Toy retailers back Skylanders

The Entertainer, WHSmith, and Toymaster are among the retailers who will be selling video games in the run up to Christmas this year.

Those stores, along with Fenwicks, Bentalls and Harrods began offering Skylanders: Swap Force toys after its release last week (Friday October 18th).

Activision UK managing director Roy Stackhouse told MCV in an exclusive interview that the publisher has added 1,000 new places where consumers can buy their Skylanders products.

It is becoming a much broader church now, and it’s a testament to the size of the [toys-to-life] category we have created with Skylanders. It is now much more than a game,” he said.

Without doubt this will be our strongest Skylanders launch ever. The support we have had from our retail partners this year has excelled. What you will see at launch is that we have some really stunning in-store activity taking place. We have got everything that we would have liked from an in-store perspective, we have very impactful interactive, in-store displays so that children can touch and feel the products before they buy it.

We have got the largest distribution footprint that we have ever, ever had for the game. We are branching outside of what we would call traditional games outlets, into toy specialists too. We are really excited.”

Swap Force follows the arrival of Disney Infinity, which launched in August. And Stackhouse feels that is just testament to how successful the Skylanders series has been for Activision.

If you look at many similar industries – or non-similar industries – when a new category is created, one of the testaments to that category is when competitors move in, because they see the size, scale and opportunity of it. That is what you are seeing with Skylanders.”