It's somehow fitting that toys-to-life are colliding with the return of plastic instruments in living rooms crowded with video game consoles.

While the original Rock Band and Guitar Hero got people used forking out extra money for a physical manifestation of virtual joy way back in 2007, the rebooted versions of those plastic guitars and drums are now fighting for space in a rec room increasingly crowded with other gaming toys, including swarms of plastic figurines.

Lumped under the catch-all term “accessories,” these figurines and action heroes have surged in popularity over the past several years, adding to the bottom line of the video game companies.

According to the NPD group, which tracks sales of games, sales of accessories — including toys from the Skylanders series, Disney Infinity, Lego Dimensions and Nintendo's Amiibo — were up 18 per cent to $197 million (U.S.), compared to $168.2 million in October 2014.

As well, NPD reported there was a 48 per cent growth in sales from software, figures and accessories between March 2013 and March 2015.

The so-called toys-to-life genre was kicked off by Skylanders: Spiro's Adventure in 2011. What was at the time a relatively unknown franchise has now gone onto sell $3 billion worth of toys and software.

That's one big reason that other companies are jumping in, like Nintendo, which launched its Amiibos this year. The figurines of its beloved set of characters have sold more than a million units in Canada alone — clearly a huge success.

"It’s like a huge stone going downhill, we just keep increasing exponentially,” says Andrew Collin, communication manager for Nintendo of Canada. "It's remarkable that in less than a year, we've gone from being literally nowhere in the toys-to-life market, to holding roughly a third of the market."

Collins points out that worldwide, the new Yoshi — made of yarn and admittedly one of the cutest figures available — has already sold more than 400,000 units worldwide.

Despite the ever-growing virtual worlds that video gamers love to inhabit, physical toys will likely continue to play a bigger role in gaming. Most toys coming out will likely have some form of connected component.

These toys-to-life figures all use Near Field Communication technology to connect with a console through a reader. They have internal memory to help save stats and can also affect game play.

Most of the games have a USB connected pad — in Skylanders, it's called the Portal of Power — where the player puts the figure on the pad, and voilà, the character magically appears on the screen.

Most games allow toys to be switched at any time, thereby changing your character — so no toy, no joy.

As well, many of the games require certain characters or figures to unlock new content and the companies are shrewd about getting you to pay for it. For instance, in Disney Infinity 3.0, while the starter pack focused on newer adventures, if you wanted to play the classic characters from the original Star Wars trilogy, you need to buy the Rise Against the Empire playset, which comes with Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia to play that content.

That is one major complaint is that many of the games, in that they require certain characters or figures to unlock content, which can be frustrating. It also fuels the collecting bug, which is how these games can become a drain on wallets.

And that “collect them all mentality” is exactly the point of these virtual and physical marriages of games and toys.

From a business viewpoint, toys-to-life games provide safer opportunities for big brands to get into the video game space, perhaps without the long development time or costs involved in creating their own games, but with the potential for added revenue from the toys.

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Lessons learned

Video game companies love the boost to the bottom line the accessories provide. But the boom-bust of music games over the past decade provides a cautionary tale for the franchises that right now are crowding living rooms and fighting for toy space.

The music game gold rush from 2005-2012 in part set the stage for this. Companies enjoyed huge profits from the people shelling out for guitars and more instruments when Rock Band showed up.

But the companies killed it by releasing too much product, even games themed around a single band, like Guitar Hero: Van Halen. The big problem was that the gameplay didn't really change or evolve, so users — especially the more casual gamers the games brought in — got bored and drifted away.

The difference with some of the toys-to-life titles is that they can tap into the evolving story lines of non-videogame sources — like movies — to keep them fresh

“One of the things that is different about Disney Infinity is that we look at it as a platform,” said John Vignocchi, executive producer at Disney Interactive Studios.

“So if you want to contrast us with Guitar Hero and Rock Band, or directly compare us to Lego Dimensions or Skylanders ... we have all this great material being created by Disney and we will always look at ways to integrate that into Infinity, so we keep introducing new styles of gameplay, and even different genres into the game.”

He points out that Disney Infinity 3.0 has Star Wars content featuring space flight and action adventure, while the Inside Out-themed playset features simpler game play, featuring more of a Mario-like platforming experience.

The way the games are evolving is important, as the gameplay has to remain fresh.