How Skylanders Went Large and Supercharged for a 2015 Digital Push
Skylanders' 'Large and supercharged' is a digital advertising campaign created by 72andSunny and published in the United States in September 2015 to support the North American launch of Skylanders SuperChargers, the fifth instalment in Activision's toys-to-life franchise, introducing vehicle and racing mechanics to the series for the first time.
Skylanders SuperChargers launched in North America on September 20, 2015, according to Blog Activision, making the September publication of 'Large and supercharged' a precisely timed market entry push. The campaign arrived as the toys-to-life category was at a commercially significant peak in the United States, and the creative brief demanded communication that could cut through a genuinely crowded competitive field. The title itself — 'Large and supercharged' — signals an intent to amplify rather than redefine: the franchise's core toys-to-life proposition remained intact, but the new vehicle theme gave the campaign language that was bigger, faster, and louder than prior iterations. The campaign comprises a single media asset in the digital medium, suggesting a concentrated creative statement rather than a broad multi-format rollout. In the United States, where the toys-to-life category had developed a substantial retail presence since the original Skylanders Spyro's Adventure arrived in October 2011, communicating meaningful product evolution to an audience that already knew the brand required creative that could make incremental innovation feel genuinely exciting. 72andSunny, whose advertising relationship with Skylanders began at that 2011 franchise launch and continued through at least September 2015 according to linkedin.com, was positioned to deliver exactly that kind of tonal amplification. 'Large and supercharged' earned a Clapboard Score of 68 out of 100, reflecting competent execution of a performance-oriented brief within a mature franchise context.
Skylanders competed in the toys-to-life category against Nintendo amiibo, Disney Infinity, and Warner Bros. LEGO Dimensions around the time of the 2015 launch, according to gameinformer.com. That competitive field made the strategic stakes of 'Large and supercharged' unusually high for a franchise that had invented the toys-to-life format in the first place.
The Skylanders franchise had accumulated more than three billion dollars in cumulative global games and toy sales by July 2015, according to gamespot.com, a figure that underscored both the brand's commercial power and the expectations attached to each new instalment. The broader toys-to-life category had generated more than four billion dollars in cumulative global sales since Skylanders launched in 2011, as of June 2015, according to mcvuk.com. In the United States specifically, toys-to-life revenue reached approximately two hundred and seventy million dollars in 2015, according to nintendoeverything.com — a market large enough to attract aggressive competition from Nintendo's amiibo line, which carried the weight of Nintendo's first-party character roster, and from Disney Infinity, which leveraged some of the most recognisable intellectual property in family entertainment. Against that backdrop, Skylanders SuperChargers introduced vehicle-based gameplay and racing mechanics, a category-level product evolution that gave 72andSunny a genuinely differentiated story to tell. The strategic rationale behind 'Large and supercharged' reads as a decision to meet the competitive noise of late 2015 with scale and energy rather than subtlety — to announce the franchise's newest chapter in terms that felt proportionate to the size of the moment. The campaign was a continuation of Skylanders' established toys-to-life proposition updated around the new vehicle theme, rather than a complete creative repositioning, which reflects the disciplined strategic instinct of building on proven brand equity rather than abandoning it under competitive pressure.
Group Creative Director Frank Hahn led the creative team on 'Large and supercharged,' working alongside Creative Director and Designer Peter Vattanatham and Creative Director and Copywriter Tim Wolfe, with Senior Designer Travis Swingler, Senior Copywriter Aron Fried, and Junior Copywriter Taylor Black completing the creative unit, according to Little Black Book.
The campaign's title functions as its primary creative declaration. 'Large and supercharged' maps directly onto the product's new vehicle and racing mechanics while simultaneously describing the tonal register the work operates in — expansive, kinetic, and built for a digital context where attention is scarce and energy is currency. Chief Creative Officer Glenn Cole and Chief Strategy Officer Matt Jarvis provided senior creative and strategic oversight respectively, according to lbbonline.com, with Group Strategy Director John Graham and Senior Strategist Daniel Teng shaping the audience and insight framework. On the production side, Chief Production Officer Tom Dunlap and Director of Film Production Sam Baerwald oversaw delivery, according to lbbonline.com. The campaign comprises a single digital media asset, a constraint that places considerable creative weight on that one execution and demands a clarity of idea that broader multi-asset campaigns can sometimes afford to distribute across formats. Within the performance genre — campaigns built around the proposition that a product does something specific and impressive — the craft challenge is to make functional claims feel viscerally compelling rather than merely informative. 72andSunny's creative approach for Skylanders had been honed across four prior franchise instalments dating back to 2011, according to linkedin.com, giving the team a mature understanding of the audience's relationship with the brand and the visual vocabulary most likely to register in a competitive digital environment. The result is a campaign that leans into the franchise's established energy while stretching it to accommodate a product evolution that genuinely warranted the word supercharged.
No verified performance data for 'Large and supercharged' is publicly available. No campaign-specific sales lift, market-share change, or advertising-attribution results have been documented, and no trade press reviews of this specific campaign appear in Ad Age, Adweek, Campaign, The Drum, or Contagious.
Structural analysis of the campaign's effectiveness must therefore rest on contextual evidence rather than attributed metrics. Skylanders SuperChargers reached markets all over the world by October 19, 2015 — approximately three weeks after the North American launch on September 20, according to blog.activision.com — suggesting the broader product launch, of which 'Large and supercharged' was a part, executed successfully at a commercial level. The campaign appeared at a moment when Activision's toys-to-life franchise was under meaningful competitive pressure from Nintendo amiibo and Disney Infinity, as noted in reporting by gameinformer.com, making timely and tonally appropriate digital communication a genuine business requirement rather than a discretionary marketing investment. A single-asset digital campaign demands conceptual economy, and the creative team at 72andSunny — operating with a full senior creative and strategy infrastructure according to lbbonline.com — was structurally well-equipped to deliver that economy. The Clapboard Score of 68 out of 100 reflects work that fulfils its performance-genre brief with professionalism, without reaching the creative distinction that would separate it from the broader field of franchise gaming advertising in the United States during the same period. No awards for 'Large and supercharged' are recorded in the Cannes Lions, Effie, One Show, D&AD, Clio, Webby, or WARC Awards databases.
'Large and supercharged' is a digital advertising campaign created by 72andSunny for Skylanders, published in the United States in September 2015. It supported the North American launch of Skylanders SuperChargers, the fifth franchise instalment, which introduced vehicle and racing mechanics and arrived in stores on September 20, 2015, according to blog.activision.com.
72andSunny created the campaign. The agency's relationship with Skylanders began at the franchise's 2011 launch, according to linkedin.com, and continued through at least September 2015. The creative team was led by Group Creative Director Frank Hahn, with senior oversight from Chief Creative Officer Glenn Cole, according to lbbonline.com.
The campaign promoted Skylanders SuperChargers. The product introduced vehicle-based gameplay and racing mechanics to the toys-to-life franchise. It launched in North America on September 20, 2015, according to blog.activision.com, and was available in markets around the world by October 19, 2015, according to blog.activision.com.
Skylanders competed against Nintendo amiibo, Disney Infinity, and Warner Bros. LEGO Dimensions in the toys-to-life category, according to gameinformer.com. In the United States, toys-to-life revenue reached approximately two hundred and seventy million dollars in 2015, according to nintendoeverything.com, reflecting the scale of competition the campaign needed to cut through.
No awards for 'Large and supercharged' are recorded in any major advertising awards database. No entries or wins appear in the Cannes Lions, Effie, One Show, D&AD, Clio, Webby, or WARC Awards records for this campaign, and no trade press reviews of the work have been identified in Ad Age, Adweek, or Campaign.
'Large and supercharged' received a Clapboard Score of 68 out of 100. The score reflects competent, professional execution of a performance-genre digital brief within a mature franchise context, without reaching the level of creative distinction that would separate the work from the broader field of US gaming advertising produced during the same period.
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