Skylanders Spryo's Adventure Starter Pack (360) $50 w/free ship @Kmart

This is a awesome deal!

Good find!

$47.49 at Sears.com for all consoles, but you need a $49 order for free shipping. Free in-store pickup is available.

Found this at Wal-Mart for $40.

I know we aren't supposed to ask questions in the forum but here goes anyway (I'll try to phrase it as a rant)

Has anybody anywhere seen the stupidly named "portal owners pack" on sale anywhere? I have 2 portals (3DS and PS3) and I'm guessing MOST people looking into this have also played the first game and own a portal already, but I have yet to see even 1 store or website have the portalless pack on sale. I have seen it in stores and online, just not on sale.

NVM - I see this is for the 1st game, not Giants, so uh, nevermind.

I haven't, but unless you really, really just don't want to pick up a repeat on Cynder, the Portal Owner's Pack is a rip off.

It's $60 and doesn't include Jet-Vac or Cynder - both $10 figures. That, alone, would drive the cost up to $80, vs. the $75 that the Starter Kit runs.

I've seen the Starter Kits for as low as $40 - your best bet is to bite on it and have an extra portal.

is the game worth buying on the 3ds

love to find it at 40

[quote name='slidecage']is the game worth buying on the 3ds

love to find it at 40[/QUOTE]

Like said above, the Portal Owners pack is a complete waste. For $15 more you get two $10 figures you cannot buy seperately (yet, although you can get Jet Vac as a Lightcore or Legendary). And you get a back up portal in case you have one go bad on you (although I have heard the Activision Customer Service on Skylanders is excellent on replacements). Also of note, you can find the Starter Pack on sale many places, on BF it was as low as $39 at Walmart, and regularly as cheap as the Portal Owners. I have never seen the Portal Owners on sale. Keep your eye out for a deal.

The only case I would not immediately consider it is if you had it for another console or absolutely did not want those figures.

As far as the 3DS is concerned, I actually stacked a pretty good deal at Best Buy. On Tuesday of last week, TRU had the Starter Pack for $49, and also had a $5 instant off, so it was $30 off total. Then I price matched it off the email on my phone at Best Buy, where I had $20 in Reward Certs. I could have saved another $5 by price matching Walmart on Friday, but I wasn't about to brave the crowds AND do a match at the same time. That's a good way to start a riot.

I originally didn't get the 3DS version, because my sons didn't like the first one as much. I had a great time with it though, so this one will probably just be for me (they will be happy to take Punch Pop Fizz though, I'm sure). The main problem I had with the first 3DS one was how it locked you into a timed mode once you collected everything. It made playing a full save file very frustrating, particularly for the kids. As I understand, the timing challenges have been done away with now. I do have to say that I have not played Giants yet for the 3DS yet - it is a Christmas gift, so have been hidden away till then. My opinions are based on last year's version.

I was going to ask why this was a deal, and then I saw that Activision - of course! - still has the MSRP of this at $70 despite there being a replacement game out there.

I got the starter pack for $38 from Amazon. Totally rebuy the starter pack, especially for the consoles since the portal is now (other than the original 360 version) wired, so no more batteries.

[quote name='slidecage']is the game worth buying on the 3ds

love to find it at 40[/QUOTE]

The first one for the 3DS feels like an old, old Skylanders game; it's all about platforming and jumping. I personally liked it.

The second one feels more like regular Skylanders. I haven't played as much of it.

Is this portal compatible with Skylander Giants? Like if I buy my niece and nephew this bundle and then get them Skylander Giants will they be fine?

[quote name='Ph1l0z0ph3r']Is this portal compatible with Skylander Giants? Like if I buy my niece and nephew this bundle and then get them Skylander Giants will they be fine?[/QUOTE]

The portals are compatible between the first and second game. But again, the Giants pack without the portal (Portal Owners) is a waste. You can find the Starter pack with the portal on sale often and for less than the one without it. Even straight up, for $15 more you get two figures ($10 each, normally) and an extra backup portal. And in the PS3 and Wii case, the portal is now wired. The old wireless ones drank batteries like they were going out of style. The XBox is wired in both games. The 3DS one is still wireless, it uses the infrared portal on the 3DS since there is no USB port (it does have a wire for PC connection for upload to Spyro's Universe, but draws no power from it).

[quote name='Ph1l0z0ph3r']Is this portal compatible with Skylander Giants? Like if I buy my niece and nephew this bundle and then get them Skylander Giants will they be fine?[/QUOTE]

Portal compatibility: 360 Skylanders Adventure and Giants portals are both compatible.
3DS, PS3 and Wii: Skylanders Adventure and Giants portals are both compatible.

Put it another way: as long as you're not mixing the 360 version with the others, all portals are compatible with both games.

Man, I spent a ridiculous amount of money building up a basic set of Skylanders stuff over the weekend. Scored several 'rare' series 1 figures for an average of about 20% off, but damn my wallet is hurting. Bit on this KMart deal after initially buying Giants at Walmart and deciding it's a great game to play for an hour or two listening to a podcast after work.

Last night Toys R Us had 3 of the 4 adventure packs up for $15 a piece. Does anyone know if they've gone cheaper? It's really hard for me to justify spending any more right now, and I've more or less gotten the impression the extra levels really aren't worth $20-25 for the kit, but seeing as 2 of the sets have 'discontinued' figures does anyone who has been following the games and prices longer than the last 2 or 3 months think it's worth it?

I'm going to ask my own question.

For someone with a six year old, who has never played or seen anyone play Skylanders, is it worth jumping in? What I am asking is (1) will a six year old like this (2) will an adult get bored of it quickly and (3) is it a money pit?

Assuming I do jump in with what should I begin with and at what price?

I don't normally ask questions like this, but I am clueless on Skylanders and the best place to research this is here.

[quote name='bgame2']I'm going to ask my own question.

For someone with a six year old, who has never played or seen anyone play Skylanders, is it worth jumping in? What I am asking is (1) will a six year old like this (2) will an adult get bored of it quickly and (3) is it a money pit?

Assuming I do jump in with what should I begin with and at what price?

I don't normally ask questions like this, but I am clueless on Skylanders and the best place to research this is here.[/QUOTE]

My kid is 3 and loves it, I'm 30 and love it. Its not a huge pit; get one of each element and you can call it done.

bgame2:

1) I really think the prime age for the game is probably 5-10 years old.

2) I've played through about half of Giants so far. It's a simple game, but there's still a lot of joy in swapping your figures in and out, as they all play a bit different from each other. There isn't enough difficulty in normal mode to require any strategic thinking or such, but it's a great "wind-down" game.

3) If you want it to be. Toys R Us had series 1 figures for $5.99 a piece with the 3rd free over the weekend. They're running Giants figures as buy 1, get 1 40% off right now and offering some series 1 triple packs for $15. Shop around and you can get 10-50% off the figures, and as emporordahc wrote, you only need one of each element to get all the collectibles (it's technically possible to get platinums with just the starter figures, but it'll be a challenge to beat the highest difficulty with just 3 characters).

If you can net a starter kit at $40 or under, I recommend giving it a shot. If money isn't a huge issue, this $50 deal is probably worth taking a look.

Thank you guys. I appreciate the info.

I had horrible luck and kept missing out on $40 starter sets over the BF holiday/weekend. However, I'm going to still hold off on this one in hope that someone is going to offer another good deal out there.

Just a heads up as well. You might want to look at Ebay since a lot of people (including myself) bought the Skylander's White Xbox Walmart bundle and are now selling just the starter kit in there. Yesterday when I checked for how much they were selling for, it was from 38-50 bucks. So you might get lucky with one.

Also: Shop Your Way Rewards members: if you've spent $50 on the 22nd and/or 23rd (Thanksgiving/Black Friday) at Sears (maybe at Kmart, too), you MAY have $10 worth of points on your rewards account. Check your account on: http://www.shopyourway.com/

Also worth noting that the points expires tomorrow (the 28th).

Even if you don't think you're a member, if you gave your phone number during checkout, it's likely that it was used to add points to your account. Just log into the site above and check.