The Toys to life Era was first a thing back in the early 2010s, during that time a lot of people were into this new aspect of gaming since it was a brand new idea and it was an easy target audience for children. A lot of games were using this formula in games, most notably Skylanders. Activision rebooted the Spyro the Dragon series for a new game that was originally going to be named Spyro Kingdom, but then the title was changed to Skylanders Spyro’s Adventure.
In 2011 Skylanders Spyro’s Adventure was released around the holidays. In the starter pack you have the game, and Skylander figures to use in the game. In order to use these figures you need the portal of power to make them work. If you wanted more figures to play the game, you would need to go to retail stores like Walmart or Target to buy the extra characters.
As a result, this was a huge commercial success, making Activision a large amount of profit off of this fresh new idea for gaming. In 2012, Activision made a sequel to the series named Skylanders Giants. The main gimmick this time was the introduction of the new, bigger characters which are significantly larger than the normal figures. The game was pretty much the same concept as Spyro’s Adventures, and this was yet again another successful game that made the company a lot of profit.
In 2013, Activision released another Skylanders game called Skylanders Swap Force. This time the main gimmick is the ability to be able to swap the top and bottom part of certain Skylanders. This was the most creative they had been, and it showed with how much money they made out of this game. This was a fan favorite in the series, while not the favorite game everyone loved but this was easily the best gimmick the company thought of yet.
Disney saw that this concept was doing extremely well, and later in 2013 Disney released Disney Infinity. Disney Infinity is a toys to life game that focuses on being a toy box in the game. In the packaging it comes with the portal, some Disney characters, and the play set. The play set is basically the story mode of this game. Depending on the character you picked, you can play the set that is based on a movie or show. This game made some good profit for the first year of the game.
2014 was a big year for Toys to Life. Two games were released and a whole new product was made. Disney released Disney Infinity 2.0 which is pretty much the same game as the original version. The only difference is the introduction of Marvel characters which really was the theme of this game. The best part is that Disney characters made for the original version are compatible with the 2.0 version. This game didn’t make a lot of profit compared to the first game, but still a respectable amount of money.
While Disney was doing that, Activision released Skylanders Trap Team. This game is a fan favorite to the series, the main gimmick is the new item called traps. These crystal looking items are for trapping certain enemies in the game and being able to play as them in game. That is a very creative idea for a new gimmick, while the fans were overjoyed by this game, this was the game where profit really started to decline.
Nintendo also saw how successful these games were doing with this concept, and they made Toys to Life figures called Amiibos. Unlike Disney and Skylanders, Nintendo wanted to see these as optional things that can get certain bonuses in games. Most notably, for the Super Smash Bros For Wii U game, where you can train up a computer player with certain abilities and whatnot. This was only used in a handful of Wii U, 3DS, and Nintendo Switch games.
2015 once again was a big year for Toys to Life, another installment of Skylanders, another installment of Disney Infinity, and a whole new Toys to Life game. The new game was called Lego Dimensions; A Lego Toys to Life game that was heavily focused on being a giant crossover with series that already had Lego sets and series that never had Lego sets before. And the game was just a huge adventure with all of these characters. The profit for the game did pay off in the end but definitely what they were expecting out of this concept, this game will get another year worth of content.
Activision this time released Skylanders Superchargers. This is where the cracks really started to form in the series a bit. First of all the gimmick this time around was just that these new Skylanders could go in vehicles, which wasn’t the most creative gimmick out there especially coming from the two previous installments that had mind blowing gimmicks, and while the story mode was good, the profit didn’t really pay off that well.
Disney released the final Disney Infinity installment before discontinuing the series. Disney Infinity 3.0 released, which was still nearly the same game as the past two games, but this time they introduced Star Wars into the mix, now having two big series in this one game alone.
This game would have another six months worth of content and characters released before announcing they would discontinue the series. This was a shock to the fans because their future was looking bright and would do so well. Their reason why they did this was because this concept was being overused by a lot of companies and the profit wasn’t really paying off.
In 2016 Activision released their final game before discontinuing all together, Skylanders Imaginators. After Superchargers did, not a lot of people were really into this game. The gimmick of this game was giving the ability to the player to make their very own Skylander, and the game really tried to make you use the character as much as possible. This gimmick really flopped hard and they lost money, it was pretty obvious that was over.
Overall this genre of games would eventually all be gone. The only company that is still doing this is Nintendo with their Amiibos and they don’t make them that often anymore. This was a genre that was doing very great at the start but all crumbled apart when the games weren’t paying off.
