Skylanders is your 2012 best seller

Clocking in at number one on the best seller chart for both the portable and home console arena's, the Skylanders franchise moves on to E3 on a high.

Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure was a mightily triumphant return for the '90s era character and has topped the NPD charts for sales in 2011/12. In addition to that, the toys (that you need to bring more characters into your game) are beating up the rankings as well.

"This achievement is incredibly gratifying, and quite an honor for everyone at Activision and our team at Toys for Bob," said Eric Hirshberg, CEO of Activision Publishing. "It was a simple idea really-bridging the gap between real and virtual play-but one that required tremendous creativity to execute and communicate to our audience. It spawned a new category and a new platform for play in an overwhelmingly challenging marketplace. We couldn't be happier that there is an ever-growing universe of Portal Masters out there."

For all the sometimes rough treatment that Activision gets, it's really nice to see the company go out on a limb like it did with Skylanders and actually try something new. It seems all too often that day in and day out, same-old-same-old is the way of big business in general; but here was something really different. And guess what? It worked... big time.

Skylanders Giants (the sequel to Spyro's Adventure launches this Fall on consoles and portables)