The Make-A-Wish foundation is teaming up with video game publisher Activision and celebrities to create special, one-of-a-kind toys for the Skylanders SuperChargers video game. The celebrities include Ben Collins, formerly of Top Gear, Formula 1 driver Mac Chilton, French TV icon Joan Faggianelli, YouTube stars St3pny and TheKing77, and kite-surfing champion Gisela Pulido. Each of those celebrities has worked with Activision to create the toys.
Make-A-Wish is pretty excited about the prospect, as the celebrities in question, and the Skylanders game franchise, should draw quite a bit of attention. Ben Collins has also expressed how happy he is with the toy he designed, and that the money is going to such a deserving charity. Chilton and Collins’ designs are the first to be auctioned, and went up on the Foundation’s website on March 20, where they’ll stay until April 8.
The Make-A-Wish foundation is probably one of the most well-known charities in the world, and has been using their money to make the wishes of sick children come true for years. Hopefully, auctioning off these toys will help them in that mission. Since the auctions just started, we’ll have to wait a while to see how they turn out, but if successful, it could open up the doors to other, limited-edition charitable toy designs.
Skylanders is a popular video game franchise available across pretty much every video game console or handheld on the market. The game requires players to place specific figures on a “power base” which allows the to subsequently use that character in the games. The core games come with figures, but there are at lease several dozen more which have to be bought separately. The business model has been successful enough that Disney and Lego have both gotten in on the idea with similar games of their own, and Nintendo has a series of figures called Amiibo that work on a similar principle.