hour every hour is annoying to me (especially when it decides to count down or take a big, gulping breath beforehand), it could actually be a useful little educational or scheduling tool for young children. I try my best to find the joy in it’s crushingly cheery quips, but I’m at the point now where it’s long since run out of new things to say and I’m starting to actively yell at it.
At USD $34.99 / AUD $49.95 / £24.99, The Talking Flower is certainly affordable enough that it’s worth a look into for serious Mario-observing households or as a lightly-interactive but still very “off the grid” companion for younger fans. Maybe just remember to mute it whenever you’re alone in the house.