darkSpyro

My son is extremely into skylanders. He knows a lot about the figures, the special packs, variants etc.

Even after six months and standing at the counter waiting for staff to unpack the figures, we still have not found a variant.

I'm getting sick of asking staff if there are any variants. Some are snide and their comments make me feel that they or friends have already stashed away the variants so they can make a quick buck on them.

The game is aimed at kids. Do Activision expect kids to go out nearly every day, drive around for miles to get even one of these that never even hit the shelves!?

I won't buy these figures for more than RRP, they're simply not worth it as they do no more than a normal character in the game.

I would like to see Activision send out more than 5 cases of each variant to each store, so kids can get their hands on these figures.

This is annoying me and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

the odds of finding variants are ridiculous, i swear its like 1 per city, so if u live in a small town youll never gonna find them
and then add in that gamestop is pulling them before they even get to the stores....

If you are desperate for them you can try to search for them on Ebay, but I agree, they are too challenging to find.

If you REALLY want them, they're available on Gamestop sometimes as a bonus with a bunch of other figures... but the bundle will cost you.

I agree with this even doe I do not want them they are so ****ing hard to find.

I agree these things aren't worth the money being asked for them on the internet. And I look for them when I'm in the stores but have yet to find one. I'm not really too worried about getting one to the point of paying more than retail for it, but it'd be nice to have at least ONE. But even that unfortunately as many have previously said, is a chore within itself.

I think its not just the variants activision needs to give more of, its also apparently all of wave 5. I've still yet to see a wham shell in ANY store in my town :/

I was just getting frustrated. My son and I have been driving around trying to find crystals or GITD figures. The figures have been released, but they're not getting on any shop shelves. Staff at the shops are taking them and flogging them off on auction sites.

Kids will never get the joy of even having one of these in their collection. The prices on the auction sites are too high! Even over retail is too high, especially when I have spent a few hundred quid getting my son's collection to where it is at the moment.

Activision need to get their finger out of their backside and address this. Even if they send 5 cases or more to each store as a one off with every variant out there staggered as they always do, it would keep my son interested. He would have time to save up his money to get the next figure.

The only thing Activision is doing is filling the pockets of scalpers, Activision don't gain any more revenue from the secondary market. It would be different if people were still looking for certain figures after production ended for all the figures.

The variants were an after thought by someone in marketing, that's why they do nothing special in the game. So Activision should have done something about this ages ago. I know kids that have been turned off by the variants and kids being kids will loose interest quickly, especially if they don't have a hope of obtaining figures they like.

i found 2 glow in the dark warnados on friday so it is possible

I don't think Activision expects kids to go out that frequently at all. I rather suspect that their goal all along was to sell variants to adult collectors. It may have been intended as a kids' game, but they knew the other crowd that plays it existed. It's probably the main reason they based it around Spyro to begin with, as I doubt he's a familiar property to the vast majority of the target audience. Nevertheless, I agree with you, they need to make these variants a little more available; they're largely an eBay only commodity right now.

I agree! Variants are extremely rare to find and employees at the store are gonna probably buy them themselves for their own collection or to sell them at Ebay. I work in a Game Stop and ive only seen 1 variant arrive and it was bought by an employee (sadly it was not me). But yeah I doubt they will send bunches of variants to the stores even thou they should. They are loosing sales and filling the pockets of Ebay sellers.

Even if they put out a few more whole cases of variants, collectors would still be happy with that as it would be cheaper for them to collect everything, including on ebay. Store staff wouldn't even bother clearing all the variants before they hit the shelves and kids would be able to get them. Win Win for everyone! I would think!

You think variants are the only thing thats not showing up, I do the same going to stores everyday but I never get any of the last 3 normal figures.

Yep, Tash has it right. The variants are more or less meant to be "adult collector" items. For instance, take a look at the Hot Wheels. My dad collects them and we go to conventions usually. They have special edition versions of cars in special blister packs, and they sell the official ones there for $30 each. (There's usually 5 for each convention) Not to mention some other ones like the dinner cars (Dinner was almost $100) and people resell those for near $1000.

Those things are not meant for children, even if the line is made for kids. It's more of a diverse channel which is cool, because the kids can have their things, and older collectors can have their things.

But I definitely feel you. I'd love to buy the variants, but they seem to be so obscenely rare that I don't even want to bother hunting for them on ebay. It'd be nice if they had a higher ration of them boxes. (I mean, one per box is good for rarity, but I'd be willing to bet my entire collection that 90% of the variants don't even make it to shelves) Or make them available in some other channel (the Frito-lay thing was a pretty good instance of this)