ShinyGirafarig and her daughter go to the Nintendo NY Labo Workshop

By SHINYGIRAFARIG - ShinyGirafarig spied on Nintendo Labo Propaganda.

Nintendo NY had a Labo Workshop for the weekend of when the Labo was released, and I went on April 22nd. This time, there was no age limit of being able to attend the closed Labo event, so I did not have to pass my one year old daughter as a six year old. I like taking my daughter out to Nintendo events. I previously took her to the Pokémon Ultra Sun and Pokémon Ultra Moon event and the Kirby Star Allies event. My daughter loves playing with the recycling rather than all those toys we bought her, so I felt this event might be a good fit. I also feel like I bond better with my daughter when we go out to places together. I prepared for the event by purchasing a lightweight umbrella stroller to navigate around Nintendo NY because her other stroller is very large and I bump into a lot of people otherwise.

(I got this from Target.)

I got to the event half an hour late. I was delayed by her need of a nap, needing to change her diaper in case she thought to fill her diaper at the workshop with her opinion on the Labo, getting to the subway, the subway being delayed, and navigating the streets after leaving the subway because I needed to go to a farther away stop which had elevators for her stroller. But it looks like I did not miss too much. After taking my daughter out of her stroller, I sat her on my lap by the Nintendo Labo desks. I sat with three others on that table. There was another table with four more chairs, leading to eight participants in all per session. No wonder these workshops filled up so fast.

I held my daughter with one of my hands so I barely worked on the Toy-Con myself. The NY employee basically did all the work for me, though I used my free hand somewhat to punch out pieces out of the perforated cardboard kit and to bend some parts of the cardboard. She also gave my daughter cardboard scraps, pipe cleaners, and stickers to hopefully have my daughter entertained as well. When the RC was done, my daughter was encouraged to put a sticker on but she is probably not in the developmental stage in her life to know who to peel a sticker and place a sticker on a surface and to press down on the sticker. She did like the sticky back though. She also liked dropping the cardboard pieces and other crafting equipment on the floor. I guess we know her method to play with the Labo now. She got to press on the Switch screen to move the Toy-Con and we pressed the option for the RC to use its camera so my daughter could see herself on the Switch screen.

Next was the fishing rod, but we barely made it as time ran out to the workshop. The employee said the plan was to fully build the RC and partially build the fishing rod, and then the rest of the workshop was to try the demos of the already-built Labo projects. My daughter sort of played with the house, it took some encouragement to play with the piano and she went on a plastic motorcycle that had the Labo-made handlebars to pose for a cute video for me. I thought I recorded her playing the piano but either I never pressed the record button or the video got corrupted.

I had asked a few questions during this workshop. Questions such as if they plan to make future kits as my child grows older. The employee seemed to not know. I guess big Nintendo does not tell little Nintendo employees about everything. The employee did seem enthusiastic that my daughter will eventually enjoy the Labo. You can see that Nintendo is really trying to encourage parents to buy the Labo for their children. I did not buy the Labo at the time, even if I was already at Nintendo NY and attended a workshop. My apartment is already cluttered and I would not have time to build these projects anyway.

If this is more successful than ARMS and Nintendo continues to support Labo, would I get my daughter a Labo if she begged for it? Parenting is always a balancing act. Would I deny her to watch Teen Titans Go if that was her favorite show and that show still survived up until then? I am not yet at the stage my daughter is going to plead me for things so who knows what will happen then.

Then again, children have short attention spans so she will like it for a day, and then get bored of it and then leave a lot of clutter around the house that I won't get the money back fully as the item has already been used. Maybe I am better off getting a much cheaper arts and crafts kits that does not drain the wallet as much. Teen Titans Go also does not take that much shelf space if it remains not watched. I will admit they almost got me at the workshop. I did not plan to buy it there but I felt more likely to buy it in the future when my daughter can do arts and crafts. Good thing I just remembered the cons.

Anyway the target age is six years and up if the initial Labo event that restricted who can attend is anything to go by. This fad might even pass by the time we get to that age and then I do not have to worry about Labo anymore.

The employee saw my Squid embroidery and asked if it was a patch. I said it is embroidered to cover a bleach stain and I bought this sweatshirt back when it was still sold at Nintendo NY. She asked if I liked Splatoon and I said I do enjoy it.

An embroidery machine is far more worth it than buying Labo.

You can see the embroidery did not cover up all the bleach.
I think I made the squid a bit too small as I underestimated how big it should be to cover up the stain.

How the original Sweatshirt looked before the bleach damage.

The trip was worth it after all.



ShinyGirafarig may be found on Twitter now because Miiverse is gone.


KoopaTV's non-guest articles go into detail about why you should not purchase the Nintendo Labo. (This article's comments section also features ShinyGirafarig's belief that the Labo will outsell ARMS.)
The last time ShinyGirafarig wrote about Nintendo NY, it was mid-2017 and they had a demo for Super Mario Odyssey.