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So… Why do you collect minimates?


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So… Why do you collect minimates?

Recently, I have been wondering why some of you guys collect minimates. So many times in the last 10 yrs I have heard of someone only collecting a particular theme/license/character/etc…which is fine, but there is a reason I ask this now. In the last year or so I have been hearing more and more that people will pick up something, like Thundercats, because they look cool, even if they don’t know anything about them. I have also heard the opposite, and I’m paraphrasing here “man, they look great, but… I wont get them because I never watched the show and don’t know who any of them are, or have no connection to the show or characters”.

So, I got to thinking. Do you like minimates? Or is it more about the characters that are made into minimates? Or something like it being a fairly small, and fairly easy to collect type of toy? Or that minimates are made with a universal body type which covers many different characters/movies/themes/etc. Or maybe they are fun and very customizer friendly?

I’ll answer this too, but I want to keep the first post fairly short.

There are a few more things I wonder about, which I can get to later on if this thread doesn’t go too far off course. I’d like to keep the discussion positive, because I love minimates, and just want to know why you guys love them too? Is this something you guys/gals(?) would like to talk about?

I ask again... Why do you collect minimates?

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It is a multi-level reason for me.

I enjoy:

the relative ease of being able to just go into a store and buy the figures

the ease of customization

the team building ability you find with most licenses

the wide range of licenses. You can have Mutants interacting with the characters from Back to the Future!

the sculpting at times (One of the best aspects of Battle Beasts)

the amount of accessories and spare body parts for alternate looks

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Way back when, I went into my local comic shop to see highly colourful, articulated versions of both DC and Marvel characters (DCD wave 1 & the Spidey 5-pack), that wouldn't take up much room, and didn't cost an arm and a leg. I bought a load, went straight home to look them up online. Just couldn't believe I'd not seen them earlier... got me back into Superhero comics, truth be told.

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They're cheap, have a wide selection of licences and characters (who thought that marvel could go on for 50 plus waves and that we'd get a spymaster figure?), have great articulation, don't take a lot of room, are easy to customize and the company who makes them is great and communicates a lot with us! What more to ask for?

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I collect Minimates because I like mini-figures and they are the best IMO. I used to pick up Lego and Kubrick figures, but both can be expensive, hard to come by, and really not very poseable. I saw the version 1 Hulk Minimate and that was all she wrote. I still pick up licenses that I don't have a strong love for, but really like them as Minimates. For instance, I am not a fan of Jak & Daxter, but they are cool Minimates. I wouldn't buy a statue or typical 3.75" or 6" action figure of these characters, but really like the Minimates.

Also, I used to collect every single Minimate line that came out. However, with the increasing volume of licenses that are getting the Minimate treatment, display room dictates that I look at a line and decide whether or not I want to include it. I am not a big modern Battlestar Galactica fan, so I have a few and may go back and collect those I don't have at a later date, but for now I'd like to use the effort and space on something else. Plus, who knows what else DST has in store? The Aliens line is going to need a spot in my collection...

One last thing, the people of this community and cool guys like DSTChuck and DSTZach keep my interest in this line very strong. Not very many industry guys cater to their fans like they do. I have friends here all across the country I live in and all across the planet.

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Its a number of reasons for me:

  1. The huge range of characters
  2. I always enjoy the potential of having a completed team displayed
  3. Easy access to buying them
  4. They're not really that expensive ( which is always a good thing)
  5. They dont take up alot of room compared to bigger figures/collectables
  6. In some cases, they have introduced me to lesser known marvel character ( crossbones for example).
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I started, oddly enough, back near the beginning when Venom was first released...had black spidey, Venom, and Carnage... after that never really thought about them...and my originals were lost to the test of time...

Then they came out with Ghostbusters Minimates, and I was hooked. I've always been a GB fanatic and when I saw the range of characters (as well as the details, and accessories) released in such a short amount of time I fell in love with the little guys so much that I made a website dedicated to them.

Now, after GB & RGBs runs all done (until the new set comes out) I collect my favorite marvel characters. Various Spider-Men, 90s x-men, etc...

Where my collection goes from here, only time will tell.

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Well this is an interesting question, good one Nervous! My first Minimate was the 3 inch Gene Simmons one. I had gotten out of collecting toys because they were too bulky to display a bunch in limited space and getting too pricey really. My wife and I found the 3 inch KISS and Star Trek ones and I thought they were pretty neat, being so different from anything else out there. A year later when I saw the Marvel ones in 2 packs and at the 2 inch scale I was even more intrigued! I really missed collecting toys and long story short these were perfect! To echo what Shane said, I used to collect them all, no matter the line but I have taken a step back on that and now only collect the lines I really enjoy and will cherry pick out of the other lines stuff that I like or find useful! Minimates have brought me a lot of joy in the past 11 years as well as many new friends...I think that is pretty good for some 2-3 inch plastic action figures!

Jeff of the Miniacs

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For me, the first thing is that I just like the way they look. They appeal to me on an aesthetic level. I'm talking the basic Minimate structure mind you--the sculpting can sometimes go overboard and detract from what I perceive to be the distinctive nature of Minimates. The second, related thing is the level of detail and options. Blue Beetle and Booster Gold were my gateway drugs, because I liked the characters, and I thought they were neat looking "LEGO guys." But when I took them home I really started realizing how dang cool they were. The articulation was phenomenal. The details were small but crisp and vivid. You could remove their masks and see their faces beneath! I went back and bought up some more DC guys. . .then went back and got some more, etc.

But longer term they have appealed to me due to the vast array of licenses (many of which I like) and uniformity. It is cool being able to pose Madonna next to Marty McFly next to Peter Venkman, next to the T-800, next to the Man with No Name, next to 500 different Spider-Men (this is also something that feeds my unfortunate 1/6 scale addiction). There is a value in the fact that the line is still vibrant, and more figures/licenses are coming out all the time. I think my interest in Kubricks has really waned, in part, because the line has stalled (though I don't think they are as aesthetically pleasing as Minimates). And like Shane, I think this community has also played some role. This is by far the best forum I've ever been a member of, and I've met lots of people here (in a manner of speaking) who keep me coming back.

But I generally don't collect licenses I don't care for, or characters I don't think are attractive Minimates. The fact that so many Minimates still get purchased by me is a testament to DST's ability to do things right in my eyes.

Edited by karamazov80
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Because I'm not a toy collector and one or two on my desk would look cool, esp that Iron Man...

Well that's how it started, it's funny I hear about you guys that picked up wave 1 and feel like a complete newb as I started at wave 6, yep the Iron Man/GhostRider set was my first set.

Nearly 10 yrs later I have literally thousands of the little blighters and although I loved the early minimates for their simplicity I'm amazed how far the line has come.

I love that they are almost all the same scale ( Thanks for sticking to your guns on that one Chuck!) & cover so many licenses.

I love that they are easily taken apart and put back together, and with a little imagination even those with little paint/sculpting skills can make some awesome customs an modifications

Finally, as others have said the community rocks, whether its the guys here who have gone from people on the internet to become friends or just that folks here treat each other with kindness and respect like no other place I've seen on the internet.

T.

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I was 14 when i had my first minimates and they had consisted of Bruce Lee and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. It was instant love; Everything from the level of detail, accessories, and most importantly the articulation. I am also a big fan of miniatures and mini figures alike, but it's hard to come by a brand that injects the same level of quality like minimates. Even for 3 inches the size was perfect for diorama creation and displays. I had such awesome moments with those little guys.... I digress, but then the marvel minimates had came along and i had mostly just gotten sets based on my favorite heroes and villains such as spider man and blade. The years come and go and my collection had waned over time due to external circumstances such as getting myself established out in the world and joining the military and overseas deployments.( it was tough resisting the urge to make a purchase knowing in the back of my mind i'm in a temporary area and leaving in a few weeks, months, etc....) but not a day went by that i didn't check out minimate headquarters or various other toy sites looking to see which new character or license i need to pick up once i get more settled. It actually wasn't until last year that i was able to get settled and pick up another license which was 24, then followed the Walking Dead, Uncharted, Expendables, & Street Fighter X Tekken. I'll catch up with marvel eventually but with 50 waves and counting it'll be a little while.

I'm now 24 years old and looking back as i type this and i see how uniform, simplistic, colorful, articulate, pieces of plastic crack sitting on the shelf in my man cave I can't help but feel that this was not an accident for me to get into this line, and it's an overwhelming feeling that there are other people all over that feel the same way i feel about this product,The Staff over at DST are greatly appreciated for all they do, It's been an eventful ten years with this line and it'll be a very, very long time before i part with these little fellas again.

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Well, to start with, I like the figures. I've always liked minifigures, but the Minimate body is so well-designed that it's much more like an action figure then any other minifig. But there's two things that really got me. One was the chance to get Marvel and DC characters in the same format. I didn't get into Minimates until the DC line started, because I've always been more of a DC guy. I'd bought a few Marvel ones when they went on clearance at Target, but they didn't become a thing I collect until I could stand Captain America next to Batman (it also helped that I had a friend at the time that was a Minimate collector, and he loaded me up with lots of his dupes). But the thing that really got me was the customizability. I can still clearly remember when I realized that I could take that Bruce Wayne head under Batman and put him on a different body and have a Bruce Wayne figure. As an action figure collector, I always wanted to be a customizer, but I never felt like I had the chops. Minimates allowed me to scratch that itch, pretty easily at first, though I soon realized that I'd have to push my skills if I really wanted to make everybody I wanted. Ultimately, I'd say it's the customizing that has kept me all this time, particularly now that I'm not getting any new DC 'mates.

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Ten or eleven years ago I got a fortune cookie that said I would find success and fortune soon by collecting a highly articulated mini block figure. I rushed out to TRU, found the LOTR 4 packs and quickly snatched them up. Now that I'm in the couple thousand Minimate club, I'm still wondering if I read that correctly since I'm still looking for both success and fortune.

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I actually got into minimates by accident, or because of an accident I should say. While I was away in the Marine Corps, my room at my parents' house flooded and ruined most of my comic book collection. After I got over my loss, I decided that hardcovers and trades would be the best way for me to rebuild so I began hunting down comic shops wherever I was stationed. I focussed my new collection on Wolverine and shortly after added action figures. Regular figures were going to be too much trouble to fit into my shared quarters so I decided to go with minifigures with minimates being the best of the bunch.

As far as my mate collection goes, its mostly character based like Wolvie, Cap, Deadpool, Cable, Spidey, IronMan Hulk and some others. Not big on collecting teams other than 90's X-men, Wolvie's Xforce and a Definitive Avengers team. The rest of my collection is made up of preferred characters: I have LionO but the rest are just fodder; I've got the Zombies and just Rick; and so on...

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My addiction started with the Spider-Man / Carnage 2-Pack about 9 years ago at Suncoast. I loved the shape of the body and the style of the tampos. I actually played with them - the first time I played with action figures in years. I told myself it would just be that one pack. A month later I had all of the Marvel Minimates that had been released so far. I started customizing Minimates in 2004. Today I have well over 1,000 Minimates in my own collection, and I have made over 500 custom Minimates. I love them for a lot of the same reasons listed above - small size, variety of characters and licenses, unique style, common scale, and customizing potential. And on top of that, they have become a cornerstore of my life through the toy store. But I don't think my passion would have lasted this long without MMV. :)

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I got into them thanks to MvC's line... then I saw the Marvel side, and I just couldn't stop.

I kick myself everyday for not getting into them sooner to get the stuff I wish I could get, but I love my collection, and I love them.

They are so fun to pose, so dynamic without being high budget, and the interchangable nature allows me to make my own perfect version of a character.

I don't like Legos cause I don't like the sets that much anymore, I just love the minifigs. But the lackluster selection and mandatory need of getting the set makes it a huge money sink. Minimates instead are way better in every regard.

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I haven't collected any action figures before, after I spent my childhood with Masters, Star Wars, MASK, GI Joe, etc. I was clean for over a decade and then I stumbled upon a pic in the internet, showing a tiny LEGO man looking just like Captain America who happened to be able to strap his shield on his back. Frack me, the desire for that guy struck me from nowhere. Of course I figured out that you couldn't buy this guy here in Germany. Anyway. A little research later, I found out about Minimates and picked up the Invaders set off of eBay. (Newbie, I know.) And damn, that guy rocked. The details were amazing, the interchangable parts just great and the articulation superb. I only needed that one little figure...

Then I stumbled upon this forum. Learned about customizing, which I actually never thought about before, since I haven't bought any figure for ages. Customs got me seriously hooked. The possibilities are incredible. I was able to have all figures from every minor story/movie/comic/cartoon I wanted. Just great.

So I usually collect characters that I like from all different lines and figures that offer a high potential for customization.

But, as some have already mentioned before, without this community, I wouldn't have stayed as long as I did so far.

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Back in 08'when i was on vacation in new York i visited a comic store and they had Iron Man/Spiderman Minimates , i thought oh cool' so i bought the Black Spiderman/Kraven package cause i knew them from the comics.

Been hooked ever since !

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I got into minimates around 7 years ago when i found the Punisher/Blade set on sale at target, i wasnt very well versed on Marvel or Mini figures apart from lego, but the extra articulation really drew me in, that was my first and only set for about a year until i found my first comic book store, i then grew my collection fast, by 2009 i had over 800 in my collection and it just kept growing.

I joined the board almost 6 years ago and have loved the community here and i definitely would say thats a big part of staying in the game so long

thanks for being fantastic guys :D

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I use to collect SW figures from Hasbro when they re-emerged in the collecting community way back in 1995 and nothing else. Then one day in 2003, my comic book provider suggested these little plastic block figures called Marvel minimates. I was instantly hooked. These little guys were tiny and had interchangeable parts. I had seen nothing like it before. I mean, name me a toy line were the Hulk could wear Daredevil's costume and ultimate Wolverine's hair at the same time? The years passed by and I met my beautiful wife. We eventually decided to move in together and that's when I made the decision to stop collecting on of my two big action figure passions. SW compared to minimates was getting waaaaay expensive to keep up with, so that era had to stop. Luckily for me, the minimate habit proved easier to fuel financially.

Ten years and hundreds of minimates later, I'm still going strong.

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Since my comment was a bit short i should elaborate as well. When i was younger one of my fiends told me about how he bought the NBC game from a site called ebay. Curious i set up an account and put some money in. Not knowing how to use the internet that well i ended up searching for some spider-man stuff and i stumbed upon a lot of minimates which consisted of: spidey 2099,the first venom,spider-carnage,iron man and ghost rider (funny thing is that they all ended up being broken and after some part swaping they are sitting in my workshop ready to be customized). A while later i bought the whole dc series 7 from ebay and it arrived just in time for Easter. After that i forgot all about them. Cut to a few years later (2011) and i sort of got back into the game. I would buy an series or two once a year but it's around the last few months that i've started buying army builders, completing teams and all that (i'm currently sitting at around 400 mates, it ain't so bad but i need to buy more!).

Edited by Kostisfire
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