Cyclops Snail

Cyclops Snail
Element:	Water
File:Spyro'sKingdom CyclopsSnail Selection.jpg
Species:	Unknown
Gender:	Male
Role:	Skylander
World:	Skylands
First Release:	Spyro's Kingdom (scrapped)
English Voice Actor:	None

Cyclops Snail is a scrapped water Skylander that originated from the early concept of Spyro's Kingdom. He was one of the original five characters planned for Spyro's Kingdom, but kept getting redesigned too many times so he was ultimately cut and developed into his successor, Zap. During development, he went through a few name changes, Cyclops Slime and Tarclops.

Development

Michael Graham, producer of the Skylanders franchise, described Cyclops Snail as a "little blue water slug that zipped around, left a little pool of sludge behind him, and he would scream and shoot electricity. He was just so weird — really fun, but totally bizarre. After some feedback, we changed him from blue to purple, but then it was 'you can’t have two purple characters, because Spyro is purple.' Then we got an early version of what Cyclops Snail's toy might look like, and we thought, 'Oh my gosh, these don’t look at all detailed, not in the way that we want them to be.’ He was revised again, made of oil and now called Tarclops, and that was the final straw. The character evolved so much, by the end, character designer I-Wei Huang at Toys For Bob felt that everything he liked about the character was gone, so we thought, let’s just scrap it — we’ve got to go in a different direction."

But in a way, you’ve already played as Cyclops Snail; you know him as Zap. "We reimagined the character," says Graham. "Same moves, actually; he plays exactly the same way as Cyclops Snail did. And even Zap went through a little evolution. His original concept didn’t have his scuba tanks, and we shortened his snout quite a bit."

Biography

A creature from the sea, Tarclops is slow on land but fierce in water. Many years ago, Tarclops was sent to the islands by his father, King Cyclops, to the find a stolen relic that belongs to their underworld kingdom.

Gallery

• 
  Early Cyclops Snail concept art by I-Wei Huang
• 
  Tarclops (Cyclops Snail) prototype figure
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  A few figures showing development from Cyclops Snail to Tarclops
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  Tarclops Spyro's Kingdom character card along with Bomb Troll's
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  Tarclops as seen on the Water island of the work-in-progress scrapped Spyro's Kingdom webpage
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  Evolution from Tarclops to Zap
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  A toy prototype of Tarclops seen in the Strong Museum
• 
  Cyclops Snail as the Gloop Hat
• 

Trivia

• Cyclops Snail makes a cameo in Skylanders: Trap Team as the "Gloop Hat".
• Cyclops Snail resembles B.O.B. from Monsters vs. Aliens.
  • He also resembles the Tar Monster from Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed.
• Had he appeared in the final game of Spyro's Adventure, Cyclops Snail would have been the first Skylander to have only one eye (others being Shroomboom, Eye-Brawl, Eye Small, Rocky Roll (the rock digger part), Magna Charge, Dive-Clops, Smash Hit and Ro-Bow).