Toys for Bob

A studio that began as a partnership

Toys for Bob is an American developer based in Novato, California. It was founded in 1989 by the designer Paul Reiche III and the programmer Fred Ford, who had met through mutual friends the year before while looking for a partner to build a game called Star Control. The pair worked as a partnership before the studio name became the label on their releases, and the company kept the same California base for most of its life.

The founding arrangement shaped what the studio became. With one founder handling design and writing and the other leading programming, Toys for Bob grew around small teams and original ideas rather than contract work. That mix of a designer's and an engineer's eye is visible in its habit of taking characters with strong personalities and rebuilding the systems underneath them, whether the property is its own or someone else's.

From Star Control to Skylanders

The studio's early reputation rested on Star Control, an original science-fiction strategy game that appeared in 1990. Over the following two decades Toys for Bob moved through several publishers and genres, and its biggest original success came with Skylanders, a series that combined physical toys with a video game and asked players to place figures on a connected portal to bring characters into the world.

Skylanders turned the studio into a franchise-maker as well as a game developer, and it pulled the team toward younger audiences. That direction suited the second half of its history, when it began working with properties owned by others. The studio's own site frames the purpose simply, describing a team that crafts epic adventures for timeless characters, and the phrasing fits both the original work and the licensed projects that followed.

Reviving Spyro

Toys for Bob's best-known remake is Spyro Reignited Trilogy, a rebuilt version of the three original Spyro the Dragon platformers that had first appeared on the original PlayStation between 1998 and 2000. The studio recreated the games from the ground up with modern visuals and reworked audio rather than emulating the originals, and it consulted people who had worked on the first trilogy. The collection brought a dormant mascot back into view.

The result landed well. Steam's listing for Spyro Reignited Trilogy names Toys for Bob and Iron Galaxy Studios as developers with Activision as publisher, and shows a Very Positive review standing from several thousand users. The collection was praised for its faithfulness to the original level design and its cartoon look, and it set the studio up as a reliable hand for reviving older PlayStation-era characters.

Crash, and the remake business

Spyro Reignited Trilogy was not an isolated job. Toys for Bob also worked on the earlier Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy, another collection that rebuilt classic PlayStation platformers for modern hardware, and it went on to develop Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time as an original sequel. Between the two franchises the studio earned a reputation as the team a publisher calls when a beloved character needs modernising.

That reputation is a business model as much as a compliment. Remakes of well-loved games carry less risk than new worlds, because the audience already knows the characters and the marketing writes itself. For a studio that had spent years on its own ideas, the shift meant steadier work and a larger audience, though it also tied the team's identity to other companies' characters rather than its own.

What the studio is today

Toys for Bob's corporate story has changed more than once. After a long stretch under Activision, the studio announced in 2024 that it was spinning off as an independent game development studio, and its own blog post says the team wanted to return to its roots as a small and nimble operation. It also said it was exploring a partnership with Microsoft while working on a new game.

The original founders left at the end of 2020 to start a new independent company and return to their own science-fiction ideas, so the studio today is run by a different generation of staff. What carried over is the craft the two founders established: careful rebuilding, respect for source material, and a preference for characters with warmth. Its recent releases and its recruiting copy both point at a studio still working on family-friendly adventures.

Quick facts

Founded: 1989 in Novato, California, by Paul Reiche III and Fred Ford. Ownership: independent since 2024, when the studio announced a spin-off from Activision, although it said it would explore a partnership with Microsoft. Notable original series: Star Control and Skylanders. Notable licensed work: the Crash Bandicoot and Spyro remakes and the sequel Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time.

Signature release: Spyro Reignited Trilogy, a from-scratch remake of the three original Spyro the Dragon games, developed by Toys for Bob and published by Activision. Steam names Toys for Bob and Iron Galaxy Studios as developers and dates its PC listing to 3 September 2019. The founders, Reiche and Ford, both left at the end of 2020.

Games

• Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0
• Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time
• Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy
• Crash Team Rumble
• Disney's Extreme Skate Adventure
• Madagascar
• Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
• Majokko Daisakusen: Little Witching Mischiefs
• Pandemonium!
• Skylanders: Giants
• Skylanders: Imaginators
• Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure
• Spyro Reignited Trilogy
• Star Control
• Star Control II
• The Horde
• The Unholy War

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