I heard about it recently from the Random Nintendo podcast. And one of the guys makes a good point, Nintendo is one to utilize old ideas and utilize them into new ones. They don’t let old ideas go to waste.

Wow thats pretty neat and definitely fits in with Nintendo's history of reusing and modernizing ideas of their past.

They don't look half bad lol

Yeah as mentioned Nintendo recycles old ideas repackage them and it sometimes pays off. I don't think that's a bad thing really if they learned some lessons and know that before they were early but now have the ability to do it properly. SEGA often brought new ideas to the table but never went back to explore them (then again big part of that is they stopped making consoles but their ideas were reborn on other systems) 

Didn't know about this but then again, they did venture into a lot of things before settling with video games so it does make sense

Doesn't really surprise me. 

Damn, Nintendo even invented cutting and folding cardboard. What the fuck didn't they do?

The Hitachi Labo?

It wouldn’t be the first time Nintendo took ideas from them.

The Joy-cons with their HD Rumble are just a blatant ripoff of the Hitachi Wand.

I've learned about their older history through various youtube videos over the years, very interesting. I recall that they also had something akin to their own version of Legos as well.

They made playing cards and such before him, but it really seems like it was Gunpei Yokoi who was the creative founder of Nintendo. Miyamoto has undoubtedly shaped the company more than anyone else, but Yokoi's toys and Game and Watch series (well before his Gameboy) really established the Nintendo that we still know today.

Like the Joy Cons, the Hitachi Wand was not originally marketed as a toy. But some some creative minds figured out other applications.