Club Nintendo Merchandise

As well as the magazine, Club Nintendo put its name on a small selection of merchandise and other goodies. Most of these - such as t-shirts, backpacks and mugs - were available to order from promotional leaflets packaged with the magazine.

Click each thumbnail to see the larger image.

T-Shirt

Wallet

Watch

And if that wasn't enough, Club Nintendo also distributed NES games in uniquely-branded boxes!

NES Cartridge Box

This item was first brought to my attention by fellow Nintendo collector Jakob, who obtained it when buying a copy of Hogan's Alley. It appears to be a standard NES box, but with Club Nintendo branding and a message that reads 'With the Compliments of Mario' instead of the typical boxart design (the back of the box is blank).

After that, another collector - retro gaming champion Ross Willett - came forward with a pair of similar NES boxes, this time for To The Earth and Urban Champion.

Previously, all ideas as to the games' distribution was based on speculation and educated guesswork; my initial thought was that they might have been competition prizes, while Ross has suggested that they may have originally been review copies that were then later redistributed as competition prizes. One piece of evidence that supports the latter theory is that the games' instruction manuals have different, blander covers from the more colourful ones included with the normal releases.

Now, we have confirmation that these boxes were, indeed, used for competition prizes. Some issues of Club Nintendo feature photographs of the lucky winners with their prizes, and in Volume 4 Issue 6, there are three such photos.

Two of the kids shown won copies of Donkey Kong Jr. Math; unfortunately, I cannot tell what the third kid won on account of his name not being listed among the competition winners in this particular issue, nor can I find it in any prior issue. (By this time, the competitions were printed in four-page pull-out segments. As such, not all copies of these issues will still have them.)

Interestingly, similar photos from an earlier issue - Volume 4 Issue 1 - depict the winners of a Super Mario Bros. 3 competition receiving their games in standard retail boxes. As such, it is currently unknown if there was a deliberate switch between box types during that time or if there had been a mix of boxes used throughout.

It is also currently unknown if the Club Nintendo-branded boxes were used for any other promotions or offers; I have yet to match up boxes with their relevant competitions/promotions. As well as the various other competitions, there was also a 'Membership Prize Draw': starting in 1991, a different membership number was printed in each issue, with the lucky Club Nintendo member winning an unspecified prize.

If anybody has any more information on these boxes, then we'd love to hear from you.

Picture credits: Hogan's Alley NES cartridge box and manual images kindly provided by Jakob. All other merchandise images kindly provided by Ross Willett. Normal release instruction manual images from Games Database.