Activision is taking a big step toward mass customization today with the announcement that players will be able to design their own characters in the Skylanders Imaginators video game and then order a custom 3D-printed rendition of their own toy character. You will also be able to upload these to other sites, like YouTube and 3D-printing community Shapeways, and throw them on trading cards and T-shirts.
You can design your own Skylander and order it as an Imaginator Card.
If you’re thinking, “Kaching!” you’re not alone. It’s a series of brilliant ideas from Toys For Bob, the game studio that launched Skylanders in 2011 and has generated more than $3 billion in sales over five years. The Activision-owned studio hopes to stay ahead in the toys-to-life market — which has slowed down, as evidenced by Disney’s decision to shut its rival Infinity toy-game hybrid — through product innovation. Consumers have purchased 250 million Skylanders toys to date.
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Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
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