The Skylanders story successfully combining toys and video games

Paul Reiche began his career as a professional game designer in 1981 at TSR Hobbies in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, where he wrote rules for Dungeons & Dragons. He returned to the San Francisco Bay Area and began to create computer games, co-designing the fantasy classics Archon, Mail Order Monsters, and Murder on the Zinderneuf, a murder mystery game set entirely within a zeppelin. In 1989, Reiche founded his own studio, Toys for Bob, with programming partner Fred Ford. Together with their friends and coworkers, Fred and Paul created Star Control I & II, The Horde, Pandemonium and many other games for a wide variety of computer and videogame platforms. Reiche's hobby of making plastic and rubber monsters proved unexpectedly useful in 2009, when Toys for Bob began the development of Skylanders Spyro's Adventure, a hybrid physical-toy/video game in which players use real toys to control play in the game. Since its debut in 2011, Skylanders has become an international best-seller. According to Reiche, “To date, Skylanders has sold enough toys that if placed end-to-end, would stretch from Novato, California (where Toys for Bob is based), all the way to Bismark, South Dakota.”