Dio

That's it, I'm done with this line. I kept trying to support it by buying each wave, but if they can't make the important characters then I refuse to buy anymore until they do. I can't believe the lightcycle got delayed but it didn't have the photon debugger keyblade.

I seriously don't know what's worse, DST not talking to any KH fans or thinking we're dumb enough to believe they have legitimate excuses for forcing as many Disney characters into this line as they can to appeal to the Disney fans.

If you wanted to make Disney characters, you should have made a Disney line. All you're doing is alienating the KH fans. We get it, you didn't think the KH franchise was good enough to sell minimates, you didn't have any confidence in the actual KH characters, so you hedged your bets on making 3-4 different versions of Disney characters to sell the line solely to Disney fans.

Well let me tell you why this line isn't selling that well. You made a bunch of shelfwarmers. People don't need 2+ of the same Disney characters. If this line dies you'll know why. It's because you didn't make the characters KH fans care about.

5 hours ago, DSTZach said:

Well, those last three comments certainly run the gamut. 

The wave has three main characters and a main villain, so I'd say the person who picked it knows enough about the game. 

Pairings need to be from the same world, so that can affect where characters are from and what worlds we do.

Its a tooling-heavy line, so I'm sure that comes into consideration as well.

 

Why are you so defensive? You clearly can't take any criticism from real KH fans. The person who picked the line up clearly does not.

On 12/28/2018 at 5:59 PM, DSTZach said:

And yeah, we tried to maximize tooling on a tooling-heavy series. Not a cop-Out, a realistic approach to each wave. 

Not an appeal to Disney fans so much as a focus on the main characters of the game. If you're a fan of the game, you should want these characters.

We only need one Sora, Donald, Goofy, and Mickey, I don't want different versions of them. Pete and Soldier were a nice addition but nobody cares about Timeless River or Space Paranoids versions of the characters. I didn't want Tron or Sark. I told you who I wanted before, even without the FF characters there are still: Riku, Kairi, Namine, Organization XIII, Ansem, and Roxas. If you talked to a KH fan you would know that people care more about the human characters. You should be focusing on characters that appear in multiple worlds, not just one world like Space Paranoids. Pete was the only real villain we got, and we really need Xemnas and Maleficent, as well as the rest of Organization XIII. We should have gotten the rest of the main characters, Kairi and Riku, before we even got a second version of Sora, Donald, Goofy, and Mickey (not to mention the Timeless River set coming out making a third version of each character).

On 12/6/2018 at 10:20 AM, hellpop said:

Wow, I didn't even realize wave 2 was out. It's no surprise to me that we might not see a wave 3; this was always a property that was going to struggle without TRU (or someone like Game Stop) to back it up. Honestly, as a backdoor to Disney Minimates it is/was a good idea, but otherwise I don't think it's really got the recognition to be a wide hit. I totally disagree that focusing on the non-Disney characters is a viable strategy; the driver for this line was ALWAYS going to be people buying these sets for Micky, Donald, and Goofy. I guess, if DST isn't going to be able to deliver recognizable versions of these characters anyway, thanks to the contract, it's probably best to move on anyway.

Cheaping out and basically making both waves Sora, Donald, Goofy, and Mickey because "tooling is expensive", and trying to make this line appeal to the Disney fans, just completely alienated the KH fanbase. Nobody on the KH reddit or the discord wants to buy these, even if they are discounted on Luke's Toy Store (not to mention that everyone on there thinks the human KH Select figures have awful faces). DST killed any chance this line had by not making the characters KH fans care about. It would have been way better to not make repeats of the Disney characters and include Final Fantasy characters like Cloud, Squall, Sephiroth etc to appeal to the FF fans.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: There needs to be actual KH characters and not just Disney, so Riku, Kairi, Organization XIII, FF characters, Ansem, Namine etc.

Man, all I really need is Classic TMNT minimates, and minimates from the SNES TMNT IV game. I'd love to have a Super Shredder figure.

Since Toys R Us is going out of business, is there any chance classic TMNT can come back?

Then why bother making two additional waves with the same characters? I think it would have been better to just release one wave, and make new figures after the first wave sells. If this line dies it will be because DST made the first three waves like this.

Unfortunately my hope of this line doing well isn't high at all. There are too many Sora, Donald, Goofy, and Mickey Minimates and their fate is to be shelfwarmers. There shouldn't have been Space Paranoids and Timeless River versions before there were Minimates of KH characters that weren't made yet, such as Kairi, Riku, Namine, Organization XIII etc. It feels like DST is trying to appeal to the Disney fanbase rather than the actual Kingdom Hearts fanbase. I know Final Fantasy characters would have done a lot better. People really love FF7, and I bet they would go out and buy Cloud, Sephiroth, Aerith, Yuffie, and Cid Minimates even if they've never collected Minimates before. And it would line up well with the FF7 remake coming out. Some people like FF8 too so Squall (named Leon in the KH series), Seifer, Raijin, and Fujin would have been good figures too.

Kingdom Hearts:
Will we get Minimates of Riku, Kairi, Ansem, Cloud, Sephiroth, Leon (Squall), Aerith, Tifa, Yuffie, Cid, Auron, Namine, or any of the Organization XIII members? Those seem more important than all of the Donalds, Goofy's, and Mickeys we're getting.

Is wave 1 only going to be composed of Sora, Donald, Goofy, and Mickey? No Riku, Kairi, or Ansem?

I like that they're highly affordable and articulated characters. Minimates are my favorite block figures because I used to have a lot of LEGO toys growing up. And the community posts amazing pictures.

Maybe it's just the angle then. I think Sora's face is fine but it looks like Axel has a long face with a huge chin.

This is what Mickey's keyblade is supposed to look like:

https://www.khwiki.com/Kingdom_Key_D

The other complaint that people on the KH reddit had is that the Axel figure's face is really bad.

I sent Maro a tweet and this is what he said:

1 hour ago, MisterPL said:

 

What other Minimates lines do you collect?

Mostly Marvel, though I did get the Watchmen box set. But canceling the TMNT series was unforgivable (they should have done the classic series first). Minimates used to only be carried by comic book stores for a long time so it's sad that DST has to rely on TRU to make enough sales now. If they cancel KH, that will be the final nail in the coffin.

I s2g, if KH minimates get canceled, I am DONE with buying minimates. I was really looking forward to TMNT classic series.

On 8/23/2017 at 5:19 AM, DSTZach said:

...We offered it to comic shops. In Previews and everything. We were going to go ahead with it without TRU. But not enough ordered it for us to make it. Obviously, if TRU had been on board, it wouldn't have mattered, but the comic shop orders were very low. Did your local comic shop order them? A LOT of them? He was one of the few.

I don't think you gave comic stores enough time to order them. My LGS has a lot of Minimates on the shelves and usually doesn't order anything unless I ask the owner to, and I thought ordering now would be enough time in advance since the wave was supposed to come out in October.

I have had a really bad day today. Woke up 3 hours before my alarm, then sat around at work for an hour and a half not doing anything because there was nothing to do, my neck is killing me and I have a headache. I did not need this. I was really looking forward to the classic wave since that's what we should have gotten in the first place, not those goofy ass Nickelodeon turtles. Instead of going to the classic series after a few waves, DST continued to make Nickelodeon turtles and released stupid crap like the space turtles. Sometimes I wonder if DST knows what they're doing. This is just like Universal Monsters series 3 getting canceled, which we could have gotten if they had not released those stupid black and white variants (and I was really looking forward to the Invisible Man, not duplicates of figures I didn't want).

tl;dr this is a really stupid move for cancelling a wave that actually would have sold well, and something that I was really looking forward to. Now I'm stuck with this ugly ass Nickelodeon Shredder.

Seriously? THIS IS STUPID. Why should an entire wave be cancelled just because TRU are being assholes? This should have still been available for LGSes to order. Even the owner of my LGS said he could sell a lot of them.

On 2/25/2017 at 9:59 AM, DSTZach said:

Nick is done because sales have dropped and TRU is out. You can blame the characters, the episodes, whatever, but blind bags AND 2-packs aren't selling as well. Rather than going with more obscure characters from the Nick toon, we went to a new, popular, unmade iteration of the Turtles we felt would appeal more to comic shop customers.

Pairing the Turtles would perhaps make it easier for customers who only want the four, but it it would also discourage collecting beyond the four. Also, it could lead to more peg warmers, as the main (or secondary) characters disappear.

Would it be possible to get 'mates made out of the SNES TMNT IV Turtles in Time game? I'd love to get a Super Shredder.

Guys! I saw in this month's preview magazine at my LGS that we're getting a Watchmen Minimates box set!

EDIT: Here's a link at BBTS:

https://www.bigbadtoystore.com/bbts/product.aspx?product=DMC12776&mode=retail

On 12/16/2016 at 1:37 PM, Kostisfire said:

 They're totally seperate licenses, but dunno. We got Gotham mates, now we're probably getting Watchmen mates. And from past AskDSTs and AskDCs (back in, dunno, 2013 or so, you could ask them questions), it was sorta implied that it wasn't so much that they weren't interested in DC minimates, it's just that this particular license was held up by another company (probably Mezco's Mez-Itz). Dunno, it isn't as unlikely as it was a few years back. I wouldn't hold my breath or anything, but... 

 

I thought the issue was with DC Direct wanting to do different toys with their license, and they kept refusing to let DST do DC Minimates. I've seen so many different DC vinyls and other mini figures that I'm wondering when they're going to realize they need to come back to Minimates.

It was great, but not what I was expecting after having seen the animated version a few months ago.