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22 hours ago, MisterPL said:

 

Why not both? Is the Who fandom as fractured as Trekkies seem to be?

No, I don't think so, but I think Classic Who is an easy sell. With the first female Doctor on the horizon, there's really no way to gauge if the show will reach new levels of interest or plummet to the bottom of the ocean. And frankly, since Matt Smith's Doctor came on, new Who merchandise has struggled to make that connection with a lot of audiences. Even though there has been a ton of it. Much like Polarboy said, it's hard sometimes to figure out what characters from the new seasons would make good figures to have and often by the time toy companies do, the pegs are clogged with pointless characters.

I think if you started with the 4th, you'd see great sales, you could do some other Doctors and villains and eventually work into "New Who" with Tennant and such if need be and by the time they got to the "current" stuff, we'd know if it was a hit and what characters to choose from. Let the 13th get a few seasons under her belt before trying to make characters from that time frame.

But as I understand it, they're two totally different licenses as well. And I suspect Classic would work well, even though lots of places want to push what's new and current, I think with Who you should start in the middle and work both directions.

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DST doesn’t have an Amazon store they run like NECA. Amazon itself buys some DST products and the rest is from others sellers on Amazon.

The only online store DST has is on their website. No idea how much they sell through but I’ve never heard of anyone using it.

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What makes me sad about Minimates is that I think the base figure itself is easily the best minifigure out there. I mean, you look at Megablox figures, and those terrible NBA and WWE ones, and there's just no comparison. Even the classic Lego minifig, while not without its' charm, is nowhere near a Minimate IMHO. But there's no recognition of that, so Minimates often languish next to these other lines.

I think that there's a lot of creativity that goes into the figures; the recent Spider-Man/Chameleon set is a great example of that. DST has often been great at figuring out cool little wrinkles to add value to these sets. But at the same time I think the format of product has stagnated a bit; we've basically only seen two-packs and four-packs for years now. I'd like to see some more innovation there.

I think that Minimates, unfortunately, often play against their strengths. The best Minimates, almost universally, are those that are colorful and distinctive. Too often, though, we see drab figures of people in normal clothes. Not particularly exciting. I also think that Minimates have been hamstrung by some unfortunate choices in recent years; they got on the Pirates of the Caribbean bandwagon way too late, and movies like Dark Tower and Alice Through the Looking Glass were flops with little demand for product. I wish DST were a little better at identifying properties that might have more long term appeal, but that said I recognize that DST can't always choose what gets made. It's not like they don't want to make Star Wars, or WWE, or Indiana Jones, or Doctor Who, or any one of a number of licenses that could be a real breakthrough.

I worry about the future of Minimates. TRU is going to be a huge blow. There's a lot of potential Minimates lines that will never see the light of day without TRU to back them up because the sales at specialty shops won't be enough. Marvel has been the tentpole property for so long that I wonder realistically how long that can last. I think that Chuck has done an excellent job guiding the ship these fifteen years, but I definitely feel like Minimates have peaked. I just hope they are able to settle into a nice level if they are never going to move up to the next one.

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Whenever the "colorful" thing is brought up I think it says more about the commenter's biases than the product. I'd argue that those civilians and alter egos make minimates just as unique as any of their other strengths. My MCU collection is much more extensive because of it.

Also, I think I have to defend MB figures a little. Claiming there's "no comparison" to minimates is pushing things a little. The articulation is very similar. The amount of detail, sculpted and tampos, is impressive. If you look at the properties you can directly compare MB has done an excellent job, I'd take their Star Trek and Turtles product over DST's if I had to pick one. They have a different approach but they're still very good little action figures.

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So I recall there's a new retailer jumping on board that may be announced at sdcc? So I don't EVER recall seeing this before (and again big city/lots of retail), but we were just in a Walmart yesterday and walked past series one of the Kingdom Hearts Vinimates in the electronics section.

Not that crap walking dead collector type section by the self checkouts that no one looks at, but a high exposure area. I was excited, by my wife's expression, she... She was not.

 

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I had seen the KH Vinimates and Selects at one Walmart by accident.

I have not seen them at 7 Walmarts while actually looking for them. 

Talk about a retailer with poor distribution. Walmart, in my experience, is significantly worse at distribution than Walgreens or TRU have ever been.

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I noticed that over the weekend, too (which is pretty odd since I'm rarely at Walmart). They also stocked Kingdom Hearts Select figures. Happy to see DST getting the business. Hopefully it turns into something wonderful for Minimates collectors, too.

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Vinimates seem to be getting into stores that Minimates do not, probably because consumers are more interested in vinyl figures than they are in minifigures. Carrying Kingdom Hearts Select figures is a good sign though. Walmart would definitely not be my choice to carry Minimates (I've boycotted them for several years) but I'm all for anything that keeps the miniflame alive (I just might need some of you to help me acquire the figures).

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 Gamestop could be another retailer for the video game licenses we got. They already have the Kingdom Hearts Vinimates there too. Sonic could possibly be there, it makes sense. But they might only want the vinyls. 

They also own ThinkGeek which we just got one at our mall. Its another hobbyist/collector shop that sells niche figures and toylines. Although they are not as widespread with only 38 locations at the moment.

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6 hours ago, hellpop said:

Vinimates seem to be getting into stores that Minimates do not, probably because consumers are more interested in vinyl figures than they are in minifigures. Carrying Kingdom Hearts Select figures is a good sign though. Walmart would definitely not be my choice to carry Minimates (I've boycotted them for several years) but I'm all for anything that keeps the miniflame alive (I just might need some of you to help me acquire the figures).

I wonder though if Walmart’s price busting may further alienate LCS and threaten the online retailers?

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40 minutes ago, Mattallica said:

geez i hope its not Gamestop, as I've heard  they are having money troubles and may be headed the TRU route,

so it probably is them.

Well that's not good. I hope that's not true. 

 

For personal and financial reasons.

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3 hours ago, thereasonsy said:

I wonder though if Walmart’s price busting may further alienate LCS and threaten the online retailers?

Select figures were $19.99 and the Vinimates were $9.99. The Select assortment was the slimmer character packs that TRU and Target have gotten, not the 3 packs that go to specialty.

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I keep having this crazy notion that the new retailer could be Barnes and Noble.  With their expanded toy/hobby section and a desire to reach beyond just print media, it seems like they're the perfect candidate.  Not that it's any more stable than Gamestop at the moment, but whatever.

 

Regardless, I guess we'll find out in a few days.

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