God forbid we should have any real-life goodies that also interact with games instead of paying for pure data alone.

They're not going to be used for unlocking characters, because that has always been earned by doing things like completing the game on different modes, playing a certain number of matches, etc. However, they probably will be used for unlocking supplemental content in the same way that players pay for DLC content in other franchises. The difference being that you'll have some cool collectible figures in addition to what they unlock in-game. Sounds dandy, if you ask me.