What Killed the Skylanders Franchise?

My strongest memory of Skylanders was owning a legendary trigger happy, I thought of it like a shiny pokemon and was very sensitive when it came to using that figure. Never played after Swap Force and only owned the first one myself. It still honestly looks like a fun game to replay nowadays.

The toys to life market is probably the most unique trend we’ve seen and possibly won’t see something as unique for quite some time!

My childhood was Skylanders! Thanks for giving them a proper video.

After playing games like the Spyro Reignited Trilogy and Crash 4, I grew so much respect for Toys For Bob and their work on Skylanders. TFB are INCREDIBLY talented and passionate devs that know their stuff. I never played a Skylanders game, but the game's design was genius, and world/characters were memorable and engaging. While not perfect, the charm made me see these games as more than just prophet margins to Activision

I'm one of those Skylanders kids who is still waiting for a comeback of the series. Even if it's not Toys to Life, I want to relive the nostalgia of playing the games with my friends.

I miss Skylanders and toys to life stuff in general, but their death was inevitable. Still doesn’t stop me from having so many good memories surrounding the first three games. I miss my Jade Flashwing :”)

A remastered collection of all the games together with the characters available digitally would be cool too see.

I think there were a few major factors that led to the fall of Skylanders. It was no one thing, rather a combination of these factors slowly eroded fan interest and sales.

1. New paywalls for each game. One of the most gratifying consumer experiences in my entire life has to be the transition from Spyro's Adventure to Giants. The reason for this was everything in Giants was unlockable from the Skylanders I had collected from Spyro's Adventures with the exception of a few Giants exclusive areas but we were already given a Giant in the starter pack. I could literally experience everything in the new game using my old Skylanders and a single new Giant from the starter pack.

But none of the following games were this consumer friendly. To unlock all the gates in Swap Force you NEEDED to have a Swap Force Skylander from every element and the same goes for Trap Team. Suddenly the player was forced to shell out 80-100 more dollars for each new installment. That's enough to demotivate lots of players, what's the point in getting the new game if it costs to much to unlock everything?

2. Less focus on story. One of the interesting things about Skylanders was how the world and lore was slowly developed. Giants is an extremely natural continuation of Spyro's Adventure which focuses off the ancient Arkeyan Empire which was alluded to in Spyro's Adventure. The game also ended with Kaos's mom being teased which carried over to the next game and when Swap Force rolled around it ended with a cliff hanger of Kaos and Glumshanks being split in half and swapped.

Unfortunately, this is where the continuous story ended. Skylanders Trap Team completely ignored that Kaos had swapped with Glumshanks. This was more than just a continuity error, it was a blatant disregardal of the canon and it broke player faith in the story of the Skylanders. If such a major story physical transformation was completely ignored, it send the signal that major continuity changes in the game were unimportant and disposal. If the game didn't care about its own story, why should the player? This is where the story also stopped carrying over from game to game and that hurt player engagement.

3. Less interesting level design and gimmicks. Most Skylander fans would agree that the final 2 games in the series simply were not that good and lacked interesting gimmicks. Swapping you Skylanders and trapping Villains in traps were some of the coolest things I've ever done in a video game, they are miles better than having a random boat you can't scan into the game. I cared about characters, not vehicles and static vehicle was a huge step down from trapping digital villains in my physical traps.

The level design and gameplay was also simply lacking. I never played Imaginations but Supercharges was enough to lose my interest and I never bothered to get the next one.

4. Skylanders became too ubiquitous and that made them less cool. Skylanders in the end suffered from oversatuation. When you have too much of a cool thing it makes those things less cool because they are everywhere and their coolness has been diluted. When the first Skylander game came out, there were only 32 Skylanders each with a cool backstory and unique abilities. There varied enough to be distinct but also few enough to keep track of.

But slowly, that number climbed up and up and up. And eventually, you have 100's of Skylanders which is simply too many to keep track of! Each Skylander starts to feel less distinct, less unique, and less essential. They began to feel disposable and the player was overwhelmed with how many Skylanders there were! And the only thing to do when being overwhelmed is to take a step back, which is what many players eventually did.

5. Increased competition. This last one is not Skylander's fault but increased competition from Disney, Lego, and Nintendo surely hurt Skylander sales. A kid (or their parents) only has so much money to spend of Toys to Life and some kids went with a Skylander competitor instead of Skylanders. You can't blame them too much either Disney, Lego, and Nintendo are trusted brands while Toys For Bob was a company no one had every heard of. It makes sense that the competitors not only diluted the market, but poached many sales from Skylanders.

All of these were the factors why Skylanders sold less and less as time went on and eventually ended. No single factor did the franchise if you were to ask a Skylander player why they eventually did not buy the sequels, these are likely the reasons they will give you.

I’ve only played Swap Force, but that alone just makes me wonder how the franchise would turn out, if it had continued.

I always wondered what Happened to our Favorite childhood games

Money killed it. It was so expensive and kids lost interest as well.

I have a feeling that the Skylanders franchise would last longer if there wasn't one game every year. The series is quite enjoyable (although my first and only game was imaginators) and I'm a little annoyed it was milked to death.

Well, at least it's still good to know that ActiVision still remembers Skylanders, since Eruptor makes a cameo in the "Off Beat" level of Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time.

This game was literally my childhood.

I miss Skylanders to death. I’ve fully played each game like 5 times

I really miss skylanders I have so many good memories of this franchise, with swap force and supercharges being my favorite entries

Coincidentally this video came out just when I was watching Skylanders videos because I was feeling nostalgic for the series, Trap Team was the last great game imo, despite how money grubbing it was looking back at it, I feel by Superchargers and Imaginators, the magic was kind of lost for me

One of my favorite franchises, damn

someone finally mentioned this game, NO ONE WILL EVERY BEAT MY COLLECTION OF EVERY CHARACTER BECAUSE OF MY BROTHAS!

I remember Disney infinity