It’s not a deskside AI assistant. It’s not even a quality alarm clock. And yet, Nintendo’s Talking Flower is proof that dumb gadgety toys may be the antidote to our tech-addled, always-online lives.
Nintendo has a strange love for its sousaphone-faced Talking Flower. The voluble vegetation first chatted players’ ears off in Super Mario Bros. Wonder on the original Switch back in 2023. Since then, it’s become a kind of mascot’s mascot, a character who routinely appears as a background character in titles like Super Mario Party Jamboree and Super Mario Tennis Fever on Switch 2. The flower is set to share the spotlight alongside the affable Captain Toad in an amiibo set to launch March 26.
The Talking Flower has never not been annoying. Its entire purpose in life is to sound off with odd quips and anecdotes. Players may have found the Super Mario Bros. Wonder flower was far too verbose in its debut game, but Nintendo obviously can’t get enough of the little guy. Nintendo loves the flower so much it imagines you’ll be keen on hearing it chatter away even when you turn off your Switch.
Nintendo Talking Flower
This speaker toy is built to be annoying. Somehow, that makes it great.
- Quality plastic on flower itself
- Works as a faux alarm clock
- Unhinged voice lines
- It’s really annoying (a good thing)
- Cheap plastic base
- So-so speaker
- It’s really annoying (a bad thing)
Yes, it’s as annoying as it is in the games
Sometimes, I just need tech that doesn’t do anything crazy. © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo
The $35 Talking Flower is as low-tech as these things get. The toy does not connect to the internet. It runs on two AA batteries, and you need to manually set the time when you first set it up. The flower will ask you personally what time you want to wake up and what time you want to go to bed. Selecting each option has the flower intone a “beep,” like the device is mocking you for enabling its basic functions.
The warbling weed doesn’t speak too often. Approximately every 30 minutes it will come in with a quip. “Ta-da!… Ta-da, the sequel!” “Have you had lunch yet?” Every hour, the Talking Flower will take in a breath, then blurt out the time, repeating it for good measure. At the appointed wake time, the babbling blossom will exclaim, “Three, two, one, wakey wakey.” The Talking Flower includes a button that lets you spam its speech. If you need the plant to shut up for a while, you can hold down the button for a few seconds. It will say, “I’ll keep quiet for a while.”
You need to manually set the time as well as your expected sleep and wake times. © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo
The Talking Flower’s speakers aren’t anywhere close to high fidelity. There’s a slight muffled sense to the audio, though I’m not sure I could expect more from a $35 desktop toy. If you tell it to keep quiet and then hold down the button again, it will play the “Wonder!” theme from Super Mario Bros. Wonder.
Then, at random moments, the Talking Flower will say something utterly unhinged. “They say the ocean tastes like tears.” One night, I was playing Resident Evil Requiem next to my brother. I was in the opening parts of the game, creeping through a burned-out wreck of a hotel, when I jerked around after hearing a moose head trophy clatter to the floor. In that same moment, the Talking Flower blurted, “Feels good to be alive!”
It’s moments like these that made me wonder if there is some microphone hidden away inside of the Talking Flower. But there is no hidden microphone or sensor of any kind. It’s simply a speaker and a clock. It’s so full of personality, it starts to seem more personified than it really is. The plastic flower itself feels high quality—far better than the faux flowerbed and plant base, which have more of a grainy, cheap, Mattel-like feel. There’s not much else to this toy. There doesn’t need to be.
Toys like this don’t need a reason to exist
If you have a Mario-themed room, this little guy will fit right in. © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo
One lingering question I had was whether the toy was voiced by Wonder’s original VO actor. Mike Wingert originally voiced the character in the game. Patrick Seitz later took over and voiced the character for its guest appearances on the Switch 2. Nintendo didn’t respond to our requests for comment on who is speaking to Talking Flower owners. We’ll update this review if we learn more.
Unlike Nintendo’s $100 Alarmo alarm clock, the Talking Flower is a lo-fi timepiece that will notify you of the change in the hour. “Perfect weather for a nap, huh?” the Talking Flower said as it was raining outside. That doesn’t mean it somehow knows the ambient humidity or weather forecast. U.S. users will need to manually reset the time when daylight saving rolls around.
Without an internet connection, there will be no option for future updates to add more voice lines. There are only so many things the Talking Flower can say in a given day. After eight hours of having it close at my desk, I heard at least one repeated phrase. If you press the talk button enough times, you’ll inevitably receive a repeat. After enough time, you’ll likely know all its vocalizations by heart.
Push the button, get a quip. © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo
If I wanted to give the Talking Flower a functional job to do, I could use it as a less obtuse alarm clock that won’t yell at me for smacking the snooze button. But this isn’t a practical device. It’s more like having a big, dumb cat wandering through your home. You’ll be sitting at your desk, completely absorbed in your work, and your cat comes over, knocks your pencils off the desk, screams, and tumbles to the floor. You may be peeved in that small moment of time. Afterwards, you’re thankful the rogue feline took your brain off your daily drudgery.
The Talking Flower is a “dumb,” non-smart device. Sometimes, we need such devices in our lives. At least this annoying, verbose, plastic plant doesn’t have to be on at every moment. If ever necessary, you can still tell this shrub to shut up (by pressing its button, of course).
