darkSpyro

Beware wall of text.

I've been wondering why none of the new characters aside from Sprocket have really struck me as awesome, and I was in the bath tub when I think I finally figured it out. With the exception of maybe Swarm, all of the new characters are a LOT more kid friendly than the characters from Spyro's Adventure.

Having thought about it, a LOT of my favourite figures from the first game are mean looking characters. Prism Break, Camo, Warnado, Wham-Shell, Zook, Double Trouble, and Drobot are all included in my list of favourite figures, and I think that's partly because they're all pretty mean looking.

In comparison, the selection of characters in Giants is a lot more friendly, and even characters that SHOULD be really cool and mean like Hot Head and Thumpback are wearing big goofy grins in their trailers and artwork.

So the question is, is this a bad thing?

On the one hand the characters lack a certain "cool" factor that the first set had, and cutting back on the more intimidating looking characters is kind of a slap in the face to the older audience that enjoyed Spyro's Adventure.

Or the other hand, the positives FAR outweigh the negatives in my eyes.

For starters, it's now STRICTLY trying to appeal to kids, and not worrying about older Spyro fans anymore. The friendlier selection of characters is just one more small step towards dropping Spyro from the series completely and letting there be new Spyro games again.

Secondly, it makes the set of characters far more consistent. The first set had Sonic Boom, Wrecking Ball, Lightning Rod and Gil-Grunt mixed in with the same set as Wham-Shell, Camo, Prism Break and Drobot. In the display, certain characters just look completely out of place to the point where I don't even usually keep all of the characters on the shelf. Giants looks to have a much more consistent cast of brightly coloured kid friendly characters that all seem like they actually belong in the same game.

Third, (and most obviously) it means that it's more kid friendly! I don't know about you, but there's a certain wholesomeness that I love about entertainment made for kids, and if Skylanders wants to go in that direction, I'm perfectly happy with that.

So what do you think? Do you like that Skylanders has decided to ditch the mean looking characters and be a more consistent kid's game? Or do you still wish there were some mean looking characters for the older crowd?

You make a good point, I guess. It really doesn't faze me either way. I never understood why Acti tried to appeal to the old Spyro "fans" that hate the non-Insomniac games (it's not all of them, just the ones that won't even give newer ones a chance or praise them for ANYTHING) with trying to add in Sparx and Sheep and making Spyro look like Insomniac's early concepts for him and all, cause that's been a dead base for a long time. Meh, I guess I like seeing some angry characters, but then again, I think we already have a fair amount of them.

Activision are aiming the game at young kids. Like Mario and similar Franchises the kid friendly imagery is also safe with grown-ups (like me).
If one's age gives one a pang of "oh noes that kidz stuff!" then its off to the Halo/CoD demographic with you, not saying thats a bad thing but hey! (not you personally op!). Its a sad fact that toy manufacturers are having to pitch toys for younger and younger children as kids are stopping playing with toys at an increasingly earlier and earlier age...at the same time uptake of gaming tech is getting more widespread at ever younger ages too. The cross over here between gaming and toyz and all the other merchandising spin offs is pretty clever, especially as many players have younger siblings too young to properly work a controller but old enough to want to play with similarly themed products...this is where the Merchandising like Megablocks is an astute move. Personally I find it fascinating to see how multimedia is evolving in the three decades I've been watching it.
But yes the new skylanders seem to be aiming squarely at increasing market coverage/audience appeal...both age and gender. Two strongly identifiable female characters in Sprocket and Chill, popfizz and shroom boom are VERY kid friendly in a fun cartoony kinda way and bare faced skulls are out Mr Ghost Roaster- Chop Chop is helmeted and so Only Fright Riders mount is skeletal and even then in a chicken-bone kinda way. FlashWing is a bit "my little pony" design wise (just sayin) and hot dog? Say no more!
Hadn't given it much thought so yeah gotta agree..good point OP

edit some of us spyro fans are parents of new spyro fans

grow old but never grow up I say

I think also, that the characters that were more mean in the first game are being toned to be more child friendly this time.
Look at Wham-Shell. He has a regular voice now and everything(not that I don't still like him).
Whirlwind isn't so animalistic now and Sonic Boom speaks fluent English.
I honestly shudder thinking about what they'll do to Ghost Roaster. I guess it's kinda GHOSTLY thinking about it for me. Honestly though, I wish they had kept those characters more angry. At least Slam Bam is still a big lumbering guy I guess...

I actually meant to mention that Nibelilt. I mean, compare Eruptor's series 1 figure to how he acted in the Tall Tales trailer. Even Slam-Bam is more kid friendly in the Tall-Tales trailer since he speaks perfect english, has some great sarcastic wit, and sounds like Sully from Monster's Inc. (Which actually made me like Slam-Bam a whole heckuvalot more than I used to, so I guess they're doing something right) They even managed to make Zook and Zap's series 2 figures look more friendly. (Haven't heard Zap's new voice yet, but I've heard it's pretty silly) And of course there's Double Trouble looking down at his double and saying "I love you son" (Sorry, but I love that picture )

Though I do like how they made Stump Smash's series 2 figure look delightfully terrifying.

The only subtle exception to this rule is Wrecking Ball seems to be a tad less kid friendly, with his tusks and all.