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Mashable sat down with Activision and a bonafide Skylanders superfan to unpack just how the series keeps fans coming back for more.
Omar Kattan: "Lego understood very early on that they’re not in the toy business, but instead, the imagination business. As a result of this, Lego brought their bricks to life through the magical power of story told through multiple platforms."
Barbie is just shy of 53 years old. She’s survived the Vietnam War, the fall of the Berlin Wall and German reunification, both wars with Iraq and has managed to outlast 10 U.S. Presidents. But she might have just met her match with two cancer survivors.
Toy store Hamleys has stopped labelling floors in blue and pink for boys and girls. But will it change the way children play, asks Zoe Williams?
After concentrating on the boys market for the last five or six years, our favorite manufacturer of plastic building blocks is trying to capture the other 50 percent of the kids market with Lego Friends, a new line aimed at girls aged 5 and above... [Further discussion on gender preference in toys can be found @scoopit http://bit.ly/rSzygb]
More than half of all children in the UK own a physical toy based on free-to-play and subscription-based virtual worlds and games like Club Penguin or Mind Candy's Moshi Monsters, according to a new study by Dubit Research.
Take a look behind the scenes at how Mattel reunited its iconic doll couple with a marketing campaign that heavily utilized social media. [This is an excellent look at how Mattel used transmedia storytelling to engage fans in Ken & Barbie's worlds.]
Now that Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure is out the big debate is which characters are the best to collect. My family each has a different approach to this.
Mixing together video games and collectible toys, Activision? How very Captain Power of you. As many will no doubt remember, the good captain and his soldiers of the future wound up defending clearance aisles from evil until fading into obscurity.
Revealed during Mattel's weekend panel at New York Comic-Con, here's our first look at the upcoming Masters of the Universe 30th Anniversary Classics collection. Among the batch figures are some interesting variants and one show exclusive.
To assist in the effort, Mattel executives teamed up with Lauren Parsekian and Molly Thompson, creators of the Kind Campaign, a grass-roots movement that offers an empowerment solution to bullying.
While a set of Angry Birds plushies made it onto this year's Hot Toy list, the only proper video game to make the cut is an Activision game that has Toys"R"Us as a marketing partner.
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Chris Kohler: "If you're at all familiar with the success of Skylanders, you won't be too surprised by Disney's latest gaming initiative."
Once your inner six year-old has calmed down a bit, take a look at some of the latest move tie-in toys being exhibited at Toy Fair 2012 right now.
Debate over gender-based toy marketing has reached a fever pitch.
Today, Lego announced a new line aimed square at girls: Lego Friends. These sets include pretty, feminine figures that are more articulated than classic Lego minifigs, blocks in a palette of colors including pink and purple, and sets like bakeries and dog shows... [Further discussion on gender preference in toys can be found @scoopit http://bit.ly/rSzygb]
Scott Schube was watching his two older children create characters in online games a few years ago when he wondered if there was a way to bring the designs to life. "They spend half their time creating characters,...
In what could be the ultimate twist on Toy Story, Henry Jenkins suggests that action figures -- those Star Wars and Masters of the Universe dolls from a few decades ago -- had the power to spark human creativity and transcend their original function.
The acquisition will add preschool favourites such as Barney the purple dinosaur, Fireman Sam and Angelina Ballerina to the ranks of the world's largest toymaker.
While at least two of us at Kotaku enjoy Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure enough to recommend a purchase, that doesn't mean we're oblivious to the costly downsides to a game that sells its downloadable content on toy store shelves.
To impress kids these days, it's not enough to make another video game. Mere action figures won't do, either. So Activision is merging the two.
[Children] can play a level, but then they can continue the story in their head, so I think giving them fuel for not just playing the game but to be really engaged in it outside of the game itself is a really key thing.
Something about the close relationship between the toy and the videogame has made both parts richer.
In mid-June, Ruckus debuted its first licensed interactive storybook app, based on Hasbro’s Tonka Truck and Friends line of toys.
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