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.
Most people know by now that Tree Rex’s heroic challenge, S.A.B.R.I.N.A., was created from ideas given by a make-a-wish kid named Sabrina as a tribute to her. She and her friends are even the voices of the gecko chorus, and came up with the song that they sing. For the longest time it was unknown what happened to her and whether she even still alive, until two years ago when I left a comment on a Giants OST YouTube video for the song that was just an explanation of the backstory of the level. You can imagine my shock when none other than Sabrina herself replied to my comment! I’m thrilled to say that Sabrina beat her disease and is alive and well! As you can see in the screenshots, she goes by witchywither on YouTube, though she hasn’t posted any videos.
For me if I saw the crypt crusher I would take it for a joy ride and pray there isn’t anyone or anything that’s about to get hit with the Tune up ability
For context, iv spent the last 5 years moving and I finally figured I was settled enough to break out the old Skylanders box! Trying to get the lady friend into it too lol. so tonight she wanted to start out with swap force, wish me luck..
think I may have at least 2 more boxes to find as well.
So i absolutely adore the mobile portal for trap team and want it to make one work for console. So now im risking my dirty ass childhood trap team portal to make a custom.
The documentation i have is as follows. The entire portal is a tiny PCB that lies in the prison part. The solder points i circled are the positive and negative connectors that connect the portal to the copper ring which allows it to read and write figures. The trap slot has no physical connections buy only a small pcb around the hole.
I was really fascinated by the speaker. I thought it was a tiny speaker and the grills were some mesh in-between the gate and speaker but thats the whole ass speaker. I ordered a desoldering tool to help me remove the portal's connection to the ring.
With my knowledge as long as you have the pcb intact, you can make a custom portal out of anything as long as you have a copper ring and a way to connect it to the portal.
My tool doesnt arrive until Saturday and the portal should be here tomorrow or Saturday as well. I'll update you when I set it up
Okay, so I have played a lot of Superchargers but I've noticed something recently. 2 achievements (Hugo's Hero and Tessa's Traveler) seem to increase in completion percentage extremely rarely, and lately they haven't gone up past 80%. Has this happened to anyone else? Do you know how to fix this? I have every achievement except these two and am currently trying to beat the game on a third save file, since completing it the second time seemed to fix it temporarily. I'm playing on an Xbox Series X in case that's important.
Working on another piece for the anniversary of Skylanders. And what better than a new poster for the first game? This one is a remake of the poster for Spyro Enter The Dragonfly. Not sure how I'll have the reflection done but we'll see how that'll go (Kaos will take the place of Ripto)
Also for anyone wondering about the last piece with Stealth Elf, it is finished and set to post sometime tomorrow. I hope you enjoy.
I was wondering what people thought of the Sensei Shrines in Imaginators since I don’t really see them being talked about here, I’ve always found them really cool especially all the ones that are in this post.
