Binaryan

Great reviews this week! To answer your question, the hairpiece for Selene has been used before. It was used for the TRU exclusive Betsy Braddock figure. Not exactly accurate for Selene who usually has long straight hair to her waist, but this one is the longest one that works with the cloak.

So many great ideas here.... I'd add: - Bank robbers - Cooks, chefs, waitresses - Riot gear SWAT team - Lifeguards (a la Baywatch! With surfboard and life preserver!) Vehicles: Taxi cab and armored car w/ drivers

Just checked the Emeryville store in the Bay Area, CA. Nothing but the final dregs of the FF Wave and the Ghostbusters... with a single remaining peg of MAX figures and half a peg's worth of IM2 and Universal Monsters. Plus ample CAP sets and HALO 'Mates. I consolidated the Marvel figures so that there were 3 entirely empty pegs. Hopefully the glaring hole will help the latest wave to magically appear in time for X-Mas. Please tell me I'm not the only one here who leaves the Minimates section of their local TRU more organized than when they found it?!?!

THANK YOU! As one of the people who decried the lack of diversity in the original MAX releases, I'm thrilled to see this set and will definitely buy at least one (Luke will you be getting these???) That said, I'm hoping the female cop gets a clear riot shield accessory!

WOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOW!!! Frakkin' INCREDIBLE!!! I would sooooooo buy these! As for the next set: Ruby, a Flight Attendant, a Mangalore and Father Cornelius. I think you could also do an alternate Ruby (he had two great outfits), Leeloo in her bandage outfit, Korben in the orange tank and the President or General.

Given some of the ghosts they've done for the GB line, they could totally pull off a Brood Minimate and it would ROCK! They could do a Purifiers army builder... and the Hulkbuster armor could be tweaked ever-so-slightly and be used for the armored, smiley-faced soldiers of The RIGHT. A generic Acolyte of Magneto could be fun and you could include a couple of different head/face options like they did with the Secret Invasion Skrulls to create different recognizable Acolytes like with the New Mutants costumes. If there was a standard male and female version with 2-3 head/hair options, you could easily create Fabian Cortez, Chrome, Rem-Ram and/or Vindaloo for the guys plus Scanner, Unuscione, Static or Cargill for the ladies. Along these lines, you could do a Hellions army builder with alternate heads for Jetstream/Empath/Thunderbird and Tarot/Roulette/Catseye... rather than extra accessories, you pack in an extra head or two and hairpieces. You could even use the double-faced thing for several of these. Could be affordable paired with a complete parts reuse figure?

Wow... I am completely underwhelmed by these. They look very sloppily thrown together and this is the third set of promo images released where I find myself hoping there are MAJOR tweaks/improvements on almost ever figure! Odin is easily my favorite of the bunch but I hope they give his helm a more metallic color and maybe add his ravens as accessories. Jane Foster has a very nice face and I like the new hair sculpt, but the likeness falls short. I also hope they find some places to add a little detail as from the neckline down she's awfully generic and undefined. Loki --- Great helmet but what's with the super-muted color scheme? Production stills have him in a very bold green cape and the figure lacks the needed "pop" to make it a must. Thor --- Again, the colors seem oddly muted. What's with the tampos on his legs and arms? They look incomplete. He has a "deer in the headlights" expression and those gauntleted hands look off to me. Destroyer - If ever a figure needed greater detail work and a metallic finish, this is it! Agent Coulson - Good likeness and parts reuse. Again with the muted greys instead of a true black... and lets at least add a belt tampo to this very standard Minimate. Frost Giant - Hard to see much in the way of details... I'll reserve judgment on this one.

I'm hoping for a First Appearance Spider-Man with some attached web-pits or maybe a sculpted revamp of Scarlet Spider. I also hope this is a mixed wave as the Shadowland wave is going to provide plenty of street level characters for the time being. That said, I'd love to see a few more villains eeked out and maybe some more X-Men, Inhumans or cosmic characters before the onslaught of Movie-mates.

I'm predicting we'll see the following figures in some form as part of the THOR movie line: Thor, Jane Foster, Odin, Donald Blake, Loki, Frost Giant, Sif, Destroyer, Warriors Three & Heimdall. I'm praying we also get comic-based renditions of the Warriors Three and Sif and maybe Balder, Hela, Enchantress and Executioner to boot. And the Wrecking Crew of course. Though I can see them holding off on some of these in case they play a role in the inevitable sequel. How many Iron Man 2 figures did we see in total? ----> Needed to answer my own question and then some! By my count, we saw a whopping 29 new Minimates from Iron Man 2 including Wave 35, a box set, 10 TRU exclusives over 2 waves, 2 Borders exclusives and the Hammer Drones single packed. Plus we got 7 new comic versions of prominent Iron Man characters in Wave 36. This is a huge leap compared to other more modest movie lines: - Wolverine Origins = 13 - Iron Man = 11 - Incredible Hulk = 9 - Spider-Man 3 = 7 - X-Men 3 = 7 - Punisher War Zone = 4

Now that the dust has settled, I'd be curious how others decided on their picks. It was really hard for me to narrow the field and I'd love to know what others used as their voting criterion. Innovation? Artful design? Feasibility? Character choice? Inquiring minds want to know. Feedback and critique are a good thing.

I'm completely underwhelmed by this wave. But there's potential there. This is where I wish I was on the final design review for Minimates because there are some quick tweaks that would improve these figures significantly: - Iron Fist - Best of the bunch IMO. Not sure about the bulky wrapped hands yet. I hope he includes a hairpiece and some weapons of some sort. Maybe a newly sculpted energy effect? - White Tiger - Not loving the color of her hair or the choice of hairpiece. I'd have preferred something like 90s Jean Grey's. The red eyes are just off especially with that hot pink lipstick which seems a tad out of character. The painted on details for the gloves and boots don't quite work and the belt just looks chintzy. - Hand Ninja - The one I want the most... but also the one with the most room for improvement. The parts reuse works well here... though some additional detailing would make this more unique. The red and brick tones are a bit too muted and a darker color scheme would help here. I also think he needs some boot/glove details or sculpted pieces. Not to mention some serious weaponry included. - Spider-Man - Given this costume has yet to see print, I'm not sure about this. It looks to be a hand-painted prototype and just looks like a sloppy custom. I'm hoping the linework on this is much much crisper. If he glowed in the dark, that could be cool. Otherwise, blah! - Elektra - The forehead is weird and I hope the placement of the actual decal is more effective than this quicky Photoshop job. Again, I think a deeper red with a hint of metallic would really set this version apart from the original. Nice new loincloth sculpt, though. - Dark Daredevil - Having no interest in this storyline hurts my enthusiasm for this one. The grey is too powdery and makes the figure look decidedly less dark... which is kind of the crux of the whole storyline, right?? If they did a black figure with grey highlights, this would look a lot better IMO. - White Tiger (Variant) - Holy parts reuse, Batman! This wave is certainly skating by without many original pieces. This figure looks pretty good but with a design this simple with no new parts or obvious accessories, I certainly hope the tampo details go all the way around the figure, including the back. An unmasked head would be a nice touch here.

This wave would be much more appealing if Luke Cage and Elektra were added to the mix! (Fingers crossed!)

I called the Shadowland Wave back in July ... but I like my line-up better. I could have done without another generic Spider-Man and think an updated Luke Cage or Elektra would have been a better choice. That said, I'm excited about a new Iron Fist, both White Tigers and the Hand Ninjas. Speaking of Spidey... does anyone reading Shadowland have any idea how they might make this Spidey unique?

Congrats to the worthy winners! And thanks to groundhog for hosting this! I'd never tried designing a Minimate so this was a great challenge that really got my creative juices flowing!

It's the natural hair color as seen here:

Sweet Quasar, hellpop! He's a fave of mine so it's nice to at least see a credible QC of him in 'Mate form. I was actually thinking of Quasar as I made the wrist gauntlets on Trigon for my DC Custom Design entry! Excellent job!

Thanks for the inspiration, MINI-MYTE. I tried the same trick with a Nurse Chapel face. Worked pretty well, IMO. My most recent mods came as a result of scoring a couple of extra hairpieces from Starfire! This is a GREAT hairpiece and I'm truly surprised it hasn't been reused by DST. I've added it as is to Phoenix from the Secret Invasion set. This was a very nice figure but I wasn't thrilled with the hairpiece or the color selection. Let's be honest, with great cosmic power comes great big cosmic hair! I think this is an easy improvement and more comic accurate. I also gave this a quick dose of gamma radiation to spice up my She-Hulk figure... another solid 'Mate whose hairpiece and color wasn't quite cutting it IMHO.

It's actually not quite as exact a match as it appears in the photos... but it's pretty close. I actually wanted it to be a bit redder than the rather flat brown of the original figure. I mixed basic orange and green acrylic paints together until I got a shade I liked.... nothing too fancy, just trial and error.

Thanks for the input. I will definitely have to revisit this guy at some point and try to spruce him up a bit!

And boy!! Was it tough to decide! I narrowed it down to five and then had a devil of a time choosing the top three... and even tougher time ranking those! We should totally be working for DST! Or at least send these designs to the new head of DCDirect to show how many great possibilities there are for a revival of the brand! Great work everyone! Ryan

Thanks! I actually sliced it off a small plastic pony my son had in his toy chest and with a little Crazy Glue and paint... voila!

I got these from Luke's yesterday (thank you, sirrah!) I promptly made some quick fixes on Wolfsbane & Cannonball. I switched Rahne's head for Nurse Chapel's and painted the eyes green. The expression just seemed to be a better match for Rahne. I also swapped Sam's head for Noh-Varr's. It still doesn't capture his youthful awkwardness but it's a bit less stern and the eyes are the right color. Finally, I gave Wolfsbane a Logan hairpiece and tail and added a few patches of fur to match on the body. What do you think?

Well, in just under a year we've seen 8 figures from my expanded Top Ten list released or on its way. Not too bad... My current Top Ten is... Banshee - Classic Sunfire - Mr. Sinister - Falcon- Black Knight - Mockingbird - Tigra - Songbird - Anole - Rockslide I included Anole and Rockslide because I think they're cool characters who would look great as Minimates. I'd also like to see them break into the younger generation of characters at Marvel (Young Avengers, X-Students, Runaways) to provide a mix with the nostalgia-based figures we've seen lately (AoA, New Mutants, Excalibur, etc.) As for the rest, I stick by my original Box Set ideas. With AoA Wolverine done, I'd go with the Classic Weapon X Wolvie with tubes and electronics just after his adamantium bonding. It's one of the major iconic looks yet to be done in some form. Spider-Man.... still UGH but I wouldn't mind seeing Spider-Man Noir or 1602. Both were fun riffs on the classic look. For New Versions, I'd still like to see Mystique and I think a Modern Rogue/Colossus 2-Pack would be great.

I'm not the biggest DC fan in the world so it took me a while to come up with a "plus size" character for this contest. Teen Titans was always my favorite DC title besides Perez's Wonder Woman, so I decided to give my favorite Titan RAVEN a suitable foe. Hope you like him! NOTES: I envision the "white" portions being the same pearly white they used on Storm and Moonstone with silver accents. The hairpiece is designed to go down as far as the eyebrows and include the ears and hair. The chest strap is sculpted and helps keep the cape and high collar in place. The skull would be a sculpted piece adjoined to the loincloth. His claws are modeled after Movie Sabretooth's. His staff is completely swiped from the DC Universe Trigon Build-A-Figure... I just thought he looked incomplete without it.

The upcoming Xtreme Toys box set - Heroes & Adversaries is featured on Art Asylum's blog this morning. Check out the packaging and let the debates over whether these are straight up reissues begin... PICS