Nintendo opens surprise London pop-up with exclusive merch and Amiibo figures

Nintendo has turned a central London Argos into a short-run destination for fans, opening the Nintendo Experience Zone inside the Tottenham Court Road store with exclusive merchandise, a large Amiibo selection and interactive experiences that are hard to find anywhere else.

The space arrived with little marketing fanfare, which only sharpened the reaction from UK fans looking for Nintendo gear in person. The mix is broad: games, consoles, plushies, figures, collectibles, accessories, stationery and homeware. Some items are exclusive to Argos, while others were previously available only through Nintendo’s website, giving the pop-up a scarcity edge that makes it more than another branded retail corner.

Argos gaming buyer Peter Wray said the partnership took seven months to plan. “After seven months of planning, our Argos Nintendo Tottenham Court Road partnership is live, bringing together hundreds of lines from across our gaming and license partners,” Wray said on LinkedIn. That kind of assortment is a reminder that these spaces are not just about shelf space. They are about coordination between merchandising, licensing, store operations and the brand teams that have to make sure every display still feels unmistakably Nintendo.

The Amiibo wall is one of the main draws. Coverage of the store says the selection is unusually large, and some of the figures had previously been sold only through Nintendo’s own website. For collectors, that makes the London setup feel less like a convenience stop and more like a timed run at hard-to-find stock, the sort of retail moment that can pull a fan across the city in a way an online cart never will.

Nintendo has done this before, but not often. Its earlier London pop-up at Westfield London in Shepherd’s Bush ran from October 22 to November 16, 2025. Nintendo described that site as its first-ever UK pop-up store and the first shopping-centre-based Nintendo store in Europe, a label that underscored just how unusual the experiment was for a company whose official stores sit in Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, New York and San Francisco.

The Tottenham Court Road pop-up is expected to stay open for a few months, though Nintendo has not announced a closing date. For a company built on careful brand control and long-running franchise legacy, the London test is a visible reminder that physical retail still matters when the right merchandise, the right characters and the right scarcity line up in one place.