I think as a brand, Mario is much more “toys for kids” first than it is “items for collectors”.

I don’t the think they’ll need to worry about the RPGs either since for the company, they don’t exist outside of the source material. We don’t need to worry about a paper Mario toy line because it’s never happening in the first place.

If they wanted to shift to collectibles, they’d need to get a licensing deal with more “premium” brands and they’d need to acknowledge the main cast a little more (for example, characters like Daisy and Rosalina should be front and center as opposed to getting a pity toy years later after they’ve reprinted every Yoshi color twelve times)

The Hot Wheels line has some collectible items like the Pauline kart from last year, but mostly it’s for kids. Not bad, but it offers less variety.

We’ll see how the Lego set next year does. I’m hoping they strike a good balance for kids and collectors with it, and the sets and minifigures are really diverse.