Replacement Labo Parts Are Now Available Direct From Nintendo

Hope this is available in the UK. Extra RC Cars for $3 looks excellent.

Well...
Sounds fair price.

God forbid they overcharge for cardboard.

Nice! 😊

PDF Downloads for individual sheets here: https://www.nintendo.co.jp/labo/parts/index.html

@SmaggTheSmug I work in distribution. Cardboard is surprisingly expensive - especially if you want bespoke sizes.

@Curlybobs

Ooooh.... !!
Thank you for the links.

You can rebuild a broken robot kit for something like $20 it seems.

That doesn't seem unreasonable.

“Made in USA”!!!

So I just got this news.... Labo is not coming to Mexico... [removed]

Now you can put all that cardboard from Amazon packages to use, plus you get the added bonus of having the black Amazon Prime ‘go faster tape’ adorning your creations

@fafonio That sucks

Actually I read that it’s only coming to Canada, US, Europe and Japan......

So.... does anyone know about Labo release situation in the rest of the world?

@fafonio Well it is certainly here in Australia. Stores have all of the kits and we can order replacement parts from Nintendo Australia and from their eBay store.

Wait, so the cardboard sheets are going for $12 separately? So they’re essentially charging $58-$68 for the instruction cartridge? I’ll wait until people get bored with it and get a used cartridge for cheap and buy a $12 cardboard kit.

EDIT: Scratch that; I visited the site and realized that individual parts of the variety kit are $12 apiece. Still way too costly for cardboard.

@thesilverbrick By my calculation the complete robot is $62 if bought that way.

Nintendo should teamed up with Dominos or Pizza Hut and have the spare parts printed on the Pizza boxes, it's good for recycling too.

@Nincompoop : Toy-Con 3 maybe?

Joy-Con degreasers and decheesers sold separately.

@Nincompoop the pizza boxes are more sturdy and durable

@Pod you're an idiot

@thesilverbrick Like the article says, that's only for replacement parts. You're not paying $60 for an "instruction cartridge" alone (besides the fact that it's not just instructions on there... ). You seem to imply that the cardboard prices mentioned here come on top of that price, while they don't.

And $12 a sheet for custom-sized an pre-cut cardboard isn't expensive at all: it's the going rate, and not just because it comes from Nintendo...
EDIT:
Have to correct myself there: it's $12 for a complete package, NOT per sheet, so it's even cheaper...

@Curlybobs If you don't mind me asking: are you the one that also mentioned something like this when Labo was first revealed? If so, I remember that being quite detailed and insightful.

You seem to know your stuff concerning this specific topic. More people should listen to you/read your comment and understand that their whining is unrealistic.

@jimi Don't take my words out of context. I said "custom-sized an pre-cut cardboard", BIG difference with just ordinary cardboard pieces of a standard size...

It is the going rate in that specific industry. Look it up. Those are the ACTUAL prices for stuff like that, even if you'd order directly from a cardboard manufacturer. It's not Nintendo trying to rip us off.
EDIT:
The whole point is moot, since I had to correct myself from mistakenly saying $12 per sheet, when it's actually $12 for an entire package of sheets, so it's a complete bundle of ALL the various builds in one kit, making it even cheaper.

I think people still focus on the wrong aspect of the price debate. It's not whether cardboard is priced well or Nintendo Cardboard (TM) is priced well. It's about if the pricing of cardboard as delivered for this product is actually the best choice of material for the use case. I still believe it is not. Having affordable replacements made available (they originally said there would not be) helps considerably. But I still believe the material was simply not the best choice for this product. Maybe for marketing purposes of being "eco friendly" and whatnot. But I still feel other materials would have served better.

@dancinguy
Why?

Do you really hate cardboard that much?

Or is it just the price? Because if you feel like doing all the printing/measuring/cutting yourself, you can do it real cheap by downloading the design templates for free from the japanese LABO site. Be aware that what you're paying for when you buy LABO is cartridge manufacturing and the shipping and handling of game boxes many times bigger than regular Switch games, that also weigh about 2kg.

Cardboard may be a cheap material, but perforation printing, packaging, and actually getting it to you the consumer isn't.

@Yorumi it wouldn't surprise me if in a few days we'll start seeing files online for 3D printed versions of the toycons.
even sooner for the simple ones, like the RC car design.

@ThanosReXXX No, I just saw it on Reddit

@ThanosReXXX It’s not $12 for an entire package of sheets. It’s $12 for each individual sheet. To rebuy the ToyCon Variety Kit would cost $60. For cardboard. The same stuff that your pizza comes in. And yes, a pizza box is also a custom sized, pre-cut sheet of cardboard. I have never paid $12 for a pizza box, and nobody has. They are given away for free with a five dollar pizza.

That's great, but I think Amazon has been sending me LABO replacement parts free with my purchase of anything for a few years now.

(Yes I get this is mainly for the reflective tape and string.)

Lol, now it's been clearly stated that the price of assembling a kit from replacement parts is almost as high as a brand new kit with the cartridge. What will the defenders grasp at now to say that buyers are not paying out of the wazoo for cardboard?

Cya
Raziel-chan

@Yorumi Yeah, plastic, or even things like foamcore (it's even still part cardboard!) is breakable but more durable, wood, plastics, stiffened fabrics, etc. etc. Corrugated is just such an awful choice. The whole point is to be self-sacrificial and disposable. That's why they make it!

@Curlybobs Ah okay. Fair enough. Well, at least you have some understanding for how these things work, unlike most of these complainers...

@thesilverbrick Seems to me that it actually is an entire pack:

"With prices ranging from $1.99 for a sheet of reflective stickers to $11.99 for packs of cardboard for the kits, Nintendo has pretty much everything covered here."

As for that price range: you have to understand that things like pizza boxes, milk cartons, house moving boxes, gift boxes, food boxes and so forth are standard shapes, matrices of which have already been used for decades upon decades, so these just aren't too expensive to make.

Custom shapes like these Labo houses, piano's, robots and what not are NOT standard shapes, so new matrices will need to be made and they will probably have to either adapt an existing production line or make an entirely new one in order to be able to pre-cut and print the cardboard, so yes, that is not just a simple pizza box and as such, it is going to be more expensive.

And Labo kits are also printed on both sides, another thing that also doesn't happen with most of these standard boxes.

Another thing is that all these standard boxes are also ordered by far larger amounts than these Labo kits will ever be, and they're also continuous orders, because companies will always be needing more amounts of all these kinds of boxes.

All these factors combined see to it that the prices for those cardboard boxes are as cheap as they are. Limited runs and custom shapes simply aren't as cheap. It's quite obvious if you take a minute to actually think about it.

If you're going to complain, at least try to see the whole picture and understand what it is that you're complaining about.

And mind you, it's not even that I'm defending Labo because I like it or am going to buy it, because I'm not, but I do understand where the cost comes from, and apparently so does the article writer, otherwise he probably wouldn't have said it was cheap...

@fafonio Mind your language!

@ThanosReXXX Follow the link to the actual site. Each page of the kit is sold separately at $12 apiece.

EDIT: I didn’t realize that each toy consisted of several sheets, so you do get more than one sheet for $12, but it’s only the sheets for one of the five toys. It would still cost you roughly $60 to replace the entire kit.

@RobotReptile What’s confusing about the price is that unlike all the examples you’ve mentioned, Labo kits will all be crushed and destroyed very, very quickly. You’re paying $80 for something incredibly fragile and essentially disposable. Those NES cartridges you mentioned haven’t biodegraded even after 33 years, but you’ll be hard-pressed to find a used original run Labo kit in working condition five years from now. My issue comes in the transient nature of the product and the disproportionately high price for something so easy to destroy.

@thesilverbrick read again, each sheet is $1.50.
the $12 ones are actually for a complete toycon that consists of 8 sheets.

@thedicemaster Let me rephrase. I didn’t realize that each toy in the kit was more than one sheet. But the $12 cost is not for replacing all five toys, but rather only one fifth of the overall kit. My point still stands that if you want to replace the entire kit worth of cardboard, you are going to pay $60.

@thesilverbrick That's certainly true it would cost that much to fully replace or duplicate an entire variety kit. But I imagine these parts will be mostly used for repairs on a piece by piece basis, which might stretch out the lifespan of a set of boards.

A few more factors that would be useful to know are the durability (i.e how often will you realistically need to replace parts) and how well household cardboard actually functions in most cases. The actual boards are (I think) A3, but most of the pieces on them would easily fit in an A4 printout, making it pretty easy for anyone with a printer to create a stencil. Whether or not you'd be able to get it to fold correctly is another question.

Anyway, it doesn't strike me as completely outrageous, especially considering the markup on things like LEGO, which is vulnerable to a similar claim of being an awful lot of wadge for 'just plastic'.

@Maxz I do appreciate that individual replacement parts are available but Labo as a whole is way too fragile and transient for the price, in my opinion. At least LEGO sets won’t biodegrade in your lifetime. Heck, I still have LEGO sets from nearly 30 years ago. Nobody will have a used Labo set in working condition in 30 years.

@thesilverbrick It seems like you can also do it for the price of effectively free if you have spare cardboard lying around. They've put up the pdfs for the sheets as well. It's in the article itself:

"If you'd like to try making these yourself, Nintendo has also published PDFs of all the various bits so you can cut out your own parts."

It's probably the biggest takeaway from this. You can essentially get the replacement parts for much cheaper providing you do it yourself.

@thesilverbrick "biodegrade" is just [removed]. I have 30 years old books and packaging cartons that look like new. On the other hand I had a camping chair that I used once and then stored in a dark and dry place, but after five years all the plastic parts just crumbled away.

Getting the Labo stuff wet will destroy it pretty quickly but the Switch doesn't like water all that much either.

@countzero I may have been using a bit of hyperbole, but think about how Labo is intended to be used. It’s folded into easily crushed, cavernous 3D shapes, strapped to people as they flail around the room, used as simple machines that are subjected to torque and other physical forces, all while being used by children, who aren’t exactly known for being delicate. I have doubts your 30-year-old cardboard boxes have seen that kind of use (and they didn’t cost $80). Seriously, Labo kits are one accidental misplaced sit on the couch away from being recycling bin fodder. And that’s why I can’t justify the price tag.

@SmaggTheSmug This glib sort of response to Labo (and many other things people build for purchase these days) continues to stun me. To reduce this to "cardboard" is rather disingenuous. As you piece these together, you can see this as a work of ingenious design, so the design itself really should be added to the value of the cardboard production itself, which, as has been pointed out, isn't cheap, especially with this order of complexity.

You guys do know that every Toy-Con takes 6-8 sheets of cardboard to make, right?

@thesilverbrick Ah, I see. Well, guess we were both not completely right then. And although I understand the sentiment, I do think that it is like others have already said: you're probably not going to replace the entire set all at once or maybe never at all: depends on which of the builds you're gonna use, because those will be the ones that run the most risk of damage, and then you just buy the sheets for that one/those ones, which wouldn't necessarily amount to a relatively large sum of money.

But thanks for the polite reply. I was a bit harsh perhaps, so my bad.

@ThanosReXXX No worries! And for the record, I didn’t get a rude or harsh vibe from you at all.

Don’t get me wrong; I do think Labo is unbelievably clever and looks like crazy amounts of fun. I just can’t personally justify paying that amount of money for something that can be so easily destroyed. I figure I will wait until the fad dies down and buy a used game cartridge and then look for some sets online made of more durable materials. The collector in me would like to keep and use a Labo set for years, but in its current retail iteration, it just won’t last.

There’s a piece of me that’s itching to try it out, though, so I probably will just cave and buy it, anyway, haha. Who knows?

@thesilverbrick Yeah, I'm of the same mind. Currently, I don't think it's for me, even though I do appreciate the whole idea for kids, and teaching them on a basic level to program games and make their own creations, something which will surely come later on in Labo.

As for me being harsh (or not): I personally don't like it when people tell me what to do, and here I was telling people what to do, so to me that's like I was saying something to you that I wouldn't appreciate other people saying to me, so that's why I kind of wanted to rectify that.

In general, though, I do think people judge it based on too little knowledge or an incomplete/short-sighted view on things. And most of us know that a personal sentiment is very hard to change, most of the time.

So, once people have made their mind up, as in this case with posting "funny" comments or pictures about all kinds of cardboard boxes, then that to me only emphasizes that they just didn't take the time to actually look into this to see if what they're saying or complaining about is truly justified.

I'm not saying that it is all really great or that I'm all for Nintendo using cardboard as a toy, but what I am saying, is that if you (try to) see the entire picture of what it takes to make this stuff, then the price point should at the very least become more understandable/logical.

I would hope (although that's probably an unachievable goal, considering the ever growing amount of negative people on here) that it should make it possible to reduce all the whining and comparing Labo to cardboard products that are of a decidedly lower grade.

I don't think that Labo is made of that exact same type of cardboard, so although cardboard obviously isn't the most sturdy material out there, I think that Nintendo has probably taken that into account and has chosen a higher grade cardboard that'll last a little longer.

Remember: that milk carton or that pizza box is only ever meant to be used once, after all...

@NEStalgia Go build the motorcycle and tell me that. It is solid. They know what there doing.

@thesilverbrick It will last lol. Its not made out of regular cardboard.

@thesilverbrick You can't justify $10 extra dollars to get all those extra possibilities? Nintendo makes less profit on this and it does so much more. To each his own.

@NEStalgia Dude, you build it yourself. What do you want....wood? We dont need more plastic.

@Razzy Your paying an extra $10 for the cardboard kit. Not quite "out the wazoo".

@thesilverbrick Yeah, if you want to buy a honda civic piece by piece through the parts department it would be $150,000. Whats your point?

Do you guys scoff every time Nintendo tries to sell you a $6 cartridge for $60 or do you value the engineering that went into crafting an experience?

@Nintendo-or-Noth No, you're paying usd 10 for cardboard for a single toy con, aka to get the same amount of cardboard as in the pack, you pay usd 50.

Cya
Raziel-chan

@Razzy Why is this so hard to think for a grasp. Most Nintendo games are $60. The LABO is $70, it comes with the game AND the cardboard to make ar least 5 toy cons.

Game $60
Cardboard and materials $10
Bundled together in a box $70.

Do you get it now?

@Nintendo-or-Noth It seems that you don't get it, you don't get cardboard for the entire variety pack in the replacement kit, you get the cardboard for one toy con, so 1/5th of the full pack. Thus, you need to get 5 replacement kits for the variety full kit. It's it so hard to get?

Cya
Raziel-chan

@Razzy Damn Razzy, my bad. Not only did I come off like a jerk. I didn't even read your comment correctly. Normaly I treat members of Nintendo life as fellow brethren. Lesson learned.