How many Pokemon figures would you buy if they came to Wii U?

Nintendo's plans to bring NFC figure scanning to 3DS smack of an attempt to ride the Disney Infinity and Skylanders money train all the way to cash city, but can it help give the Wii U a boost?

Just last week, Nintendo announced its own take on the Skylanders Portal of Power, a near-field communication device that will enabled games to scan action figures into their 3DS.

This thing:

Now, we can all laugh about how scanning tiny plastic creatures into consoles is a fad, or how it's probably just a trend that'll only last until next Christmas, but the truth is that these things are shifting faster than buffet platters at a videogame press event.

Kids are going apeshit for Skylanders and Disney Infinity games, as well us merchandise such as this starter kit:

This Skylanders watch that fires discs for some reason:

This Skylanders foil effect jigsaw puzzle:

This Jet-Vac mug:

The newly-announced Skylanders fragrance Essence of Spyro by Armani:

And many other items children are currently going nuts over.

These games have helped their publishers make some serious bank. Think about the whole idea of kids collecting figures, swapping them with friends to complete the set, levelling them up in-game and making them fight against each other.

What does that remind you of?

The Skylanders format and Pokemon are a license to print money. Seriously, combining collectible action figures that can be made to do battle on Wii U is a dream ticket for Nintendo, and as it happens, we may have already seen our first glimpse of that financial wet-dream made reality:

That's Pokkén Fighters, a mysterious project first shown in a concept trailer back in August. At the time The Pokémon Company said it had nothing to do with the clip, but just last week the firm trademarked Pokkén Fighters and Pokkén Tournament.

Now, this could just be a case of the firm watching its arse from a legal perspective, but I don't think it's too much of a stretch to see that this concept could be sheer financial dynamite, the kind of boost that the Wii U arguably needs to shift more consoles.

How much would you spend on each Pokémon figurine? £1? £5? £10? Vote here.

I'm not saying the Wii U is crap or Nintendo is failing or any of that nonsense, because I still love the company and I'm playing a s**t-load of Mario Kart 8 and Kirby: Triple Deluxe right now, but it's clear that bringing interactive Pokemon figures would make Nintendo a lot of money.

Image credit: The Perfume Shop (also, that perfume was obviously made up)