The Sky is Limited… Where Are the Skylanders?

Gamers are no strangers to shortages. Most of us learned early on that in order to secure a console at launch, preordering is almost always required. We get it.

Once we have a game at home (and the platform on which to play it), though, we’re used to being ready to play as much of that game as we want. We’re also no strangers to expansions, whether they are available on another disk or as DLC. With rare exception, all we need to do to access those expansions is purchase them digitally and download.

Enter Skylanders.

As you know from my review and our lauding of the game on the N4G Podcast, we’re big fans. The game is a very clever action-RPG that, while designed for younger audiences, is quite enjoyable for adults. Any gamer purchasing Skylanders should be aware before checking out that what you get in the box won’t give you access to every area of the game. In order to access all of the elemental areas, you need at least one Skylander figure in each of the eight elements. The starters come with three, leaving you with five to purchase as singles, in three-packs or adventure packs. You don’t need more than the starter pack to complete the game, and if that’s your choice, you’ll still have a great experience. However, if you want a more complete adventure, you’ll have at least eight figures and you are constantly tempted with previews for figures that aren’t in your collection or aren’t out yet. All you need to do is go to your local toy or game store and pick up more figures. Right?

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Wrong.

Currently, Skylanders are sold out in many areas. You can probably still find the starter packs, but if you are looking for figures to round out your elemental needs, you’re probably out of luck for now.

This exposes a major problem with the game’s model. Unlike DLC for games, which is available at nearly all times and in infinite supply, the Skylanders Toy-loadable Content is a bit trickier. The cost is higher, which should be something anyone purchasing the starter is aware of before swiping their credit card. More importantly, though, you need to find an outlet that has figures in stock. While it was a bit tricky to find specific Skylanders through the holiday season, if you were simply looking to fill an elemental slot without regard for the character, you would most likely find something to meet your needs (except for Air, which is scarcer because one of the two available figures is only available at Target).

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Between Christmas and the turning of the new year, something happened to the supply. After calls to many retailers in a few different areas of the country, and reports from readers, figure packs (in any configuration) seem to be completely depleted from store shelves. Sure, demand is most certainly up. Those gamers, both young and old, looking to build a collection after receiving the game for a gift are on the hunt. Unfortunately, this poses an interesting question for those that want to play the game, “Do I play now, leading to backtracking later, or simply wait until I have one character of each element?” Choice about whether to purchase more figures has been removed from the equation, replaced by a far less appealing one.

We’ve reached out to Activision to gain some understanding of what’s going on with the supply and when stores might be restocked and, as of publishing, haven’t received a response. If Skylanders is to be a model for future game development for young audiences, this issue needs to be addressed. Supply must be constant through the product’s life cycle. No one is expecting every retailer to have every figure, or even every element. For every retailer to be completely devoid of stock, though, is unacceptable. If this problem persists, Skylanders will turn from an astounding success to a horrific failure from a long-term development perspective. Those that jumped on the Skylanders bandwagon will, no doubt, remember product shortages when the inevitable Skylanders 2 (or other toy-based game) arrives.

We certainly hope that this is a very short-term problem as we’re big fans of the game and the ability to move characters across platforms. We’ll be sure to keep you posted if we receive further information.

Update (10:55 AM EST) – This was spotted on the official Skylanders Facebook page (and brought to our attention by Dan Amrich/@OneofSwords):

We are working hard to get more Skylanders in stores as fast as possible! Starting in mid-January, you’ll also be seeing Skylanders that haven’t yet been released. We’ve listened to your requests and are pulling together as much info as we can share – check back at Facebook soon.

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Update (5:17 pm EST) – I happened to be at a local Toys R Us and noticed two things that bothered me.

First, their stock of figures was fully depleted (there were many starters, though). Second, the chain is price gouging. MSRP on Skylanders figures is $7.99 for a single figure and $19.99 for a three-pack or adventure set. Prices at Toys R Us today are up 25% to $9.99 and $24.99.

Additionally, we strongly suggest you stay away from GameStop for online purchases. The figures are only available as a blind buy (random). They are also gouging with three-packs priced at $25 online.

Written by
Mike is the Reviews Editor and former Community Manager for this fine, digital establishment. You can find him crawling through dungeons, cruising the galaxy in the Normandy, and geeking it out around a gaming table.

34 Comments

  1. Hey, everyone. Thank you so much for your comments.

    I wanted to give you a quick update on what we know. It’s not much, unfortunately as we still haven’t received word back from our friends at Activision.

    First, we had been tipped off that there might be a restock on January 13. We didn’t report it because the info seemed less than firm and we didn’t want to get hopes up. Seems we made the right call as, with few exceptions, outlets seem to have bare shelves in the Skylanders section.

    I do know that wave 3 (Slam Bam with Empire of Ice Adventure Pack, Double Trouble and Cynder) has been shipped and has arrived in equally limited quantities to stores. They are about as likely to show up as any other previously released figure/set at this point.

    Ultimately, this seems to be a communication of underestimating success and complexity of assembly. Remember, each RFID chip is uniquely coded so that it can be used in the web game. I imagine that this adds a bit to the assembly process (and another piece that may, in and of itself, be more limited), but it still doesn’t explain the huge drop off after the holidays.

    We’re continuing to investigate and will report as soon as we have concrete information.

    Thanks for reading and commenting, everyone. If you do have any tips on this, please do send me an email at michaelfutter@ztgamedomain.com. You can also find me on Twitter (@mmmfutter).

  2. I’ve called twice complaining my daughter wants more characters. Both times they said they have no idea when stuff is shipped.. “useless”. I talked to Best buy yesterday… was told they had a shippment comming in tomorrow, I’ve now been told that the distributor is out, they told me we should see something in about 3+ weeks.
    Ebay is rediculous, I sat bidding on a guy for HOURS and after 4 tries I finally got “Bash” for $14. What are the chances of getting “Cynder” or “Whirlwind” at that price. Here in Canada we only pay $7.99 for a single, so I’m not spending more then 14 online BLA!! I agree with a comment posted earlier “a release of information on WHEN we should see more would help”. I’m tired of sitting on the phone once a week calling around”. I also think there should be a limit on how many of one Skylander u can buy. Guy at Walmart told me he filled the shelves on a Saturday, came in the next day, the day I was there, and they were out. Love the game, but it’s put on hold till we get more guys.

    • these pricks on EBAY are so ANNOYING $45 bucks for 1 fig!> WTF,,they are wrecking the game a:'(

  3. Activision, next time make a real proper Spyro game for us old Spyro fans because this one was just a Spyro knock-off for little kids who never heard or saw of Spyro and you didn’t show any support for the old Spyro fans. Do you have any idea how much withdrawal we have been going through since 2006?

    • While I certainly hear the calls for a classic Spyro game, commenting here with that name is inappropriate.

      As for Activision, they are pretty happy with the results of Skylanders. By the way, if you haven’t played Skylanders, you’re missing out. It’s a good game for kids AND adults.

  4. Went and purchased the starter PS3 pack and son has scorched his way through finding all those wonderful characters that he’d now love to purchase, but alas Activision has cut it’s own throat by failing to even inform it’s customers of planned supply dates.

    Well Activision has really done its dash with my son and I’d say probably a very large segment of its NEW customer base, activision needs to remember that children have very long memories in regards to disappointment and in the years that follow they will recall activision caused disappointment and probably reject their products no matter how good.

    My son even began to ask me if it was possible to create our own RFID that would allow him to use any character by loading and unloading the RFID. (his only 9) and he gleaned all this from his own research into the product. So well done activision you have not only managed to disappoint but to also encourage these same kids to think about how to get around your DRM.

    Anyway I’ve told him we should wait about a month and in the mean time we’ll find some game that doesn’t have a stupid DRM.

    I’m sort of wondering if we could take it back to the store and demand a refund given that the game can’t be fully played without the other figures which apparently nobody knows when or if they will be available.. That makes the product defective in my view.

    Just a thought.

    • hey mate i seeyour from melbourne ….im near mebourne and i was wondering where is the best place to call, look and buy them?..im 14 and love it :P pleas help :)

  5. K Mart is a good place to look though Air is still hard to find. People forget about K Mart I guess and the 2 I have been to have them.

    From a marketing standpoint, I think the whole Skylanders thing is genius. they have to do better with supply. I suspect you will see other trilogy games work in this fashion moving foward. I invisioned something similar way back, with Pokemon. Really surprised they didn’t do something like this, but would be even more surprised if they didn’t try to follow suit.

  6. Still can’t find anything in stores. Oh well.

  7. Well I see that Activision has still not managed to get sufficient stock into stores, and I’m hardly surprised given that I heard the account of a fellow parent describing what sounded like an all out brawl in a Kmart store when they went to stock the shelves with the limited supply that had come in.
    Apparently the shelf stacker only managed to start opening the boxes before dozens of seemingly normal parents went into a frenzy tearing the box open and loading as many packs as they could physically carry, and then turning on each other.

    I was sooo glad not to have been witness to this.

    Anyway I more or less gave up at that point on getting anymore for months perhaps as even EB Games revealed that reps. had been lying to them about the volume and dates of restocking.

    Went on Ebay and good fortune occurred but at a hefty price I managed to pickup 26 new character’s in one auction and now I can take my time finding the missing ones.

    I feel for everyone out there searching and wish Activision would get it’s act together and inform their customers when they will be restocked.

    Good luck and happy gaming folks.

  8. I have been all over and I cannot find more then drobot at the stores (one target in particular has move then 30 DroBot’s on the shelf and thats it)

    Whats really bad about this is last week we really the 1st week many recover from Christmas spending so would actually be a good sales oppertunity for Activision because parents are now willing to buy the add-ons for there Christmas presents :(

  9. It’s now nearly 2 months since we have seen any skylander figures in Australia – the stores seem to be stocking the game starter pack in large quantities, but there should be a huge big sign next to the product that the addons cannot be purchased – It could be argued that Activation are breaking consumer law by continuing to sell the base product when they already know that they cannot supply demand of the required figures to fully complete the game.

  10. Target has joined in on the price gauging – they’ve now raised the prices of the single figure packs to $8.99. Our Target did get a shipment in about 2 1/2 weeks ago, but have not restocked since. My son was disappointed when the people in front of us bought up everything on the shelf. They wouldn’t even share a duplicate with him. We did eventually manage to get a Double Trouble.

    My dad has also had luck at KMart and was able to pick up a few figures for us.

    We’re hoping some of the supply issue is worked out by his birthday in March.

    • This is just sickening to me. While I love collecting them I try to be patient, but when you are a kid it is hard to wait for something you want. These retailers taking advantage of that makes me really sad.

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