The game contains 32 playable characters, each with different skills, upgrades, and stats. The characters are split up into 8 different elemental types that are needed in specific areas of the game. When you purchase a Skylanders figure, the RFI chip inside of the figurine is read by the portal, which tells the game which character to load up on the fly, and all experience, loot, and upgrades are saved to the actual figurine for later use. The figurines are cross compatible with different console versions of the game as well, which make the characters easy to transport over to a friend's house and used on their copy as well. Adventure Packs (retailing at $19.99) were also released containing special figures that opened up new levels of play and special magical spells to help players progress through harder areas of the game. The marketing concept for this game is quite ingenious due to the game making the players want to run out and buy more figures to both collect and progress deeper into the game.
During the Holiday season, Skylanders became a pretty standard item on Christmas lists. The figures were well stocked throughout the whole season and the game sold very well, making Skylanders a risky yet profitable endeavor for Activision. As soon as Christmas came and gone, the Skylanders craze began to kick in. As children received the starter kits on Christmas day, everyone ran out to retailers to purchase more figurines for the game, which in turn wiped retailer's shelves clean of product. Skylanders figures became very hard to find and the eBay hoarders began buying up figurines to auction off for up to $100 a figure. Retail stores began to pick up on the growing demand of figures and started raising prices by two to three dollars a pop. Skylanders quickly became a mass hysteria.
I work retail as a manager of the sales floor and electronics department, so I was well aware of the Skylanders game but thought nothing of it. I honestly thought Skylanders was another money grab attempt by Activision and figured the quality of the game itself would have been poor. Not until the game's popularity exploded after Christmas and noticed the reviews were pretty strong, I decided to look more into the game. During a Toys R Us sale, I decided to pick a copy of the starter kit up for the Xbox 360. I am a huge fan of action-RPGs and after watching some gameplay videos I thought the game looked kind-of fun. When I came home with my starter kit, I hooked everything up to my 360 and fired up the game; I played for probably 30 minutes until I came to the conclusion that I MUST HAVE MORE FIGURES NOW! Activision's marketing whip wrapped tightly around me and I began hunting down these figurines with the rest of the masses.
Working in retail helped track the figures down, so I had quite an advantage finding them over most people. I knew when figures typically shipped in, started to catch on to shipping trends, and successfully snag characters quite easily. Every day at work our Electronics department would get countless calls from customers seeking out these little figurines. Since I was in the Skylanders loop and a collector myself, I was able to really help people find these things. One morning I remember a large group of people busting into the store at 8 A.M. and picking our fully stocked shelves of Skylanders clean within 15 minutes.
I put a lot of time into the actual game itself. Even after I completely finished the story mode and obtained every achievement in the game, I still wanted more figures. I got to a point where I had so many of them that it made more sense just to keep collecting them until I had every single Skylander available. Right now I am at 22 out of 26 currently available figures and I even went out and purchased the 3DS version just for it's exclusive figurines. I had officially become addicted to Skylanders.
February has kicked in and even though the demand and interest in Skylanders has diminished quite a bit, the figures are still typically sold out. Stock does seem to last much longer than before, usually taking a couple of days to sell out instead of 15 minutes from receiving them. Even though I am no longer visiting multiple stores a day looking for the figures, I am keeping an eye out during my weekly errands to see if one of the four I am missing happen to pop up. A sequel to the game is already planned and more figures are being released every couple of months or so. It is hard to say where the Skylanders brand is heading and how long Activision can ride on it's coattails, but I do tip my hat to them for not only coming up with a ingenious idea, but also finding a way to find the cheap skate in me to hop on the bandwagon. Kudos, Activision.
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