Any Skylanders experts out there?

A question about : Any Skylanders experts out there?

My son had Skylanders together with the portal a couple of years ago. He would now like the Trap team for his birthday. Do I have to buy the whole portal etc again with the new figures or can I buy the figures separately and use them on the portal we already have. Thanks for any help.

Best answers:

• You need to buy the starter pack for Trap Team, because of the trap mechanics in game you need to have the portal which supports it, it will not work otherwise. As a result you can only buy Trap Team as a starter pack - unless someone's splitting it and selling it second hand.
  I don't wanna say it's a cash cow, but it's a money making bovine - have to buy characters & traps this time round, which for me is a little excessive.
• Its worth noting for anyone thinking of taking the plunge that whilst there are good offers on the starter pack for Trap Team you do need at least one Trap Master of each element to play the game to it's full potential and realistically one trap of each element (there are currently 8 in total for each, 2 more to be revealed soon).
• my ds has completed this (as far as he can). To be honest it wasn't as bad money wise as I expected. Originally I thought he would need a trap for each character but he only needed one of each type (you can change which character it gets used for) the traps are around Ј6 each making them something he could save up for. I thought it was much better as Ј6 for an item changes into 4-5 characters is a lot better that the Ј15 it costs for the main trap masters.
  He now needs the chaos trap but I am refusing to pay the prices it is being sold for when it originally cost Ј6!