Skylanders Frito Lay Sidekicks: Whisper Elf

Skylanders.  The perfect mixture of collectible toys and addictive video game.  Whoever came up with this idea is genius.  Say what you will about Skylanders - they have been a massive hit for Activision and now with Giants being released the brand is still going strong.

Earlier in the year Activision had teamed up with Frito Lay to run a Skylanders promotion, giving away 4 exclusive Skylander figures.  Now at the time I hadn't played the game so I really had no interest.  This past summer however I caved in and bought the Xbox 360 starter kit while on a massive sale at my local Toys R Us and well...the rest is history.

I guess this proves even a 35 year old gamer like myself can fall prey to marketing traps such as this!  All joking aside I really enjoyed the game and I'll probably pick up Giants at some point.  I didn't go too crazy with buying additional figures, but I did buy a few extras to help me enjoy the game that much more.

Back in October my wife and I were shopping for our family's upcoming camping trip and she asked me to grab a big bag of individually packaged chips.  I noticed the Walmart we were at still had some of the bags with the Skylanders promotion so I grabbed one and proceeded to check out.  After we returned from our trip I grabbed the form I secured from the bag earlier and proceeded to fill it out.  Not once did I really look at what the promotion was - I just selected Whisper Elf as my first choice, enclosed the required UPC code and a check for a few bucks to cover shipping and sent it off.

The typical 6-10 week period had passed by and I completely forgot about sending in the form...until I received a small padded mailer in the mail.  I didn't recognize the return address and I was clueless as what was inside.  Aftering opening the package I find this inside:

  

First off I had no idea the figure would actually be a working piece like the other Skylander figures you can buy at retail.  Because I didn't pay close attention to what the promo was offering I just assumed it was a non-poseable character toy and not an actual game piece.

Now I've still yet to actually try this piece in the game.  I've been totally immersed into Borderlands 2 since it was released so all other games have fell to the wayside for now.  Even if this Whisper Elf character plays like the Stealth Elf character I'll still be impressed with this promotion.  I kinda wish now I would've paid attention sooner and gone after at least one of the other 3.