The Future of Action Figures?

Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure at first glance looked like the ultimate cash grab and many gamers looked at the game and thought “how in the hell does a company expect you to spend $70 on the game and then buy action figures at $10 a pop in order to complete the game?”  I was one of those people and thought this game will just be a fad and go away.  Fast forward to the fall of 2012 and the sequel is released,  Skylanders: Giants.  Giant’s not only featured more characters that you can buy,  but they upped the ante by including Giant characters that cost $15 and Lightcore figures that cost $12.  Being the avid gamer that I am,  I started to take notice.  I read the reviews on Spyro’s Adventure and learned that it was a very fun experience however the game was very easy as it was aimed towards younger children.  Giant’s received similar reviews and my interest grew.

After much debate a friend of mine and myself decided to go half on the cost and purchase both games and large chunk of the now over 80 available figures.  It took only minutes of gameplay until I was hooked!  He felt the exact same way and the next thing we knew,  we were buying figures on eBay and going on Skylander hunts checking all retailers.  The game’s weren’t even close to being challenging however they made up for it in the amount of fun we had switching out our action figures,  leveling them up and trading them back and forth.

I started to think what would happen if a game developer took this same model towards a adult based fantasy role playing game along the lines of Final Fantasy,  Dungeon and Dragons  or Lord of the Rings.  It could get dangerous real quick for my checking account if I could walk into the nearest Target and purchase a Warrior or Elf and go on a 40+ hour dungeon crawling adventure.  As I started to discuss this with friends and like minded individuals,  one question kept coming up,  “Is Skylanders doing well enough to even spark these kind of games?”  In January of 2013,  we got the answer.