There is a surprising bit of news coming from Toy Ark!  Jakks Pacific is releasing a World of Nintendo exclusive figure set at San Diego Comic Con this year.  While they have done one figure that I know of, Metallic Samus, which was a Comic Con exclusive of sorts, this is definitely different from that.  Not only is this two pack focused on retro NES characters but the packaging is some of the coolest I have seen from Jakks Pacific.  It really looks like the sprites from Super Mario Bros. are on your TV while you’re playing NES!

If that wasn’t unique enough, the way these are being sold is also very different. Entertainment Earth, one of the biggest online sellers for pop culture items and figures, is going to have 3,000 of the 8-Bit Mario and Peach Two Pack for sale at the convention.  If they do not sell all of these figures, then they will sell the remaining to anybody who preorders.  If you’re interested in this figure, I recommend you preorder as quickly as you can on Entertainment Earth’s website.  The nice thing is that you won’t be charged for the figures until they ship them to you so there isn’t much risk to pre-ordering.

While it is nice that Jakks Pacific and Entertainment Earth are at least giving people outside of the convention a chance to buy it, there are a lot of questions raised by this new product too.  Will these figures be released in any shape or form like this again?  8-Bit Mario is an easy enough figure to find but with so many other characters already released in 8-Bit form, you have to wonder if Peach could get released on her own at retail at some point.  It easy to imagine that she will be but it seems a lot less likely we’ll see this cool retro packaging again.  The last and perhaps the most interesting question is: could Jakks Pacific release more elaborate packaging and figure sets like this in the future?  I certainly hope so!  The only drawback I can see is that not everybody who wants this figure set is going to have a chance to get them but that is generally the nature of these kinds of special sets and if Jakks Pacific releases Peach later on, that will help most people deal with any hard feelings.

Those are my thoughts on this news.  Let us know what your take is on the news in the comments below!  I have placed my preorder and will update you on how this whole process goes as San Diego Comic Con approaches.