A German Ratings Board Nearly Trashed Their Nintendo Labo Before Realizing It Wasn’t “Waste Paper”

This week’s announcement of the Nintendo Labo has inspired many jokes and expressions of creativity across the internet, but one of the best little tidbits surrounding the forthcoming Switch accessory just emanated out of Germany.

The German software ratings board Unterhaltungssoftware Selbstkontrolle (USK for short), revealed on Twitter that the new cardboard-based peripheral that arrived at their office almost ended up in the garbage.

ENDLICH können wir die Anekdote erzählen, wie die neueste Nintendo-Hardware einmal beinahe von der Reinigungskraft als Altpapier entsorgt wurde ???????????? (die Geschichte hätte uns vorher eh niemand geglaubt ????) #NintendoLabo

— USK (@USK_de) January 18, 2018

For those of you who cannot read German, Game Informer provided a translation: “Finally we can tell the story, when we had the latest Nintendo hardware, it was almost dumped by the cleaning crew as waste paper. In the past no one would have believed this story, anyway.”

If not for some quick acting, the German population would’ve been exempt from the rise of our cardboard robot overlords on April 20. Good on the USK to make sure the Labo invasion, which you read more about here, remains intact.

We’re sure Nintendo is saying Danke.