For the Second Year in a Row, Skylanders Is Forgetting About Their Existing Fans

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While all the excitement is in the air for Skylanders Imaginators, set to release this fall, Skylanders looks to have once again forget that they have a game to finish.

Toys-To-Life is a tricky genre to develop for. No doubt about it. Your asking your consumer base to purchase a lot of “paid DLC”… a lot.

Though a lot of us enjoy this genre, costs and all. Many of us even choose to go completely submerged and pick up every piece of content that is coming to the game.

Unfortunately, for the second year in a row, Skylanders has made that difficult.

Trap Team

Trap Team released in the fall of 2014. There were a lot of products to pick up, and a bunch of traps. But things went pretty smoothly. Aside from the issue of the overabundance over water traps, but that’s another issue entirely.

Sure there were a few items that had short supply, but that’s how Skylanders has worked in previous years.

YawnTraps

Until we get to the infamous “yawn traps”. I won’t go into all the details on the release. My friend Matt over at SkylandersCharacterList.com has a great final round up on the huge debacle.

Essentially, many collectors were left (and are still left) with an empty collection. All with absolutely zero communication from the Skylanders team. Zilch. No official press release (which I don’t think anyone really expects), no e-mails to fan sites, no messages to community leaders, etc. Just radio silence and off they went to Superchargers.

Skylanders Superchargers

Superchargers, the next installment in the Skylanders Universe, was released in the fall of 2015. Vehicles finally came to Skylands! This year, the Skylanders team approached the announcement/release of figures a bit differently than in years past.

With Superchargers, right on day one they said exactly how many figures and vehicles there would be. By the time the game came out, we knew exactly who they all were (minus variants and all that fun). This was great for those who like to budget things out, decide which figures they want to get or not get, etc.

The release stated with a slight problem with the recall notice of Nightfall. The figure had some issues with the information stored on the NFC tag, but Skylanders did the right thing and kept the community informed of what was going on. Manufacturing issues and other problems happen. Everyone understands that. All we ask is to be kept informed to know what’s going on.

Things continued to go smoothly, until recently.

Here comes Thrillipede.

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Now let me take a side step real quick and talk about how Skylanders announces new figures. For the years leading up to Superchargers they would rarely, if ever, make an official press release announcing new figures after the launch lineup. Whenever they did officially announce them, it would often times be after the figures were released in stores. Most recently, I remember many of us picked up Eggcited Thrillipede and Spring Ahead Dive Bomber at the beginning of February. Skylanders didn’t officially announce the figure until February 24th.

Mostly this is all due to the fact that after the initial game releases, Skylanders figures very rarely ever have official release dates. That’s all fine and dandy with most people, and again that’s just the way Skylanders does things. It adds to the confusion to many, but helps create a lot of discussion across the internet.

But then Skylanders did something different.

May 9th, Skylanders officially sent out a press release saying that Thrillipede is now available “at all retailers”. Buzzwing was now available at Toys”R”Us, then everyone else in June.

I’ll let you look around for a second.

Granted, some international retailers have had the figures released, but not in a huge volume. Many are now out of stock, especially with Thrillipede. International release aside, the press release was talking specifically about the U.S. market.

Buzzwing did release at Toys”R”Us in-store and online, but some users have said their local Toys”R”Us still has not received shipment.

Thrillipede was released in very, very low amounts on the ToysRUs website.

So what happens now? Once again, radio silence from Skylanders end.

Obviously something changed. Though to send out a press release saying something is available now, and it’s not, there is an obvious disconnect.

Right now the cheapest option to get Thrillipede is to pay nearly 3x+ more than retail value via third parties on ebay or Amazon. Or you can try to import from overseas, but good luck, as many places are still sold out as well.

The problem overall is, I don’t even think many people who are in the position to make the changes, are even aware of these issues.

The Future

While Skylanders is going around touting about Skylanders Imaginators, it leaves a bad taste in the mouth of many of the core Skylanders fans. We all understand why they are talking about the new game now. You have to. But at the same time, can you at least clarify what’s going on with the products you already have released?

You have a multitude of resources at your finger tips to clear information up to your consumers, use them!

Will Yawn Traps ever see the light of day? I don’t think so. Will Thrillipede ever show up fully? I sure hope so… but with each passing day I’m feeling less hopeful.

Skylanders Imaginators tagline is “Unleash your imagination”. Right now, I’m afraid my imagination will be restricted to only a part of what they announce.