Skylanders Giants: Are you Ready To Play?

I was excited to head down to Best Buy on my way to dinner with friends this past week because I’ve been trying to come up with some fun ideas for my boys for Christmas gifts. I had heard about Skylanders for the first time from my friend Amy when we were at BlogHer this past August. I actually didn’t know what they were, but her son absolutely loves them!

I wasn’t sure if Skylanders would even be something that would interest my boys since her son is 5 and my boys are 9 and 13. I figured I’d at least check them out and see if they were even interesting.
Now, before I share with you my experience, I want to tell you about my phone call BEFORE I went to the store. I knew there were some Best Buys in the area doing in-store demos and one of the stores listed actually wasn’t doing them. I called the Minnetonka store and the guy who answered the phone (yes I should’ve written his name down) was amazingly knowledgeable about the Skylanders Giants demo. He gave me more detail than I expected and I felt 100% confident that this was going to be a good trip!

I actually headed to the phone cases to start off my shopping because a) I have yet to find a case for my phone and 2) I am tired of dropping it unprotected. So, I swallowed my pride and got myself a case. Ugh, black was my only option and my RAZR is no long sleek and easy to put in my back pocket. lol It’s big and bulky, but hey, it’s protected!

The guy who helped me with my phone case took me right over to the Skylanders Giants display. He didn’t know a heck of a lot about it, but because of the guy I’d talked to on the phone, I knew that if I took one of the characters hanging on a peg and put it on the display, it would tell me about that specific character…all without taking it out of the box.

Seriously, don’t you LOVE technology sometimes? I mean, here’s a toy, inside of a box, that doesn’t need to be ripped out to get an idea about it. Not only do you see the character in the box, you get very detailed information as it shows a short video!

I have to admit to spending quite a bit of time changing characters I was so fascinated by what it could do. Yes, I know it doesn’t take much to amuse me, but this was really cool!

While I was checking out all of the characters and other products, the guy who was helping me went to get someone else who knew a lot about the game. The guy who came back gave me even more in-depth information about how the whole Skylanders Giants work. I was pretty impressed to say the least. I’ve never been into the Minnetonka Best Buy store before, but they definitely won me over with their customer service on the phone and in person.

Now, I have to say, this is actually something my boys will like. I was also pretty stoked to find out the characters can be used from one console to the next. So, we have a Wii and my brother has an Xbox. They can take each character and it can be used across the board.

Yes, Virginia, there IS a Santa Claus. For real, someone finally created a product that doesn’t have us going out and buying 3 of the same thing to use on different consoles. Brilliant I say!

*The reviewer has been compensated in the form of a Best Buy Gift Card and/or received the product/service at a reduced price or for free. The opinions expressed are my own and not influenced by the company.