Gyroid (outdoor)

A Gyroid (ハニワくん, Haniwa-kun) is a special item that sits outside the player's house in. When the player wants to quit, they save their game progress by talking to the Gyroid: if they do not save, Mr. Resetti will punish them with a long lecture the next time they play the game, about how they should not reset the game (or turn off the game without saving). When the player buys a house from Tom Nook, he throws in the Gyroid free, and will explain what it does to the player.

In, and , Nook will not give the player a Gyroid outside their house, instead (in  and ) the highest floor of the player house is a bedroom where the player can jump into their bed and save progress. Also, in City Folk, there is an Auction House in the City owned by a Gyroid named Lloid.

Messages
A Gyroid's owner can teach it messages to repeat when conversing with other players or visitors. In, the player can set a message to appear at a certain time of the day.

Item storage
The player can place up to four items in the Gyroid for it to sell, give away, or display to other players or visitors. This is the easiest way to exchange bugs and fish with other players as they may not be placed in letters.

Trivia

 * The Gyroid is always doing a sort of dance, and will do it faster and faster as a character gets closer to it. Another Gyroid that does this dance is Lloid.
 * Gyroids have appeared in Pikmin 2 and some of the WarioWare games. Also, there is an enemy from the Kirby series named Cappy, who resembles a Gyroid. Curiously, Cappy was created before the release of . Though, this shouldn't technically come as a surprise, as both are based on Japanese haniwa.
 * Coco is a rabbit villager who strongly resembles a Gyroid.
 * In, if the player uses a warp item to go to a test world, a differently-colored Gyroid can be seen. When the player talks to it, it will say nothing.
 * Gyroids are based on (and are actually called) haniwa, which are Japanese terra cotta sculptures used in burials.
 * In, when players visit a town and shut the game off or reset it, the next time they play, they have a Gyroid-like face.
 * A Gyroid appears as a token in the Nintendo Monopoly 2010 version.