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TMNT Minimates - it's official!


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5 hours ago, Josh2382 said:

...... I always feel disconnected from a line when you feel like it's difficult to piece together main characters or a team is left without a key member. It's like the Phoenix 5 mates and various teams such as that. 

DST seems to excel at this........unfortunately :confused:

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I always thought the budget that needed to be met was the reason for so many human characters and spreading out the mutants. 

Did it make the waves less interesting..yes and that probably hurt sales.

Also, the last two waves were released way too late and after the space episodes were almost done. That probably hurt sales as well.

Shame cause the new season has been really good with some characters I'd really like to have and as others have said without Shredder's main team the line is incomplete.

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On 2/21/2017 at 0:32 AM, JRSly said:

It was an extraordinarily weird and bull-headed decision to never look back and never bother with minimates of the most common, recurring henchmen or the great, really memorable mutants from the first seasons. Instead hedging their bets that the show would be space show forever from this point on, and not just a dozen episodes or so. 

We planned out Series 4 and 5 simultaneously, based on the next, upcoming season of the show at the time. I don't see how being current is bull-headed, and yet continuing to make characters who no longer appear on the show because their planet blew up is not. It was a lose-lose, because I can see the space suits and aliens being listed as a glaring oversight if we had not made them.

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8 hours ago, BuffaloDelorean said:

I think DST is generally pretty good about completing groups, with a few major exceptions like the Phoenix Five.

It's difficult not to agree with that either ..........:D

DST do a pretty good job but it doesn't hurt to ask why ?.......... sometimes. 

I always start with "look how many Iron Man variations we've had "...........currently 71 . That's a lot of Iron Man .  I love Iron Man but that's a lot of Iron Man .

Each of us has our personal (Marvel especially for me) minimate grail & I understand that that figure might not be too 'commercial'  but there is a seriously long list of saleable missing characters . 

That said, I may well write my own comic series & get it published by Marvel ......seems easy enough from what I've seen recently .

it would revolve around a WW2 Nick Fury sans eye patch teaming up with a 60's Swordsman (Duquesne), Deathlok  & Green-skirted Marvel Girl going in search of Ghost Rider's motorbike which has been stolen by The Toad ,The Enchantress,The Executioner & The Super Adaptoid .   Not much of a plot ........ but that's the idea these days isn't it :whistling:

Once published I reckon ol' Chuck will never being saying never ....er....ever.

 

 

This ought to be in another thread ...there undoubtedly is one or was one but I'm happy here .

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Well, she certainly has had very long hair, but it certainly varies, sometimes on the same page. Simonson and Art Adams have both drawn it about this length, and even Kirby drew her hair normal length when she was in human disguise. I do not know if a second Enchantress is coming, regardless.

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On 2/23/2017 at 9:56 AM, DSTZach said:

We planned out Series 4 and 5 simultaneously, based on the next, upcoming season of the show at the time. I don't see how being current is bull-headed, and yet continuing to make characters who no longer appear on the show because their planet blew up is not. It was a lose-lose, because I can see the space suits and aliens being listed as a glaring oversight if we had not made them.

There's certainly a fair amount of prognosticating and gambling. Just seemed like a whole lot of eggs in one basket instead of a mix of new and old. Space turtles, sure...But did we need space Casey and April, Salamandrian as urgently? Before Dogpound or Xever or Leatherhead or Mondo Gecko? I can't imagine a lot of complaints about getting to familiar characters because they were last seen on the show in the previous season. I think most fans interpret toy lines as all inclusive and by nature of the design and manufacturing don't expect them to be super trendy and as topical as a newspaper. And even still, we got Bishop and Chrome Dome in these last two series. But I can imagine they were more of a cost decision, I'm sure cost was a significant factor in why didn't get a ton of mutants over squeezing in more tertiary human characters that were cheaper to get out.

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Current is great. I love current. Current is a great strategy so long as your consumer is also current. Otherwise it might not be a terrible idea to also offer popular, in-demand characters no matter how long they appeared on the show. If we're going to base figure releases on screen time, Uncle Owen had almost twice as much time in A New Hope as Captain Phasma did in The Force Awakens.

 

It's also currently the 25th anniversary of Star Trek: The Next Generation but I saw nothing at Toy Fair about any celebratory Minimates. Maybe they were hidden.

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I agree with MisterPL. Current is fine, but if that is the case, how come we are getting waves in Marvel like 69? Marvel seems to be the exception to the current only mindset, and strangely surprisingly obviously is the only Minimates property to make it past assortment 5 (not counting D.C., which also didn't follow the never look back mentality).

Offering jumping on points for properties that theoretically have the legs to go the Marvel distance should make sense. Walking Dead and nick TMNT are two properties that could both have been be revived by going back to the beginning and offering main characters packed with new costars. This gives the collectors who have been with the line from the start a reason to keep buying, and it makes the line accessible to new collectors just discovering the minimates or the show/comic.

Minimates are the reason I got into BSG and TWD (and Halo). They are the reason I am still interested in the TMNT show and for reigniting my interest and passion in Aliens, Predator and NBX. If I wasn't in the know about Minimates, I probably wouldn't have discovered them from my love/casual interest in these non-Marvel properties, especially not from the start. 

Long and short of this? Marvel has always had a mixed bag approach to the line plan, and it is looking at turning 75 this year. Looking back isn't something that kills a line, clearly.

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I've said it before and i'll say it again, there is A LOT of good ideas/feedback shared on this board if someone were interested in listening, it just might help them market or design toys that sell, and I know we are not privy to all that goes into manufacturing or managing these toys but we are a good source of marketing research and our info is free. some companies pay big for this kind of consumer feedback or help in designing their products. Just saying.

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It's not as simple as good ideas/bad ideas. There can be two good ideas, and one may be right for a particular time/place/retailer.

The TMNT line was shared between comic shops and Toys R Us. So keeping things current for a younger, presumably more current audience was the way we chose to go. Obviously, most of the older TMNT fans here are not current on the new cartoon, but that doesn't mean others are not. Also, putting turtles in space suits seemed like a very smart way to go, because turtles in space suits. Without TRU, now we can focus on the classic characters older fans love, and which have been heavily requested both here and elsewhere. Hopefully, that resonates with people, both consumers and retailers.

Similarly, the specialty-exclusive Series 69 was an example of us taking character suggestions from the fans here -- a good idea, I think everyone here would agree. We chose to focus on Avengers requests because we'd done a lot of X-Men, but maybe we should have stuck with the X-theme, because I don't think the line did as well as prior waves. Maybe the theme was not as cohesive as series 60 or 68, maybe the characters were not current enough, maybe Enchantress's hair was just too damn short. But I think Series 72 did similar numbers for specialty, so who knows.

There are a lot of ideas here on the boards, and clearly we listen to them -- not just me, either. BUT a series of suggestions and comments and wish lists is not always actionable market research, as older collectors who are part of an online trading community are not our only customers. We need to take casual fans' interests and retailers' preferences into account. Even polls here do not necessarily represent the larger pie, and they are not always heavily voted in.

As far as Trek goes, a 25th anniversary is not really part of the definition of "current." As we roll out new TNG items (figure, role play), we will monitor sales, and see if there is an uptick from the anniversary/cyclical nostalgia. But last year was the 50th of TOS, and a movie year, and that didn't really work out for MM, or other products. I know the argument is that TNG has not been done for MM, but the question is whether retailers would see that as reason enough to buy them, with an underperforming film in the rearview and a heavily delayed show in the future, at some point. But I will keep putting in my two cents, as well as everyone else's, so we'll see.

 

 

 

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Also, comparing Marvel and DC to any other license is an impossible comparison. 50-year-old universes full of colorful, toyetic characters with regular, current media vs. ANY movie, TV show, etc., is a one-sided battle. Factor in the Marvel line's back-and-forth between comics and blockbuster films, and of course it's still doing okay. And I mentioned the specialty-exclusive aspect -- waves like 60, 68 and 69 are tailor-made for our primary retailer base: comic shops. It is only when a line is shared with TRU that we have to think about character selection so strongly, but it also gives us some leeway with comic shop orders -- if TRU is not on board, those comic shop orders make or break a line.

Let me reiterate that I respect and value the opinions and ideas of everyone here, even the people I butt heads with, but even I am not privy to all of the ins and outs that can affect production, character selection and licensing.

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37 minutes ago, DSTZach said:

Similarly, the specialty-exclusive Series 69 was an example of us taking character suggestions from the fans here -- a good idea, I think everyone here would agree. We chose to focus on Avengers requests because we'd done a lot of X-Men, but maybe we should have stuck with the X-theme, because I don't think the line did as well as prior waves. Maybe the theme was not as cohesive as series 60 or 68, maybe the characters were not current enough, maybe Enchantress's hair was just too damn short. But I think Series 72 did similar numbers for specialty, so who knows.

This kind of info is something I find very interesting. Zach, when a wave doesn't sell through as fast as hoped/projected, how much do you guys look at the reasons why? It seems like any given wave can have problems, but as a consumer and fan of waves like 60, 68, 69, & the upcoming awesomeness of 72, I guess I worry that the simple answer of "older Avengers isn't where it's at" or "MCU should get 80% of the releases" is the conclusion that might be jumped to. 

Does the performance of a wave like 69 hurt the chances of classic non X-themed characters being added to the line? 

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1 hour ago, pk13 said:

This kind of info is something I find very interesting. Zach, when a wave doesn't sell through as fast as hoped/projected, how much do you guys look at the reasons why? It seems like any given wave can have problems, but as a consumer and fan of waves like 60, 68, 69, & the upcoming awesomeness of 72, I guess I worry that the simple answer of "older Avengers isn't where it's at" or "MCU should get 80% of the releases" is the conclusion that might be jumped to. 

Does the performance of a wave like 69 hurt the chances of classic non X-themed characters being added to the line? 

We will always need/want 616 releases, whether they're timed to media like Wolverine, or released whenever there is no media tie-in. Before 69 we were worried about over-saturation of movie Avengers, and that limited the comic Avengers we did, while we had the opposite problem with the X-Men. But we aren't turning our back on the Avengers.

69 may have simply been too many fan-requested secondary characters and not enough A-list anchor characters. The theme of Most Wanted may not have captured the imagination of retailers like Fan Choice 50 and the team-completing 60 and 68 did.

Series 74 or 75 is non-X 616, and so is TRU 25.

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Has there been a definite reason why no more nick turtles and no more TRU turtles are a thing? 

The TRU backing out and allowing DST to focus on my fan requested characters, is that only going to be classic 80's turtles? how much effort is DST going to continue to put into classic turtles after those 2 waves? There is potential for more mutants with less sculpted parts, so I would hope there is more effort, but DST has done a great job in the last 2 years of canceling every non marvel line that reignited my original minimate spark and I can't say I like that very much.

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Y'see I just love the first 4 TMNT Minimates we got ............if I were not a completist then that would have been enough for me . They are superb Minimates & oh so different from much of what we had seen before in the Minimate line . The other characters & the various versions of ...er.. whatever there ...er..names are unimportant to me purely because in my particular case I have no nostalgic connection to anything else in the line .........4 TMNT Minimates was fine by me but licences don't come cheap & they have to be milked dry. 

 

My point is that I don't envy DST's character choice-makers  . 

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4 hours ago, arnim zola said:

Has there been a definite reason why no more nick turtles and no more TRU turtles are a thing? 

There are 3 FULL PEGS (that's a lot of 2-packs) of TMNT Series 4 & 5 not moving at my local TRU.  AND that's at a price point of $3.98, not even $7.49.  The Space episodes weren't nearly as good as the episodes from the other seasons but they were a lot of cool looking characters that played huge roles that we never got (Mona Lisa, Lord Dragg, Armaggon, etc.)

 

I'm just throwing this out there, but they might move sets to casual collectors/current fans if you could get all four Turtles in only two sets instead of having to buy all four sets.  Also, they would probably move more sets to hardcore collectors if army builders like Kraang or Foot Soldiers were paired together.  I

 

know they probably have their own way that they like to do it but here's how I would've done the pairings for Retro Series 1 & 2

 

Leonardo & Donatello

Shredder & Splinter

Foot Soldier & Foot Soldier

Casey Jones & April O'Neil

 

Michelangelo & Raphael

Bebop & Rocksteady

Baxter & Krang

Foot Soldier & Foot Soldier

Edited by MisterMiracle
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7 hours ago, DSTZach said:

69 may have simply been too many fan-requested secondary characters and not enough A-list anchor characters. The theme of Most Wanted may not have captured the imagination of retailers like Fan Choice 50 and the team-completing 60 and 68 did.

Series 74 or 75 is non-X 616, and so is TRU 25.

I do think wave 69 probably had too many obscurities. The Avengers have had a massive boost in popularity because of the MCU, but only one character in 69 had appeared in a movie (two if you count Coulson).

I think DST should try to find a balance between this series and something like Series 44, with mix of A-listers and obscure new characters, and maybe even some B-list Avengers, who don't get their own movies but still have a clear presence (Black Widow, Vision, Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver...).

Team-completing waves like 60 and 68 are fantastic, and I've always found completing them more satisfying than other waves.

I thought you said 74 was going go be Ragnarok, or is that what you meant by "74 or 75"? Neither 74/5 or TRU 25 being X-themed makes me think BMH's two characters aren't Marvel Girl or Toad. In any case, I'm excited for new comic Marvel and hope the TRU exclusives aren't too hard to find.

 

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