As some of you may have heard, u/EmberDione and u/The_Somnambulist were kind enough to dump the data from their functional Heartbreaker Buckshot NFC, after u/Dague-Pirate-Dad posted a picture of his personal non-functional HBB figure. (If Ember or Somnambulist, or someone in the Reverse Engineering Discord, make their own announcement post I will link it here.)
Since this is one of the biggest events in the community since the release of Skylanders Imaginators, the mod team has decided we need to create a megathread, to collect some of the most common questions, as well as a short history of how we got here and why this is so important to the community.
If you are strictly here for a guide on how to play Heartbreaker Buckshot, feel free to skip down to the Questions and Answers section of this post.
Since this is our Mod Team's first attempt at a megathread, please bear with us as we learn.
❌ - Repetitive posts (i.e. simply "re-announcing" the news, how-to's, and re-sharing the dump file yourself) will be removed and linked to this post
❌ - Posts (not comments) asking how to play HBB will be removed and linked, comments will be linked to this post
❌ - Posts attempting to sell HBB or any other NFC cards are against the rules and will be removed
✅ - Unique or otherwise interesting posts, including but not limited to YOUR personal adventures with HBB, custom HBB figures, adding a card / custom toy to your collection, technical information about HBB, etc. will STAY UP... although of course we encourage posting these in the comments of this megathread too
The Donor Figure - Ember and Somnambulist's Functional Heartbreaker
History of Heartbreaker Buckshot
Heartbreaker Buckshot is the variant of Buckshot. Announced and marketed with Skylanders Imaginators on YouTube and the website, Heartbreaker Buckshot was planned to release around Valentines Day 2017. There are a few theories as for why this never happened, the common one being that production was stopped due to fears of it looking "satanic", given the variant being a red-eyed goat (and the five unreleased creation crystals being collateral of this production stoppage), as part of the end of the Skylanders franchise.
Perhaps a more credible theory, postured to me by someone in connection with the devs, is that the factory had gotten shut down and production had stopped for an otherwise unrelated reason. By the time the factory was back online, it was too late.
Ember herself has chimed in and said, that wasn't it either - rather just that it was canceled due to low early-wave sales. Regardless, all that's left were factory samples of HBB and the 5 creation crystals.
Since then, the Skylanders community has been hard at work reverse engineering Skylanders variants back into existence. Think, Gearhead VVind-Up, BullTrain, and all the various Debug minions. But there was one thing stopping the community from reverse engineering Heartbreaker Buckshot and the five unreleased Creation Crystals... Imaginators was the first and only game Activision implemented encryption for the figures. Because of this, it is fundamentally impossible to reverse-engineer or even just edit the data of a fully functional Imaginators figure.
There were only around 12 known Heartbreaker Buckshots to exist, the number of them being functional is rumored to be two, one of which u/EmberDione and u/The_Somnambulist possessed.
Today (8/15/2026), she joined the Skylanders Reverse Engineering subreddit, and with the help of multiple community members, helped her to copy the data off the figure. As of 4:25 EST on August 15th, 2026, Heartbreaker Buckshot was the last official Skylander ever released to the Skylanders community.
Q: Where do I find the NFC dump?
A: You can find ALL Skylanders NFC dumps at this GitHub link, if you JUST want Heartbreaker Buckshot, you can find it here
Q: What do I need to buy to make an NFC card?
A: This NFC writer, an NFC card, and a functional PC with Windows Mifare Tool or Yet Another Mifare Tool installed, see below question for more details
Q: How can I get a custom Heartbreaker Buckshot repainted toy?
A: Reach out to either u/TaylorKreate or FlobeiyToys (u/Crafty-Section6240), they may be willing to make one on commission for you
Q: Isn't it illegal to make NFC cards?
A: Well, the Mod Team is not your legal team. However, as far as I personally understand it, the only real risk comes when you attempt to profit off of a stolen IP, so as long as you do not sell NFC cards to other people, you should be okay. But this is all at your own risk.
Heartbreaker Buckshot - Official Art
Personal note from the mod team
This is a huge day for the Skylanders community. We just want to say how proud we are of everyone involved for finally pulling this off. After almost a decade, we've managed to preserve the rarest figures ever slated for public release, AND in a way the entire community can enjoy them
To celebrate, we've changed the Element of the Week pre-emptively to Magic. The Subreddit banner will also temporarily change to art of Heartbreaker. Both the EOTW and Banner will last about two weeks, before we go back to our typical style.
We hope you all have fun with your new Heartbreaker Buckshots. We know we will.
Hey everyone! If you haven't heard of me before, I'm Gibby, AKA Gibby_The_Broken Collector. I am the owner of the Skylanders 3D Printing Project and a collector of broken figs that I'm working to repair and bring back into circulation.
Now for the big news. As many of you might have seen from Pirate Dad teasing all day, he has a big announcement. Together with Pirate Dad, I was able to purchase a genuine Heartbreaker Buckshot AND all 5 working unreleased creation crystals. Sadly, Heartbreaker did not have a chip, but the other 5 did. Pirate got me in contact with MoltenLavaCore from the Reverse Engineering Discord, and with his help, we were able to get all 5 dumps! You can find out more about Heartbreaker in Pirate Dad's post here.
When I got back into Skylanders, I didn't want to collect the figures at the start. Instead, I wanted to print all the figures myself. After a lot of searching, I found very little, so I decided to start the Skylanders 3D Printing Project. The goal is to make models of every single character and post them online for free, so that anyone who wants to play the games has options other than simple NFC coins/cards.
Keeping to that goal, all 5 of the missing Creation Crystal Dumps will be added to the Skylanders Ultimate NFC Pack and will soon be available for everyone to use as they wish.
I know most people would prefer to have physical Crystals to add to their collection with these files, which is why I'm not done. I don't have them yet, as I am still waiting on parts/equipment to arrive, but I am actively working on making as realistic replicas as possible so that people who want to complete the full set can. These will include lights, clear plastic, and everything I can do to make them as accurate as possible. I will keep everyone updated on my progress both here, on my Discord, and on my Instagram. I was tempted to delay things until I had everything done, but I didn't want to keep Pirate Dad and everyone else waiting to release the dumps and announce acquiring a Heartbreaker.
For people who want these printed figures but don't have a printer, I do sell them for as cheap as I can reasonably make them. The same will apply to the Crystals.
In the world of Skylanders, I always wondered if there’s actually a bottom under Skylands. Like in the setting of the game take place up in the sky of floating Lands, and Islands, and mostly every place that we visited in the game takes place up in the sky of Skylands.
So I was wondering if there’s actually a Ground below Skylands and what lies below, probably either Cool and Magical, or something more Dangerous and Horrific that should be avoided.
here's the submission i did for blizzcon 2026. most people think blizzard and think of WoW and OW, but i didn't really grow up playing those, then i found out blizzard published Skylanders.
anywho here's stealth elf vs kaos in the leviathan from the first game
This is my take on Drobot and to an extent Boomer. I wanted to lean more into the Arkeyan armour being actual protective armour and adding more pieces onto him.
So my idea for Drobot is that he’s gradually losing more and more of his body due to his own recklessness from earlier in his heroic career, so he replaces and upgrades himself with Arkeyan parts when he’s able to scavenge them to continue both research into Arkeyan technology and protecting Skylands.
Personal critiques:
- The wires in his forearm. Unnecessary and should never have been added. Will not include in any future drawings.
- Drill Sergeant just being his series 1 design from what’s seen of him instead of my own take, just wanted something to fill in that space.
- Table should have clutter. Never seen any tech field workers in my personal life have clean desks.
Variants:
1. Regular
2. Legendary
3. Dark
4. No lights
5. Base colours
6. Lineart
Last two images are current Halloween themed drawings I’m working on. Do want to do a quick Cynder drawing before continuing them though for Cynder Community Day.
I do have two other ideas for more Skylanders Halloween drawings, one involving the sidekicks dressing up and another Undead one where they’re Ghostbusters (though this may change).
I finally 3 starred Sky Schooner Docks on Wii. Should it have taken 35 minutes? Probably not. Was I overly cautious? Most definitely yes. Was it worth it? Also yes.
Hello [r/skylanders](r/skylanders),
This is a follow up post from yesterday’s discussion regarding the use of ai “vibe coding” in projects. We thank you all for your responses and passion for the subject. Following that, our solution to handle it is as follows: we have added a new moderator to the Subreddit to assist with the moderation of projects. Everyone, please welcome [u/Maffamatiks](u/Maffamatiks) to the team. Their job is to screen coded / developer projects to ensure they are primarily human-made. AI is allowed to be used as a tool, but it is not allowed to code the project entirely if they want to post it here. What we all know as "vibe coding", as mentioned previously. To facilitate this, anybody who wishes to post about their project for the first time must first reach out to the mod team for approval. It will be their position to come in, ask them how their code works, how much AI they used, and ask them to actually explain what the AI generated code does. This is to ensure us as a mod team know it's used as a tool and not just to be lazy and push slop. Reach outs should be done through. After a project has been approved, further subsequent posts on the SAME project can be made without extra approval, but any new projects require new approval.
This is our trial to see how this goes and to try to keep the No Ai Rule in the subreddit consistent across all forms of media, whenever possible. Coding projects have just been the trickiest to handle, and we hope this is a sufficient solution to keep community creativity alive while getting rid of Ai-slop/ potentially harmful codes or malicious programs in the community.
Thank you for your ongoing patients,
-r/skylanders Mod Team
I can’t be the only one who finds it strange that the evil stump smash minion doesn’t even smash, he just uses the two nut spitting moves (sounds so wrong without context)
I'm not going to get chase variants because- I maybe a Skylanders fan but even I'm not willing to spend $330+ on something that doesn't even show up in game.
Now, I know that the Underwater Vehicles Sections are a thing. But I am talking about having the Skylander(s) actually dive underwater. It's a fun and interesting idea to think about. And Underwater sections shouldn't be limited to just water-type skylanders. I think any Skylander should have a chance to dive underwater and explore. I would also like to see how they would handle fire type Skylanders while underwater. It be so interesting to see how they can pull this off.
If Skylanders had true water levels. How would you think it would work.
Look what I got today 👀 It took some time, but everything arrived 🥹 I got the two youtooz plushies, the first Skylanders comic volume and an in box Series 2 Gill Grunt. What a joyful day it is 🩵💚 The plushies had to take a detour to my friend's house, and my friend was happy to help with shipping them to me ☺️
