Playmation: The Epic Toys-To-Life Game 'Star Wars' Almost Had

Photo courtesy VentureBeat

     In 2015, Disney announced a product that promised to revolutionize toys-to-life gaming: Playmation. Instead of having each toy be represented by a video game character on a screen, the ambitious Playmation tried to make the toys interactive in the real world. The idea was announced with a bold slogan: "Imagination made real."
     And after this amazing trailer was released, it's easy to see why many of us were excited by the concept.

   
     Even before the first iteration of Playmation was released, the ad made the bold proclamation that Playmation Star Wars would be unveiled in 2016. It wasn't.

Photo courtesy Passion For Savings

     The first iteration of Playmation, which was based around the Avengers, involved a wearable Iron Man gauntlet, which the player could use to fight toy villains as he or she moved around the room. The villains sat on bases that allowed them to respond to the player's attacks, and motion sensors in the toys allowed the player to dodge imaginary projectiles.
     Playmation Avengers made its debut to spectacular reviews. Critics praised the immersive quality of gameplay despite it not involving a screen. Time Magazine even ranked it one of the Top Toys of 2015. I particularly liked the story mode, in which JARVIS leads the player through different missions requiring him or her to crawl, swim, dodge attacks, and fight Ultron-bots. The sound design is incredibly detailed and makes it easy to imagine you are actually walking through the Marvel Universe. So why didn't we get this kind of experience for Star Wars?
     Playmation didn't sell quite as well as Disney had expected, and as happened with Disney Infinity around the same time, it had to be canceled. It's possible that consumers were experiencing toys-to-life fatigue; maybe the fact that a person must buy a comparatively expensive starter pack and then a series of other toys made Playmation a rabbit-hole down which many consumers did not want to go. Or maybe the omnipresence of virtual and augmented reality products meant that a toy line would never feel as "immersive" as it could be. Whatever the reason, it was rumored that Disney would explore technology that was somehow similar to Pokemon Go for its future toys, but no one was sure exactly what that meant until Disney and Lenovo announced a Star Wars augmented reality game called Jedi Challenges.

Photo courtesy CNET

     Jedi Challenges gives you an augmented reality helmet and a shiny replica lightsaber and pits you against holographic versions of the worst villains in the galaxy. The game is enjoyable and the lightsaber fighting part of the gameplay is impressive, but it doesn't have much of a story mode compared to Playmation Avengers, and as a result, the battles aren't as fun for repeat gameplay. Playing with this only makes me wonder what the toy landscape would look like if Disney had been able to make the second version of its Playmation. I'd like to think it would have lived up to its slogan, "Imagination made real."