Skylanders

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Skylanders is a toys-to-life action-adventure game series created by Toys for Bob and published by Activision. The idea is simple: you buy collectible figurines that have data about a character. Each figure sits on a special Portal of Power, which reads the figure’s data and brings that Skylander into the game. The figurines remember upgrades and progress, so you can move them between games.

There are ten elements in Skylanders: Earth, Air, Fire, Water, Magic, Tech, Life, Undead, Light, and Dark. Elements affect strength and access to certain areas in the game. The games take place in Skylands, a world of floating islands. A recurring villain named Kaos tries to take over Skylands, and the Skylanders work with Portal Masters to stop him.

About 160 Skylanders exist. Some are bigger Giants, and there are special groups like Swap Force (Skylanders that can swap their top and bottom halves for new abilities), Trap Team (uses traps made of Traptanium to imprison enemies), SuperChargers (Skylanders who pilot vehicles), and Imaginators (you can create your own Skylanders). Spyro, the famous dragon from another series, is one of the Skylanders.

The main games in order are:
- Spyro’s Adventure: the first game, with 32 Skylanders, to restore the Core of Light.
- Giants: introduces the Giant Skylanders, who are bigger and stronger.
- Swap Force: adds the ability to mix and match top and bottom halves for new powers.
- Trap Team: adds the Trap Masters and a new trapping system with Traptanium.
- SuperChargers: Skylanders drive vehicles; racing mode is included.
- Imaginators: the sixth game, where players create their own Skylanders, called Imaginators, and learn from Senseis. Crash Bandicoot and Doctor Cortex appear as guest figures.

There were other Skylanders projects too, like Skylanders Universe, a browser game; various mobile games; and Skylanders Academy, a Netflix series. A Ring of Heroes mobile game came later, and there were talks of a Skylanders movie.

Sales and reception: Skylanders became very popular and sold hundreds of millions of toys and earned billions in revenue. Reviews were generally positive, though some versions did better than others.

Over time, the main line paused after Imaginators. In 2022, after Activision was bought by Microsoft, there was talk of reviving old franchises like Skylanders, but nothing new has been released yet.

Platform notes: The Nintendo 3DS versions had their own stories and used a smaller portal. In Swap Force and later games, progress is saved in the game itself. The Switch version of Imaginators uses the Switch controller’s built-in NFC instead of a separate portal. Some features like traps were not present on all versions.