Skylanders Imaginators: Activision pins its hopes on player creativity

This year's instalment allows players to build their own on-screen Skylander characters from hundreds of components

When the first Skylanders title arrived in 2011, it did much more than revive the career of cutesy PlayStation hero Spyro the Dragon - it invented a whole new type of video game.

The so-called "toys-to-life" genre, mixes on-screen action with physical action figures that can be placed on a RFID-equipped portal and then digitally transferred into the game. Kids loved it because they got to collect cool figures as well as play a diverting action adventure; parents were less sure because the growing range of plastic toys was getting expensive after five instalments - especially when you factored in the rival franchises: Disney Infinity, Lego Dimensions and Nintendo's Amiibo collection.