Last week, I arrived home from a funeral and decided to pop into my home office to make sure everything was prepared for the return to work day ahead. As I sat down to log-in my laptop, still feeling a bit wobbly from the day I had, I was greeted by the Nintendo Talking Flower toy informing me that "wasn't life great."
That was the point where I decided it was time to take its batteries out.
Why not just turn it off, you say? Well, you see, for some bizarre reason, Nintendo didn't think to include an off switch with this toy. You can mute it by holding down the large oval button in its plant pot, where it'll hushly reply, "I'll keep quiet for a while." But unlike plenty of the best toys out there, there is no way to power it down without getting a screwdriver out and having at that AA battery compartment. And trust me, I looked.
I spent a good hour or so trying to find any semblance of an off switch, until I did the thing I moan at my mum to do with every tech issue "just Google it." That's where I discovered that the official Nintendo Support page has a whole section dedicated the toy, and one of the prepared questions is "is there a way to turn off the Talking Flower?". That leads me to believe that many more people, hopefully those who came to the realisation way before I did, have reached out in attempts to shut the flower up for good, and were as bemused by the talk of an off switch as I was.
The underside of the plant pot reveals a series of buttons, so I just assumed one relating to the power would be around somewhere - but alas, you can adjust the time, language, and how loud this thing talks, but not stop it from talking altogether.
To actually get the Talking Flower to "remain silent for an extended period" Nintendo states you have to remove the batteries, which is more easily said than done. The battery compartment requires a screwdriver to access, and despite being the GamesRadar+ hardware best SSDs for gaming reviewer, I don't keep mine at arms length. Yet once I finally did look it out and remove the batteries from their chatty prison, I was greeted by a welcome silence. That fear that the Talking Flower would sound off during a work meeting was finally no more, and I was happy to hear it - or should I say, unhear it.
In all fairness to the Talking Flower, it's not its fault that it just so happened to sound off at the worst possible time. It's a plastic version of a Super Mario toy. How was it supposed to know I'd just come back from a day saying goodbye to a friend? You could also place blame on myself, as I very easily could have placed the toy on silent mode before I left the house to avoid the awkward situation, it just wasn't the predominant thing on my mind, funnily enough.
I had sooner expected it to rattle through its wealth of other sound bites that would have been more appropriate for the day. While the thing does repeat itself a lot, I imagine hearing "let's take a breath" would have been far more comforting in the moment. But in all honestly, the Talking Flower's days have been numbered for a while now, so there was bound to be one moment that'd push me over the edge.
Every and every morning, I instinctively wait for it to wake up and hold its button to make it quiet. The only times it's on and talking is usually on at the weekend, a time when I don't have much reason to be in my office. For weeks now, every time I press and hold that big brown button, I knew it'd make more sense just to turn the thing off for good, it was just a matter of when I'd actually get the motivation to do just that.
If you want to subject yourself to a tirade of annoying soundbites, the Talking Flower is still available for $34.99 (Nintendo) / £24.99 (Nintendo).
I was also warned by our team's toy and merch expert, Benjamin Abbot, who when first describing the toy, said it had a "penchant for chaos." Despite knowing how much I adore Super Mario merch, he did iterate that it would get annoying fast, and sure enough, I should have listened. I only lasted 69 days from its March 12 release date until enough was enough. If I headed Benjiamin's warnings, I could have saved myself the annoyance and £24.99 to put towards a Super Mario toy that doesn't talk back.
But I entirely understand if you actually quite like the Talking Flower while we may not, especially if you recently completed Super Mario Wonder for the first time. I recently picked up the Meetup in Bellabel Park Nintendo Switch 2 Edition Upgrade Pack and forgot how funny the character is in the context of the actual game. Replaying through some courses almost made me feel pretty bad for the guy and reach for those batteries, but I fortunately stopped myself.
If you do want some plastic representation of the Talking Flower, I'd much rather recommend you grab the Captain Toad & Talking Flower amiibo available for $34.99 at Amazon instead. It's not as large as the talking toy, but you still get a plastic representation of the flora without the fear that it'll talk back and make an already bad day that much worse.
For merch that doesn't talk back, check out the best Nintendo gifts.
