Activision and 72andSunny know that today’s ungrateful youth can’t just accept a toy without having a definitive reason for its existence. So, for Activision’s forthcoming title Skylanders Spyro’s Adventures, the video game developer called upon its agency to develop a two-minute long commercial that tells children about Spyro the Dragon’s epic space battle against a cloud monster who blows him and his computer-animated friends to Earth, reducing the heroes into paralyzed but still conscious gamers’ pawns to play with in digital or tangible form. That’s sure to shut the kids up for a while, right?
It seems as though Spyro’s 13+ years as a video game franchise star has left the titular hero a little worse for the wear. Gone is his adorable little face, which is now hidden under peeling scales, battle scars and a overall pessimistic outlook on life. But, for the first time in video game history (at least to our knowledge), Activision has harnessed the technology change a video game’s story using physical, IRL objects. As 72andSunny says in the announce, “The hardware within the toys allows the player to take any of their Skylander characters and have them inserted in games with their friends, across any platform the game is available on. We worked closely with the team at Activision to ensure each of the characters personality and story came through, as collecting all the toys allows you to navigate through the game and get a different experience with each.”
In other words, gamers are actually getting two toys in one. Not bad, but was anyone else thinking about telling the kid who reaches for a toy that just rocketed through the atmosphere, “Don’t touch that! It’s hot and could potentially burn your hand!” Having been a fan of the first couple Spyro games, I now feel very old.