Jatta Pake

Someone say... I'll just throw this out there as my dream: SDCC 2015 AFX Exclusive Brotherhood of Evil Mutants 1 Set Magneto Toad Mastermind Unus The Untouchable SDCC 2015 Luke's Toy Store Exclusive Brotherhood of Evil Mutants 2 Set Mystique Destiny Quicksilver (Green) Sabretooth SDCC 2015 DST Exclusive Freedom Force Set Blob Spiral Pyro Avalanche Let's make this happen people.

Those are great! Firestorm is inspired.

I think I just fell into a parallel universe... Tell me I'm not mis-remembering getting an Avengers dump. I may need to have my head examined. Didn't we get an Avengers dump?

I'm interested in seeing pics of any of the Kubricks that could serve as accessories to Minimates, such as: Frankenstein's Lab Table (secret, 1/48) Dracula's Crate (secret, 1/48) SAS Assault Vehicle (Oct 2002) Others?!?!?!?! I have the Aliens Powerloader and some of the Planet of the Apes sets, as I assumed we would eventually get Minimates versions of these characters.

@Zach - I think you are missing out by not trying a comic assortment of army builders. I think movie versions work well, but they need to really be iconic within the property. This process seems to require an extended appearance in a series of movies rather than being a flavor of a one-time enemy in a single movie. The Aliens from the Aliens movies are iconic. Stormtroopers in Star Wars are iconic. They appear in all of the movies. Cylons are iconic in Battlestar Galactica TV show as are Cobra troopers in GI Joe. Similar for comics. Sentinels are iconic in X-Men comics. Comic Hyrdra are iconic in Avengers comics. Moloids and Skrulls are iconic in Fantastic Four comics. Foot goons are iconic in TMNT comics. They are easily recognizable for fans despite slight variations in appearance over the years. The movie versions of the Frost Giants and 1940s Hydra had no immediately recognizable counterpart in other movies or comics that established them as iconic villains. Had a Dark Elves army dump been released, I theorize that it wouldn't have done any better than the previous Thor and Cap dumps. Sad because the design of the Frost Giants, 1940s Hydras, and Dark Elves are some of the sweetest troop designs ever. And they translated into absolutely beautiful Minimates. I suspect the Avengers dump did better for two reasons: 1) The movie was a smash hit, and 2) the Chitauri are referenced in Iron Man 3 and Marvel's Agents of Shield, and 3) they appear in the Marvel Ultimate universe of comics. But I'd argue that they would need even more exposure to become truly iconic as movie Avengers villains. I hope DST gives comic army builders a shot with a dump. I theorize it would do better than the movie Thor and Cap dumps.

Wait, don't tell me the Blammoids! line has been cancelled! I've been waiting for Series 5 since 2010. Noooooooooooooooooooooooooo! The magnets in these new figures are clearly the critical innovations missing from previous lines of deformed vinyl DC figures. I feel confident that I will be able to collect this line for years, and assemble some truly impressive teams of DC characters.

I'm ok paying to get one but I'm kinda hoping some become available for cheaper than $50 on ebay. Ouch. Zach mentioned that some of these were given to a retailer for possible sale? Anyone know who? Did Zach ever say how many of these were ultimately produced? I'll just throw this out there as well - I don't mind paying $50 for one if I know the proceeds are going to cover the operating costs of MMMV. Running a website isn't cheap and I appreciate being able to hang out in this corner of the Internet with like minded people.

Well, at least DST took ONE suggestion from this thread. Yes. The wrong one! At least several members agreed with me ... in 2012. Good Ideas: Build-A-Mate Pack in Pieces Better Interchangeability Marketing Impulse Buy Availability at Big Box Retailers Dump of Mixed Army Builders Bad Ideas Blind bagged with one per case rares

Who is the blue head that Polaris dated?

I agree but I think elitism is the intended result. Kind of like, can you figure out every face? And Professor X's and Moria's son is Legion. One flaw in the graphic - what the hell does a red dotted line mean?!?! It is not in the key but Juggernaut and Professor X have a dotted red line relationship. Are they offspring that dated?

I need to read more comics.

I didn't stay for the end scene; anyone care to spoil or point me to a summary?

I agree with everything you said. I still just don't see the benefit of one-per-case over something like two-per-case.

I kinda like the snarky Zach variant. Shakes things up; keeps you on your toes. Like mild mannered Clark Kent turning into: Or not.

Haha! That made me laugh. Reductio Ad Absurdum using an insignificant element of my overall critique. Ultra-rare, one-per-case figures run the risk of stopping casual buyers from attempting to complete a collection. This is different from casual buyers remaining casual buyers who continue to pick up random blind bags every time they stop at Walmart. And it's different from casual buyers being comparison shoppers for impulse items which I'm not sure even exists. If a casual buyer gets hooked, sees an accompanying checklist, and decides they are going to "Collect Them All", the one per case situation is going to eventually become evident. Either through a frustratingly futile attempt to find the rare, or with the sky high prices they soon discover on eBay. So in the short term, sales may be high. But long term, I'm arguing you are going to forego building a repeat customer base for the line. People are going to give up because they won't be able to complete a collection because you've given thieves and scalpers incentives to cherry-pick out the rares. I don't see any benefit of a one-per-case rare strategy outweighing the benefit of an assortment strategy like the Lego Simpsons blind bags. Finally, didn't DST already go through a similar headache back when the TRU exclusives were short-packed one per case? This seems like the same situation, only this time with blind bags.

I think YB is probably right about Predator. His analysis makes sense. No one has yet mentioned Dr. Who which was a frequent license speculation on MMMV awhile back. I know design work was done. Doesn't totally fit with Halloween though. I'm kinda hoping for the return of MAX Zombies. Not really a new line though. The Nightmare Before Christmas property seems to show up eternally in every possible collectible line, so I could see it debuting. It would be weird going into Hot Topic to buy Minimates though. My final guess (dream/hope) is DST will re-launch their zombies under a new line called MAX Monsters. In addition to the previously designed zombies, we will get ghosts, skeletons, vampires, demons, werewolves, swamp monsters, ghouls, goblins, witches, bigfoots, reptilians, mad scientists, giants, mummies, phantoms, cyclopes, minotaurs, grey aliens, jinn, gorgons, trolls, ogres, and sirins.

I paid $3.99 per pack at the Lego store in Walt Disney World, Florida. I haven't seen any in the Los Angeles TRUs yet and I haven't checked my closest Lego store in northern Los Angeles. The Lego store in Florida was packed with tourists, and every person in line making a purchase had a handful of these. My rather limited impression of these is that they are a big hit. With my first purchase they had several large full stocked bins by the checkout. Two days later with my return visit to the same store, I found the bins only half full.

No ASM2 Minimates with the ASM2 toys at my store, but I do see several pegs of TV Walking Dead figures in the Collectibles aisle. Looks like they also had a Walking Dead zombie bank (from DST?) I think we should be on the look out for Minimates showing up at Ross or TJMaxx stores again. TRU pegwarmers seem to vanish on occasion, only to show up months later at Ross stores. I don't believe the large stock of clearanced mates could have sold out so quickly. My stores are bare and they had heaps of unsold, clearanced Minimates warming the pegs.

It always ends in Moe's bar passed out drunk next to Lego Barney. It's how these addictions always go...

I don't collect LEGO minifigures either as I don't really care for the overall design aesthetic, but the Simpsons minifigures somehow work really well imho. I think it is the sculpted heads that translate the cartoon style so well. They don't seem like typical LEGO minifigures and I think you would like them BHM (if you like Simpsons at all). I don't want to de-rail this thread so I'll direct further discussion to the Simpsons Lego Thread.

I'm not sure what part of my logic was getting twisted but I'll try to reframe for clarity. (Note: I don't expect my criticism to change DST decisions, but as an end consumer I want the manufacturer of a product I love to have my perspective). I'm not criticizing blind bags or 50% main character case distribution. I am being critical of the one per case as it seems unnecessary with blind bags, it encourages scalpers and thieves, AND it encourages comic shop owners to open blind bags and re-price. You may hope comic shop sellers do well with that practice, but they are utterly defeating your blind bag system. Who will pay $3.99 at Target for a random figure when they can get a main figure at a comic shop for $1.99? I think I've made my case and I don't expect DSTZach needs to reply to me. I don't want to beat a dead horse and I'm starting to sound like it! As a hard-core collector, I have no personal stake in the matter. If comic shop owners or scalpers are successful in finding and re-selling the variant, it makes it easier for me as a hard core collector. I'll spend less money. But I think you risk losing out on turning casual buyers into more serious collectors.

I put down and voted for a write-in candidate: Toad. Then I voted for him four times.

Based on your first line, I'm going to assume you are somewhat directing your answer at my criticism. But I don't think it directly addresses my main critique - why a one per case if blind bagged? Having a case mix with 50% main characters makes sense to me to appeal to first time buyers. I'm not critical of that. But you can have a 50% main character mix without throwing in a one-per-case rare. One doesn't require the other. I disagree that casual buyers will keep buying while only tolerating supporting characters. The pool of main characters in most properties is small. With TMNT, once the casual buyer finds the four turtles two things will happen: 1) They are done and toss aside any unliked supporting characters they inadvertently purchased during their blind bag search, or 2) they get bitten by the collecting bug and realize their four turtles can't exist without Splinter and April. And now they need Shredder. What's Shredder without a Foot henchmen. And so on. I can get why small business retailers might like the idea of a one per case rares. If you can sell 18 bind bags for $3.99 each that's $71.82 per case sold. If the retailer opens the blind bags and re-prices based on rarity, they could opt to price based on "true odds". With a 50% chance of getting a main character for $3.99 blind bag the odds are even so main characters could be priced at $1.99. Odds are 4:5 that you will get a supporting character so you could price those at $4.78 each. Odds of getting the variant are 1:17 which means you could price the variant at $67.83. Retailers would have a strong incentive to open the bags and price based on odds to get $123.98 per case sold rather than the expected retail price from selling blind bags. I think not trying to create more completionist buyers is a mistake. In essence, you are hoping casual buyers buy more Minimates not because they actually want all of the figures but because they are gambling on blind bags in an attempt to get the figures they do actually want. I think this sells Minimates short. Blind bags should result in casual buyers purchasing characters that they wouldn't normally intend to buy, but end up enjoying the product so much that they go back to get the rest. My argument is that once they see the figure priced $67.83 on eBay, they will decide the effort is too fruitless because they can't justify spending that much on a single figure to complete the set.

Like Lobsterman and Youbastards, I have very mixed feelings about this announcement. For the purposes detailing my concerns, I'm going to assume the blind bags will be for TMNT and the expanded outlets will include Wal-Mart and Target. As a completist collector who has all but only a handful of produced Minimates, the one-per-case figure bothers me. I tolerated it with the previous Army Builder case dumps, because owning multiples of a single army builder was acceptable. I generally like multiple army builders and these army dumps were infrequent. But this will be one variant per case with the rest of the case fleshed out with multiple non-army builders of which I don't care to have duplicates. The one-per-case also bothers me because it seems unnecessary. If the items are blind bagged, why not offer an even distribution of figures? I like the fact that the LEGO Simpsons figures are evenly distributed. I don't think I'd have bothered with collecting the entire line if there was a one figure per case chase figure that I'd likely never find. You cannot prevent cherry picking. Someone will hack a method for finding the chase making it harder for the average person to get. I don't think the one-variant-figure-per-case method will be successful long term. You will get the initial success of people buying multiple bags trying to find the chase figure. You will also get initial success from hard-core collectors who buy an entire case for the lone variant. But you will also get: 1) Bags opened in big box stores, 2) Comic retailers opening all bags and re-pricing the figures for individual sale, and 3) Scalpers who will inevitably figure out a way to cherry pick the chase. The result will be the following: Characters of which there are multiples will eventually drop below retail at comic stores, depressing blind bag sales at big box retailers (if you just want the main four turtles, why risk blind bags? Go to a comic shop and pick up the four you want for a discount). The variant will be priced out for soft-core completist collectors. These are collectors who would collect an entire line but shy away from paying anything beyond retail for the figures. In my humble opinion, a better strategy for increased sales would be turning casual/impulse buyers into soft-core completionist collectors. Few people transform from grabbing a few Minimates as an impulse purchase at the retail counter to throwing $75 bucks at a hard to find variant. More likely, they get a few figures, like them and go searching for more. Eventually they discover there is a super rare hard to find variant going for $75 on eBay. After a few failed attempts to find one resulting in 7 duplicate Leonardos, the potential completist collector will either 1) give up or 2) drop big bucks on eBay to continue being a completist. If they give up, they will lose interest in collecting further waves of figures. Who wants another 7 duplicate Leonardos from Wave 2? Frankly, I think LEGO Simpsons has the right approach for blind bags. The announced plan is a copy of the Kubrick method, and I don't think it will be successful long term.

Whenever his name is uttered, I shall appear.