Well, this certainly explains the strange heat coming from what I thought was a turned-off Wii.
If post count matters here, I guess I better go back to lurking.
I’ve seen the occasional complaint of a Wii being really hot in the Connect24 mode, but mine’s only ever been slightly-warm at best, so there might indeed be a manufacturing issue in some batches. It wouldn’t be the first time a big company has botched a fairly simple heat issue, though at least it’s far less common here than with something like the overheating Macbook Pros, where it was thanks to their standard build process.
I turned connect24 off on my Wii after seeing a report on what it’s power consumption was. It was something ridiculous, like connect24 taking 60% or so of the Wii’s active idle power, so I figured I wasn’t using it for that much and I could cut the earth a break and use less electricity.