Hands-on with Skylanders Imaginators’ zany user-generated characters

Ever since the original Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure debuted in 2011, Paul Reiche has been getting thousands of letters from fans. The president and cofounder of game studio Toys For Bob has a pile of letters with suggestions for new Skylanders characters, with lots of drawings. So the developers of the $3 billion game franchise decided to finally let those fans take charge.

This year Skylanders Imaginators lets players create their own characters for the first time. I went through the process in a hands-on demo in advance of new revelations at the Gamescom 2016 game event in Germany this week. The game is part of Activision’s bid to restore some growth to the toys-to-life market, which has declined with the demise of Disney’s Infinity platform.