My Start with Skylanders
It wasn't until late 2012 that I finally got into Skylanders. I know I had heard others talking about them earlier when I would visit my local game shops, but I had never taken the time to look into them.
So in late 2012, I decided to give them a try. My first purchase was a lot of about 10 figures along with the first 2 games and a Portal for $25 off my local Craigslist. For that price, I knew I couldn't go wrong. Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised to find out just how enjoyable Skylanders could be.
The Birth of SCL
Over the next few months I really had time to dive into Skylanders as they really didn't have any competition yet. Unfortunately this also meant that there wasn't a lot of good coverage for Skylanders.
I had a lot of questions and I just couldn't find the answers. This is one of many reasons I started SCL. I knew I wasn't the only one out there with questions, so as I gathered information, I wanted to share it with others.
Disney Chimes In
Moving into 2013 Skylanders finally did receive some form of competition. Disney announced Disney Infinity. After the success of Skylanders I felt compelled to give it a shot.
Long story, short, I do not care for Disney Infinity's gameplay style.
Now don't get me wrong, I still love Disney (Aladdin is my favorite movie), but I much preferred the Adventure style of gaming that Skylanders provides.
Just to make sure I wasn't missing out on anything, I even tried out the Toy Box for a while. As much as I wish I were creative enough to make something awesome, the Toy Box was just not my cup of tea either.
All in all, Disney Infinity was a flop for me.
I have also given Infinity 2.0 a try, but that just pushed me further away as they continued to limit which characters can be used in which playsets. It just seems crazy to me the number of figures that can only be used in the Toy Box right now and I'm sure that number will just keep on growing.
Throughout my journey into Disney Infinity I did create a companion site as well. This one I called Infinity Characters List (ICL). At first I tried to keep up with the Infinity news, but since I just wasn't really interested in the games, the news reporting fell by the wayside.
I have done my best to keep the lists of figures, power discs, and play sets current, but beyond those resources, the site is pretty worthless.
Enter Amiibo
In 2014, Nintendo decided to join the fray with their amiibo line.
While I was still in love with Skylanders, Disney had failed me so I was a bit more skeptical this time.
I very much liked the idea that amiibo could be used for many different titles across many different franchises. However, after looking over the compatibility charts, I was very disappointed.
It turns out that in most games, the amiibo are “Read Only”. This means that you scan the figure while you're playing the game and you might unlock a new costume or gain an extra life. No information is stored in the figure.
Now there are a handful of games in which the amiibo are “Read/Write”. This means that the game actually stores information on the figure (like Skylanders). This list includes major titles like Super Smash Bros. and Mario Party 10. However, if you want to use the same figure in both games, you will have to delete the information from the first game.
Can you see the disappointment mounting here?
As with Disney Infinity and Skylanders, I created a website to compile the information I gathered. (It's what I do.) But I didn't even start reporting any news. I told myself that I would only go there if I were really interested and it turns out that I'm not.
The Ultimate Fusion
If you follow the news in the toys-to-life genre, you may know where I'm headed now.
Last week, Lego officially announced their first entry into the toys-to-life genre: Lego Dimensions.
Now we don't know a lot about the game yet, but here's my thinking.
I love Legos.
I love the Lego video games (my wife and I have played them all).
The prices we've seen so far for Lego Dimensions sets are not far off from the prices of regular Lego sets (you are paying a little bit for the electronic bases). So as I see it, the worst case scenario is that I'll have a bunch more Legos to play with.
As the game was just announced, I have just started building my companion site (Dimensions Character List) for it. But, unlike Infinity and amiibo, I plan to provide full coverage for Lego Dimensions.
Don't worry, I'm not giving up Skylanders, but I wanted you to know that I will be covering Dimensions as well.
Share Your Story
Now I'm curious.
How did you find your way to Skylanders?
Did you try Infinity or amiibo first?
Are you interested in Lego Dimensions?
We just got our start in Skylanders late last year. Trap Team had been out for a while, but it came on my radar because it was tablet compatable. I have a Kindle Fire, and my son was having a lot of fun playing the Skylanders Cloud Patrol app. I looked into the game, found out that the tablet version was on sale and picked it up. My son BLAZED through the game, loving every minute of it, and began asking for other characters. We got into it big time! I found figures on eBay, started conversations with sellers, and learned quite a bit. When looking for a way to track his growing collection, I found your site, which was a tremendous help to us! I eventually found a used set of the older Skylanders games, and a portal for him to play them on, and we’ve had a ton of fun as a family!
We could only afford one game though, so we left it for my son to decide, and he chose Skylanders. Infinity’s figures, while familiar, didn’t seem as good of quality as the Skylanders. As we don’t own any compatible Nintendo devices, amiibo is out for us as well, though my son would love an actual Pikachu figure, though I can’t justify the cost of it.
Like you, our household loves the Lego sets and video games, so we plan on jumping into Lego Dimensions with both feet. It may take us a while to afford everything, but we’re super excited about the game! Will you be setting up a newsletter feed for that site too? I already gave your Facebook page for DCL a like, but I like getting the e-mails too!
Thanks for the like. I will be setting up an email list for DCL soon. I’ll be sure to post on the DCL Facebook page when it’s up and running.
I had heard of Spyro and thought Skylanders was a fighting game. We went to a convention and they had Skylanders in the kids’ room. My son started to like it so we bought him a couple and then my husband and I got into it.
I love seeing this. Buy it for the kids, but the adults get hooked. That’s a killer formula.
I did not try DI because honestly these things take up a ton of space that I don’t have and i can’t say I am a huge fan of disney like some people. I have a minimal collection of skylanders, and I try to keep it to what is needed to play the games. I won’t be trying lego, since I am not a huge fan and again, space issues. I have bought 2 amiibo, but honestly I am totally done with them as well, as most of the ones I want I cannot find in stores, and I am not driving out to a store on a whim at a specific time and stand in line for 2 hours while the registers crash because they can’t accept a preorder since they have crashed. Too much trouble for plastic figures. I genuinely like the skylanders games and I get a lot of playtime out of them, however if the distribution issues with key pieces continue, I will have to discontinue buying them. For example my area has not seen a single light and dark pack (had to order online). My target only has water and life traps and that is all they have had since the very beginning. I also don’t live near enough to a TRU, and when I have gone to TRU, everything is so overpriced and what I wanted was not in stock. So I have had a terrible experience finding what I needed to play trap team, when I did not have issues with swap force at all. I am looking for figures that are very functional in games, not like amiibo or DI, if Nintendo made a game that used amiibo as the characters like skylanders I might be in for that as long as I am not required to buy a huge amount of figures.
I’m sorry that you’ve had so much trouble locating figures. I don’t have a TRU anywhere near me either, so I know how that goes.
Not living in a major metropolis is one reason that I really like to shop online. This is also why I use Facebook/Twitter/Email to try and keep you all informed of the new and hard-to-find releases.
Whether you stay or go, thank you for sharing your story.
I had a lot of fun with the games, I really like that they are not online, as I am not a big fan of online multiplayer games, there is always someone ahead of me, and my fingers simply do not move fast enough to keep up with other players in whatever game is out there. This means the games can be played forever, as long as you have hardware to play it on. This appeals to the older gamer in me, online games disappear way too quickly and fade into obscurity and are forgotten about (Even after you put hundreds of hours and/or dollars into them). With skylanders, I can have my figures, save files and discs forever as long as my hardware does not break. You mentioned UB funkeys, while I never played these were popular and my cousins had them, but it was an online game, and you need a Windows XP computer to play it. If you can even find the drivers to get it to work, if you don’t have it installed already on a machine in your house. Once again, a game that many have played, that is now essentially not playable. I will most likely stay, and your work has been very helpful in locating the figures, but I may not purchase day 1, I may wait till the coupons and figures become more plentiful and get cheaper. Also I have not had any issue getting figures until Trap Team, the other games didn’t have distribution issues like TT at least for me. This raises a lot of questions about games and future generations who game mostly online, they will not be able to go back and play the games they did as a kid (going back and playing funkeys, is a huge challenge or may not even be possible just a few short years after its release). With skylanders kids can keep their memories and their games and figures and they will be playable forever as long as you keep the console hardware around. I think we may have found what keeps this series ticking at least for the adults. Yes it is an expensive game, but you can keep everything forever, think about how much we waste on online games or smartphone games that won’t even be playable 3-4 years from now.. this is much better. There are also few kid friendly games aside from the usual Nintendo published games (NOT call of duty type games) that are huge on consoles now, this is one of the few that is not a crappy movie based game but can also be played by younger kids who’s parents do not want them to get started on violent games like Call of duty but is popular enough to be cool with the other kids and doesn’t require purchasing a Nintendo console to play.
I held off from Skylanders because I was afraid I would fall headlong into it. Then Giants was given to me as a gift. Next thing I knew, I had ordered every character available, and have done so since, collecting even the hard to find Ghost Roaster, though I don’t bother with odd variants like clear or red characters. I have enjoyed many many things about the Skylanders universe, except of course all the money I’ve shelled out. 🙂
After a trip to Disney, I splurged and ordered the entire line in one shot. I still regret that, for all the reason you’ve said. But also, two player in Skylanders works. It isn’t perfect, but it works. On Infinity, it’s useless. Any character who opens a quest ‘takes over’ the quest in action. Talk to someone else and poof you’re on to that quest. Characters may be on different ends of town doing totally unrelated things, and though there is something okay with that, we never felt like there was anything really cohesive about story, and I’m mostly drawn to story.
I did not intend to get any amiibo figures. But it turns out that I’m a collector. (Shocker). I only have ones I think are cool with a few for nostalgia. I’m sorely disappointed with the implementation. All Nintendo first party games should include appropriate support for amiibo with downloadable updates to include new figures released in future, or some such. But in Mario Party 10, the only amiibo that ‘matter’ are Mario world amiibo. That’s too limiting like Infinity. Unlocking a bonus wheel isn’t enough of a draw for the non-Mario amiibo in the game. It’s a missed mark. Again. I will not be completing the amiibo collection, just gathering ones that inspire my writing or make me smile.
As for Lego Dimensions, I’m out of the loop and this was the first I’ve heard of it. I will most likely sit back on it and see what others like yourself think of it. So far, nothing has compared to the creativity of Skylanders. My partner and I have been speculating on what the next game’s gimmick will be. I haven’t tried to see if there is any news on it. But I’m guessing vehicles or mounts. Now four Skylanders can go on a portal, if two are mounts. New and old characters can ride dragons or cars or floating clouds…. And to reduce animation requirements, the vehicles would be type-specific, so only fire types on the rolling lava ball, etc. Swap Force could be on either top or bottom element, giving them an advantage. Trap Force and Giants would have added skills due to their size.
Yeah, I have overstepped Skylander reality. 🙂
I do wish Activision would change their wave scheme now. We have completed Trap Team, have all the characters to date, and (like Swap Force) probably won’t get wave 5 until after the next game is out, and wistfully won’t have their help in the current game. Time to change that pattern.
Whatever their next plan is, they need to implement the trapped villains well. Back to my vehicle idea, villains would also provide additional skills to the vehicle attacks and stats. Just saying.
Thanks for all you do for us fans of Skylands. All the best,
–Steve
I often feel that Infinity and amiibo were simply banking on character recognition so much that they forgot to care about the games they were connecting with.
Unfortunately, it seems to be working out alright for them. I know so many people who buy them just because they are collectors or just because they have an attachment to the characters and they never actually use them in the game.
Skylanders has to work twice as hard every year because they not only have to create the games, but they have to create new characters from scratch. They do not have decades of characters to fall back on.
I’m also super excited for Lego Dimensions because Lego already has experience making toys and games. Now they’re just putting their hands together and I expect the results to be spectacular.
Started collecting skylanders a few years ago with spyro. On a whim I decided to by the spyro one because my girlfriend was a fan of the original spyro games. Plus it was something we could play together. We were hooked. We now own every game available, even multiple copies of 3 of them. We have also collected every skylander through swapforce. I have almost all the trap teams one except for a few of the core ones and the ones not yet available. My fondness of skylanders has really started to disappear with trap team however. The game was just not that good in my opinion. Swapforce is my favorite by far. We own both Disney Infinity games. We do not collect the characters for it though outside of the ones that go with the adventure packs. We both really dislike the fact you can not use the characters outside the world they belong in. This makes them feel about useless. I however love the fact they have it available on PC. I play pc version and have access to the packs and characters that we buy simply by plugging in the web code that comes with them. Amiibo, we have a few. There are some we want but refuse to chase them down and stand in lines for hours because of Nintendo’s extremely limited supply of them. Amiibo feel about useless in general. We would love for them to do a skylanders type game with them. They seem to be more of a collectors piece than anything else. Lego dimensions I have pre-ordered all ready. We are extremely excited about this. First thing I am hyped about (other than it’s Lego) is the fact they have no restrictions on what world you can use the mini figs in. Not to mention back to future and the mini delorean sold me instantly. There are so many possibility’s for worlds: Ghostbusters, Simpsons, Matrix, etc. I am willing to bet we will never see Marvel or Star Wars because Disney will not give the license due to potential lost sales of Disney Infinity. Would be awesome but I am not holding my breath on that one. I would also like to see Lego and Activision take a page from Disney and release their games on PC and give web based codes for the characters as well when you buy them. Sorry if this is a mess to read. Don’t feel like going back and proof reading.
I am absolutely thrilled that Lego is not as restricting as Disney. The breakthrough moment was really The LEGO Movie that allowed all the characters to crossover worlds.
Now it’s a no-brainer for Lego to keep moving forward in this direction. #BreakTheRules
I owned no Skylanders prior to getting Swap Force in September, but my 6-year-old son was a fan for many months before that. A friend of his in kindergarten gave him a Shroomboom and when we’d go to Toys R Us (we live very close to one) he’d want to look at and get more figures. To me they seemed very costly for such little toys. When Toys R Us had Swap Force on a one-day sale for $20 I thought it was an inexpensive investment, not knowing it would lead to well over 100 more figures after that. When he got Trap Team for Christmas I became his playing buddy, and since I’ve bought used versions of SA and Giants. It’s fun playing with him and luckily I’ve been able to hunt down many of the figures from the first three games for an average of $5 each, which makes buying new traps so annoying. They cost more than I’ve paid for most of the Skylanders! But my son really loves the villains. He also likes just about all of the Skylanders. He thinks Blackout and Spotlight are awesome, and as a fan of bats he really likes Bat Spin. We both have a collector mentality so we’ve justified getting multiple versions by rationalizing that they can each have a different path.
I’m in no hurry to look into the other companies’ games, though Lego sounds like it could be fun. I don’t even have a game console in my home. I take my son to my brother’s house on weekends to play. He would want to do nothing else every day of the week if we could play Skylanders at home.
I have to also voice my displeasure with the wave scheme, mainly with how much they are spread out. I can see not putting them all out with the game; the less cool figures would be comparatively ignored. But by the time Enigma comes out my son may not be interested in playing the story for a fourth time. As it is he’s spending more and more time picking out hats for the characters, not an interesting activity for me. When Enigma finally comes out I’ll be getting it more for me than for my son.
I know the Waves can be annoying, but it’s the same song and dance every year. Part of it is so retailers have enough room on their shelves for all the “current” characters, but part of it is also to make Skylanders a year-round event. Halfway through the fourth year, I have to say that they’ve succeeded.
Their formula continues to work for them so I don’t see them changing any time soon.
I can’t wait to get my hands on Enigma too.
When our son took an interest to video games, mainly the Lego ones as he was 3/4 yrs old, I started paying attention to games geared for kids. With the launch of Trap Team, I dove into researching Skylanders vs Infinity and found that Skylanders would be an easier game for him to grasp. I’ve had a love of Spyro from my childhood and had no idea it was developed into Skylanders until I started researching. The decision was made! We bought Trap Team before Christmas and have been collecting since. We get most of our figures from eBay. Currently we only have the Trap Team game, but plan on purchasing them in reverse order as we have the most characters from Swap Force and Trap Team. Having played most of the Lego games before our son was even a thought, we were BEYOND excited to learn of Dimensions. I can’t wait to follow along with Dimensions Character List!!! Bravo and thanks
Thanks for sharing. I’m glad to hear that you’ll be joining us on DCL as well.
There was at least one set of toys that pre dated skylanders that deserves an honorable mention here, UB Funkeys. I was a collector of those as well until they suddenly disappeared from production.
Thanks for the info. I had not heard of these.
After a bit of research it seems that it was a PC only game and they are now discontinued in the US.
I think the biggest hurdle for them was that it was a toy company (Mattel) trying to make a game whereas Skylanders came from a game company who started making toys.
I’m sure they were disappointed when their idea finally caught on about the time that they were discontinuing their product.
UB funkeys was an online game, I doubt its up and running anymore, and you need a Windows XP computer to run it I do believe.
It was functional offline, it was only the last line of characters I believe that tried to introduce social interaction, I do believe you are right about XP though, or at least compatability modes. It was a very fun game, especially considering all characters opened up their own game.
Got into Skylanders looking for a kid-friendly game (no blood splattering, zombies, etc) and easy game play, This has been great, except for the cost. Darn figures start adding up per version per game, even when on sale.
As a Wii owner, I’m not buying a new game system for all the new games, although I’ll follow Dimensions. I’m interested in what if has to offer. Starting with Batman, Gandalf and all is a BIG attraction.
My girls play a lot with the figures outside the video game. I also like the games myself.
Let’s not forget the most awesome part – The Tick/Puddy himself, Patrick Warburton. We’re enjoying the comic books too. Fun reads for any Skylander fan.
Skylanders is definitely kid-friendly. Sometimes I’m amazed at how many adults (myself included) get into the games, not just the collecting.
I hope you’ll join us for a Lego adventure as well.
I got into Skylanders on Christmas Day 2011. I remembered because my little brother had gotten a Wii combo pack with Skylanders Giants. It was also the special edition blue Wii which had Gnarley Tree Rex. Being the older sister, my parents wanted me to check out the game so that i understood how to help my little brother if he ever needed help in the game (9 times out of 10, i had to help). So I sit on the couch Christmas morning and begin to play. Immediately I get sucked into the story line. Then i found out there was a game before Skylanders Giants and it was all over from there.
I currently have a total of 104 Skylanders (all the Giants and all the Swap Force), all the Adventure packs minus Mirror of Mystery adventure pack, and 21 traps (including the Ultimate Laos Trap and the special edition Easter Earth trap).
When I heard about Disney Infinity, I knew i had to get it since I am a huge Disney fan. I wasn’t a big fan of it at all for the lack of adventure in it. Now I am just collecting the characters for the fact that they are Disney characters.
It’s so easy to get sucked into the story. Happy music, bright colors. It’s all there. 🙂
Exactly! And it doesnt help that I love to collect things and I have OCD so my brain tells me that I have to collect everything and I want to. Its just a lot of money for certain items. I will collect everything though. That is my main goal
I got into Skylanders about a month or so after SSA was released. I’m a collector and as soon as I saw that there was a video game with collectible characters where you could actually own the physical figure, I knew I had to give it a try (though I was never a fan of the original Spyro games). I found a combo pack at Best Buy that included the SSA starter pack, an adventure pack, and a 3-pack of characters, so I figured that would be perfect to start with. From there, I’ve managed to get every regular character and in-game variant for the first three games and nearly all for Trap Team (but I don’t care so much for the chase variants), though I’m fortunate to be surrounded by a ton of stores that carry a half-decent stock of characters. I’m an adult with no children, but I still get a lot of enjoyment out of the games and I’ve reached 100% completion on all four of them.
Although I never was a Spyro fan, I’ve always been a fan of Disney, Nintendo, and Lego. Despite that, I own no Infinity or Amiibo characters for two reasons. First, Skylanders is a big enough money pit as it is and I can’t afford another collection. Second, those two sets of figures don’t have the same gameplay as Skylanders and I don’t like how they’re used nearly as much. Lego Dimensions sounds extremely interesting, but I’m not sure if I’m willing to sink the money into it that it’s going to cost.
I was informed today that Skylanders were not the first toys-to-life game created. U.B. Funkeys (from Mattel) beat them out by a few years (2007) although it looks like it was only a PC game. In any case, Skylanders brought toys-to-life to the mainstream so you have to give them credit for that.
If you’re at all interested in Lego Dimensions I hope you’ll join us on Facebook or Twitter (if you haven’t already) to keep up with the news. That much can’t hurt and maybe it will help you make up your mind.
https://www.facebook.com/DimensionsCharacterList
https://twitter.com/dclmatt
well let’s see I don’t remember what date it was exactly but I know it was at least 2 years ago. It was on a Sunday when my youngest niece came over with her skylanders and their Xbox. At the time we hadn’t even heard about skylanders so we didn’t know what the heck they were. It came with my brothers Xbox. watching her play it and seeing all the cool characters she had was really interesting. even my mom got into it. When we went to get us a game she bought her a chill not knowing that it won’t play on the one they had until they tried it and found out that there was another game out there. We had bought the giants game at the time thinking that was the game but we learned that they had the first one and we had the second one which we started to play but decided that we wanted to try the first one which made more sense. Learning about what characters could play on which game. I had the wii at the time so I started mine on the wii but played it on my parents ps3 and found out that it was a lot easier on there so I got a ps3. thinking about all the money I’ve invested in this game makes it worth it. I really do love playing skylanders. it’s interesting collecting the coins and upgrading the characters and beating the villains it’s so much fun. I was excited when they came out with swap force which was better then giants but after trap team came out that was better then all 3 of them and I’m still playing that one. almost got my collection complete. it’s crazy to think that its been at least 2 years that I’ve been a skylanders fan and how I got started and addicted to it.
I agree. You need to play them from the beginning. Even though I got into it late I started with Spyro’s Adventure. That is still my recommendation when people ask.
Spyro’s Adventure is the “original”. It needs to be played.
Like most stories it does need to be played lol. I learned that from watching series of movies to. it was funny thinking about how we didn’t know nothing about skylanders when we started or that there even was more then one at the time nor did my brother who had spyros adventure but it’s been such an enjoyment to me and I put a lot of money into this game but it’s been well worth it. thank you for the comment.
So my wife and I are really new to the Skylanders games. We played a bit with some friends of ours a few weeks ago and then decided to buy the Trap Team starter pack over Easter and some extra characters. Needless to say we were instantly hooked. We next grabbed every trap team we could find and scooped up all the core figures out now, plus even a few variants (Love Potion Pop Fizz, and the easter versions of Pet Vac and Weeruptor. We really loved the quality of the figures and how unique they all were.
We find that while we really enjoy the games (been kind of crazy so only part way through SSA right now) the greatest fun we have is tracking down figures we don’t have. We’ve so far been able to track down all figures except for 12 in Giants and 12 in Swap Force. The most fun thing is making a great find for a figure you really want. Like when I found Gearshift for my wife or she found Wildfire for me. Or when you find a pretty rare figure for a great price like when I found a used Lightcore Pop Fizz for $7 or my wife found a used boomer for $10. We have had to pay a premium for some figures (Krypt King and couple of mini packs set us back a bit, and Darklight Crypt pack was pretty pricy) but otherwise we’ve been pretty lucky to find most figures just bouncing around to Gamestops, local video game retailers, used game stores, or just shopping online (Amazon has everything!).
It’s been a really fun experience so far. My wife and I really love to play video games together and hunting down Skylanders has just taken this to another level. Looking forward to being part of this great site going forward. Also looking forward to Trap Team Wave 5 and trying to hunt down Scratch for Swap Force (boy is he expensive!).
Oh quick question if you don’t mind. Since we are new to Skylanders we are a little unsure as to how hard finding Wave 5 characters will be (finding Echo for example was really tough and it was only a couple of weeks after release). We’re so close to getting all the Trap Team, we’d hate to miss out on the last 3. Any thoughts? Again, thanks for a great site Matt!
While the games are good, I think a lot of people are caught off guard by the thrill of the hunt and that is what keeps them around long past beating the games.
As for Wave 5, it’s a little tricky. In the past Wave 5 has not always come out in one lump sum like the other Waves. For example, we may see Enigma one week and the Cores 2 weeks later.
Just for reference take a look at the release dates from last year and I think you’ll see what I mean:
https://skylanderscharacterlist.com/swap-force-release-dates/
Finally, if you’re not already I highly recommend following SCL on Facebook for the quickest updates on new releases.
https://www.facebook.com/SkylandersCharacterList
When Enigma and the rest of Wave 5 surface, they’ll be hard to miss there.
Thanks for the reply Matt!
I first started collecting way back in Spyro’s Adventure, right at the beginning. Tempted by the design of Spyro, I pursued to have all 32 standard figures. Giants came around, I became more enthralled and collected all Lightcores and Giants. With the announcement of Swap Force, I was determined to collect all Swappers and did so. Only just having the figures I wanted from SSF, I first ignored the reveal of Trap Team but soon became captivated by the traps. I still only have a few from TT but I have collected/will continue to collect the traps. However I recently had a go with Disney infinity 2.0 and liked the style of play and avengers figures. I have never used Amiibo but as you listed above, it has many problems. LEGO Dimensions, while it is rather expensive, looks to be very promising.
BTW
My favourite game: Swap Force
Favourite character: Spyro Series 3/Legendary Ignitor
Favourite Infinity: Iron Man
Another collector sucked in by Spyro. 🙂
I know the Legos seem expensive right now, but I’m really hoping they make it worthwhile in connection with the game.
I was first introduced to Skylanders doing my normal shopping at Walmart. My kids were still youngish and so we hadn’t heard of Skylanders. But the colors of the toy figures kept catching my eye. I kept wondering what those toys were. The colors and style of the characters kind of gave me nostalgia for the characters Basso and Doyle in a game I had played in college, Sega Saturn’s Shining the Holy Ark.
Well a year or two later Giants was released and my kids were a little older. We had received a gift card from a Brother in Law and I had really been wanting a Wii, unusual for a 34 year old Mom of two, but I’ve always been my own unique person. I found a set at Target packaged with Skylanders that was on sale. Considering what the cost was for the Skylanders starter pack all by itself, it was like I paid just $40 for the Wii, so I thought it was a great deal. I was instantly hooked. I had never liked depressing colorless video games and Skylanders was so colorful and absolutely immersive. I mean sure, Skylanders has it’s spooky chapters too, and that’s kinda fun too, I just like that it’s so balanced. Something for everyone. There was so much depth and detail to the game, and different ways to play it. Story mode, battle mode, cannon shooting games, all the different types of swap zones, kaos mode, arena challenges, time attack challenges and so on.
It did not take long for the kids to join me and now we are all big fans. I went back and bought a used copy of Spyro’s Adventures and now we have all four games.Between what I have bought and what relatives have bought over all the birthdays, Easters, and Christmases, I think we have like over 60 figures. My son wears Skylanders T-Shirts and had a Skylanders booksack last year. My daughter does Skylanders coloring pages. We have not gotten into Amiibo or Disney Infinity for all of the reasons listed above in the article. And those figures just don’t have the detail and dimension that the Skylanders do.
My only complaint is the same as many others. The amount of money that it sucks. Great idea, we all love it, but we would love it so much more I think if they wouldn’t keep making the figures bigger and more expensive every year. Can’t they come up with new smaller main characters? The Trapmasters, with their huge weapons, are bigger than the Giants sometimes. And I soooooo love Tuff Luck, but I could have handled her being scaled down. Plus storage space is getting to be a problem. To me new creative ideas, new powers, or different types of characters is of more value than whether the new ones are big enough to squash the ones from last year. 🙂
I did appreciate the trap idea, where you have a smaller piece and several characters to play per piece. But having to buy eight $15 characters and two $30 expansion packs and eight $5 traps with a total of $220+tax just to open the areas in the game is crazy. Nobody in their right mind would put a $220 price tag on a Wii game in the case, but that’s about what we end up paying each year. 🙂 They need to get some coupon clipping moms who know how to get the most bang for the buck, to consult with their design team lol! How to keep the game new and fresh each year without exploding overhead costs. 🙂 But overall we’ve been having a wonderful time with them and really enjoy the Skylanders franchise.
I think you nailed it. There’s something for everyone. That’s why is really doesn’t take long to get hooked.
Thanks for sharing.
My experience w/ Skylanders started when I bought Swap Force so my youngest daughter could play when she was over. I bought some characters but they would get knocked out pretty quickly. They needed to be leveled & powered up so I decided to do just that for the next time she was over. That was when I got hooked. I was playing more & more and my gf would watch. She started playing and became hooked herself. Now thanks to ebay & local shops we now have at least one figure of each character released to date, some reposes and have enjoyed Swap Force & Trap Team, both of us finding the former more enjoyable.
Awesome. From a simple act of kindness comes an obsession. You’re not alone.
You aren’t kidding I’m not alone: now my fiance’s (yes fiance. Things have progressed since I posted) family are getting into it. I know my soon-to-be brother-in-law is anxiously awaiting Fling Kong. I picked up Disney Infinity 2.0 when it came out but have been disappointed. The campaign doesn’t even touch Skylanders. I’m a big time comics fan so this is quite the letdown.
I got into skylanders when I saw the first commercial and since im a big fan of spyro adventure I decided to pursues the game. I been a fan of the Skylanders since day one I have collected all of the Skylanders, Skylanders Giant and Skylander Swap Force still missing about 8 more to complete Skylanders Trap Team. Also have all 8 characters for eons elite. I have a total of 250 Skylanders all the adventure packs missing about 14 traps. Also bought the Disney Marvel Super Heroes and I have all 16 characters but it doesn’t compare to the Skylanders. And I have both kaos trap and 21 Skylander Minis and missing 3 Skylanders Minis.
Nowadays I don’t hear from a lot of people who were in it from the beginning, but I’m glad to know you’re out there.
I remember that one day I was at gamestop with my friends, just browsing games and all, and then we found skylanders (the first one) and I remember watching the commercials at the time and thought that it was interesting, so we bought it and it happened to be pretty cool. By now, I think I might have maybe around 100 or 150 figures, because after then, I got every single figure (not including variants) from the first three games and I’m still adding from figures from Trap Team
Sounds like a solid collection. I think most variants are overrated anyway.
Charter player since Spyro’s Adventure. I originally planned to only get 8 figures (1 of each element). My son began to play and got 8 others. At that point, collecting them all seemed reasonable.
Only 32 in all, right?
The rest is history, and the Toys For Bob company Porsche is financed by me.
That’s what I told myself in the beginning too. Just enough to open all the areas…that didn’t last long.
I found Spyro’s adventure core set on Amazon and brought it
for my son for Christmas, never know too much about it and didn’t know there
were so many different figures. My son
loved it and so did I, over the Christmas week we went out and found the
remaining sets that were out at time.
Over the next few months we would have ball going out and looking for whatever
was new at time. Before the end of the
first series I had my own collection and I have been getting two of everything since. My son and I love battling and seeing who can
get to the end faster or find everything on each level. Over the last year I have been looking all
over E-bay to get all the missing figures.
I was too crazy about infinity when it first came out, but
as soon as I heard that they were going to do Star Wars, I had to check it
out. I bought 2.0 to check it out and
found it was pretty good, not as good as Skylanders, but not too bad. So my collector gene kicked in and I had I had
to have them all. So I went out a pick
up 1.0 – cannot wait until 3.0 is out.
Check out the Amiibo’s and was
really disappointed with them, I pick up what was out at the time and might
just get a few I my fav’s – waiting for the new Pokémon ones.
Really looking forward to Dimensions – I
am a huge lego fan and love the video games – we have most of them and have
played them over and over again.
Might need to get a part time job just support this habit 🙂
Just want to say a quick thank you to for making my job a lot easier of finding what was out and when the next ones where coming out
Always happy to help a fellow collector.
I got into them somewhat late, on Father’s Day 2013. My wife bought me one of those Blue Skylanders Giants Wii console/starter pack combos on some crazy sale, because our little boys had finally finished off the first one. I had never heard of them before but was intrigued immediately. Only took a week or two before I was addicted.
I’ve actually lost interest since Trap Team was announced for two reasons: 1) I don’t like the gimmick that much, and I’m not interested in having to keep track of a million little trap toys and 2) the Wii version is garbage compared to the other systems, with at least one level almost impossible to complete before the machine literally runs out of memory and locks up.
Having said that, I’ve been keeping an eye on things, hoping that Skylanders 5 will rekindle my interest, enough that we might consider upgrading to a new console to get it. I’m also very interested in Disney Infinity 3.0, but they’d have to put out a starter pack with characters from the original trilogy before I was interested enough to purchase it.
I’m super hyped about the Lego game. Always been a huge Lego lover, and I’ve played the Lego Movie and Lego Marvel games with my sons, so this would be a slam dunk. My older son is also a huge Portal fan, so the Portal 2 set is perfect. But I get the feeling they wouldn’t have Star Wars sets for the game, since Disney is working that market. But who knows how all that licensing stuff would work out?
Yeah, you need to get off the Wii. Infinity 3.0 and Lego Dimensions are not coming out for the Wii and I highly doubt that Sky 5 will either.
There is only one Infinity 3.0 Starter Pack that features Anakin and Ahsoka (Clone Wars characters). You will be able to buy the game digitally though and just pick up the Play Sets and characters you’re interested in.
Not expecting to see Star Wars or Marvel included in Lego Dimensions (even though they both have previous Lego games), but they still have plenty of properties to work with and are gaining more each year.
Who knows though, perhaps 5 years down the road (if toys-to-life is still a thing) we could see Star Wars join Lego again.