KelpPlankton
Member
Also, suggest your kid not dismiss them so fast for not being Skylander clones. The amiibo are much more interesting to play against or team up with than the standard AIs are. They actually learn from their opponents and can be taught to a certain degree particular fighting styles. A way to think of them is this: they are real time Pokemon.
This does not matter to children who probably aren't going to be masters of a video game to begin with. It's cool for high-level players to work with, or for people to experiment and see what aberrant behaviors we can teach them (farming CDs, taunting from kills, etc) but for most kids it's going to be "I can't beat my Amiibo anymore he's too high level

The more important thing is that while most current games use Amiibos as just unlock keys, future games are likely to use them in much more substantial ways. Expect the next E3 to show off some really cool and innovative Amiibo usage in upcoming Nintendo titles. The unlocks are the easy thing to patch in to existing games, titles that truly use them in important ways will take more time to develop (and their existence predicated on the success of the Amiibos in the first place).
Either way: The Smash Amiibos are phase 1. They were a success. Phase 2 will be next Christmas, and much bigger. Expect something interesting.