Sydney, Australia, 5th August 2013: Just 18 months since launching, the Skylanders franchise exceeds the $100 million mark for sales in Australia and New Zealand.
Voted K-Zone magazine’s Toy of the Year for two consecutive years[1], Skylanders is yet again on its way to cementing its place as the hottest toy in town for 2013, with the next instalment in the franchise, Skylanders SWAP Force, set to launch later this year.
Skylanders toys outsold the #1 action figure line in Australia and New Zealand, sweeping aside giants of the toy industry Spiderman, Transformers and Star Wars. Additionally, Skylanders Giants eclipsed domestic box office sales for the top holiday kids feature films including “Ice Age 4” and “Madagascar 3.”
“Just over 18 months ago, bringing toys to life in a virtual world was an untested concept. Now Skylanders is established in the Australian toy market and embraced by parents and kids across the world,” said Philip Earl, EVP Activision Publishing, Asia Pacific. “We’re thrilled to see Aussie kids embracing Skylanders toys and games both in the virtual and physical worlds.”
Fusing the physical world of toys with the virtual world of video games, Skylanders has ignited the imagination of millions of kids around the world with some great stats to prove it:
- The amount of Skylanders toys sold globally in just 20 months is three times the Australian population[2]
- If all of the Skylanders toys sold in Australia were lined up they would follow the course of the 1,170 km Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race[3]
- The number of Skylanders toys sold in Australia and New Zealand exceed the population of New Zealand or the population of Sydney[4]
Sydney mum Kelly Drew has lost count of the number of Skylanders figurines her kids Finnegan, 7, and Mackenzie, 5, have amassed, but “it’s at least 50. I’m certainly no expert but each character belongs to an element and as you work through the game you need different elements to fight the baddies,” she said.
The only problem Finnegan had with the toys was that he was only allowed to play with them on the weekend. “I just like their powers and the look of them,” he said.
On 16th October, 2013 Activision will release the third instalment of the franchise Skylanders SWAP Force™ which introduces an innovative new feature – dynamic swapability. Kids and gamers will have unprecedented levels of choice in how they explore Skylands and battle Kaos by swapping the top and bottom halves of the toys to transform 16 SWAP ForceTM characters into more than 250 unique combinations.
“What we saw at BIG W was that Skylanders really captured the imagination of children and our customers are telling us October’s release of Skylanders SWAP Force can’t come soon enough,” Said Big W head of general merchandise Georgia Sotiropoulos.
Skylanders SWAP Force is not yet rated by the Australian Classification Board. For more information, visit www.skylanders.com
AUSSIE KIDS’ FAVOURITE TOY ‘SKYLANDERS’ REACHES MORE THAN $100 MILLION IN AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND SALES
