Barry

Swappable parts was indeed a licencing restriction, not something in itself we weren't able to use.

There's a lot of strange decisions that are made, but they're usually done either to avoid a legal issue, or to try and help a product get made (believe it or not). Decisions like the packaging would often be a way to make sure two companies with similar category products could be at retail at the same time. The first company might say no other company could make product, then the licencing company would float by certain ideas to them until they liked one that would allow both products to be around at the same time. So in this case, (and I'm hypothesizing here, I honestly don't know why exactly our rule was in place) the first company might've said no, Marvel might've said 'what if your product could be fully visible at retail, and theirs couldn't?' and then they agreed. So, it's an odd rule, but it's better than them saying we couldn't do it at all. For Universal, I wonder if it was due to similarities with The Munsters, or another competing Frankenstein prior to all of those monsters being public domain. Like the packaging example, it was probably a concession between Company A and Company B. "No other Frankensteins!" / "What if ours was green...?" Same goes for Batman's Mad Hatter being Jervis Tetch on product now. Alice in Wonderland is public domain, but they just don't want Disney sniffing around. I always found that weird though, because the DC one's debut was 3 years prior to the Disney movie, but it's possible DC never got rights to use him from the book whereas Disney did.

I completely understand the pain of retail exclusives when you live in another country, as I don't live in the US either. It's better now than it was before, but 20 or so years ago it was absolutely terrible. I don't want to know how much I spent on shipping and customs to get retail Star Wars exclusives over the years. Even as it was, I didn't get all of the Minimates I worked on, and frequently had to buy them. Over time, the factory helped me out as I became the go-to approver, but I actually bought my own comps for many a year there, which really kind of defeats the purpose. Even as it was, I was frequently trying to prove to customs that I shouldn't be charged for approval samples. They always thought I was importing the whole run of the product for distribution tax free. That was ALWAYS a joy... DC's package was good, although as a former comic shop manager, I disliked the round blisters. They don't stay in nice piles that way. Flat surfaces are the way to go! Regardless, they are some of the nicest ones when hung separately. Just don't ask me to arrange them in nice stacks. The Marvel package only giving a peek into the box was a licencing issue. It began with no figure visible, then we managed to get half the figure visible. Not ideal, but we worked with it. There was supposed to be a corresponding Target 2pack wave that would have released alongside the Spider-Man Torment 5pk. It was actually previewed in ToyFare magazine, although not all figures were shown. Most of the figures were reconfigured and released elsewhere, but not 100% as designed for the 2pks. The set was Torment Spider-Man & Powerhouse Venom, Melee Symbiote Spider-Man & Powerhouse Sandman, Civil War Spider-Man & Transformation Venom, and Web Armour Spider-Man & Transformation Green Goblin.

I was just speculating on why people may have felt the DC releases were stronger, and that it wasn’t due to DC doing anything differently since they weren’t involved creatively. It may simply have been that working on a fresh IP energized the same artists behind the other lines. Citing TRU Wave 1 is amusing to me, because in my mind it doesn't exist. I honestly have to look up what was in the wave when people talk about it to remind myself. It was developed as Waves 21, 22, and 24. When TRU Was interested, those were all in the hopper ready to go, so we put a wave together for them, with the idea that they would have exclusives created specifically for them by Wave 2. I know Tony and the Stealth Iron Man were an EX, but really they were developed for the movie. I have no files for Wave 1, my folders start with TRU Wave 2. Anyway, W24 (as I'll call it, apologies) was the beginning of what became the regular team of Robert, Uriel, and myself working on the line. Robert really wanted to push the brand and do things that they weren't doing before. Musculature, alternate parts, details like striations in hair, extra tampo, removable masks for characters... That did begin to some extent with Wave 17, but I think 24 is were we really got to shine on it. 17, 18, 21, and 22 were all movie based, so while we were pushing things, it was still more within the boundaries of working on a movie licence where reference might not have been available, or where looks of characters were not solidified until later in the process. I began with Wave 17, and we experimented with ways to make things different even then. I drew rounded head Spider-Men, ones with sculpted webbing, all sorts of different ideas. We settled on the more traditional, but we knew we wanted to advance later. Not to say that 19, 20, and 23 were not advancing, but they were definitely transition waves. Some designs included there were designed for much earlier waves, so they might've felt dated. (Not to say that they were bad at all, but they were designed with the idea that they would fit the aesthetic of the earlier waves.) Then you had me, new to the team, still figuring out the style and getting comfortable with the aesthetics. Uriel was doing his usual beautiful work, and then also supporting me to bring me more on model, tweaking my designs where needed. I had a bit of a test prior to those waves with some one-offs (Civil War Spider-Man for the ill-fated Target Spider-Man Classics, the Defenders box set, US Agent and Taskmaster), but by 24 everything kind of ironed out. I understood it a bit more, and knew how to work in the parameters. Uriel, yet again, was doing his usual beautiful work but didn't have to support me as much, and Robert really solidified the direction he wanted to go in. As mentioned, there's evidence to all this from 17 to 24, but because of the movies and the older unused designs making their way in, it's not as noticeable until you hit 24, where all designs were new for that wave. We knew at the time that this wave was special, and we were super excited for it. I think part of it was kind of knowing that the trajectory was now upward. 24 had characters that hadn't been made, but we also were remaking ones that were done before. It was a moment where you felt that if we were able to retread but also iterate and have consumers come along for the ride then we'd done something right. And while all the elements we brought to that wave eventually had to calm down a bit due to rising costs, it still helped us forge a new direction in what the line was, and where it could go from here. And not to say that every wave after that was better than the last, we still were figuring things out as we went, but it just seemed a bit clearer from there.

They were still designed in house by the same group of people, so it might've just been the change of scenery that helped refresh the artists a bit.

The character choices for this line were not made by us, and I do know that certain selections were driven by personal preferences, but that was the discretion of those individuals. I believe the line would have looked very different if done by conventional means. Designs for Waves 9 and 10 were produced without our involvement. At the time, it was decided that the art team could be removed from the process in order to reduce costs, based on the idea that the existing library of control art was enough to assemble new designs with minimal additions. My understanding is that the line did not move forward because removing us from the process also impacted the ability to continue using the brand. The lineup was: Wave 9 – Darkseid & Orion; No Man’s Land Batman & Two-Face; Alan Scott Green Lantern & Solomon Grundy; Zatanna & The Atom Wave 10 – Plastic Man & Martian Manhunter; Cassandra Cain Batgirl & Tim Drake Robin (One Year Later Uniform); Beast Boy & Terra; Jade & Kyle Rayner Green Lantern (Second Uniform) I do have those images, but I won’t be sharing them, as I disagree with how they were developed. The intent was to replace our team, and some elements were also taken from designs I created prior to my time at the company. Those particular designs were never purchased or licensed and therefore were used without authorization.

DC in general, those were very early on for me and I feel that I could design them a LOT better now. I still like what I did, but they feel a bit dated. I only worked on Classic Batman, Nightwing, Starfire, Raven, Cyborg, Red Son Superman, and Red Son Wonder Woman. I sort of had a chance to redo the waves I didn't work on when it came to Vinimates. I began with New 52 styles at first because that was the new hot thing, but as interest in those slowed down, I realized that Bronze Age looks were more interesting at least to me, and a pretty core group of collectors. I switched gears, but it was too late and the line finished. And yet, even though they were kind of a redo of the Minimates, if I could redo those themselves, they would all be Bronze Age from the get-go. There's the odd figure here and there that I would update now too, like comic book First Class Jean Grey. She just looks off to me. I would update her tampo and choose a better hair piece, but at the time we went hog wild into reusing the BSG TRU wave hair pieces since there were so many options available. Now, I would choose something with more body. I would also update some of the MCU ones to be a little more faithful. At times, we didn't have much to go on, maybe just concept art, or some shots of costumes on hangers. Sometimes we had an actor's name, but no picture of them in costume. Star-Lord was one of those, we knew it was Chris Pratt, but not that he got into MCU-shape for the role. We assumed he was going to look a little more like he did on Parks N Rec, which is why his face is not quite accurate to the movie. I also think in general I was not as good at likenesses then as I am now.

This is why I can’t find a job.

No, I wasn't, I began in November 2006. I did get the stands made though. I was frustrated with my own display constantly dominoing over, especially when I was picking figures out to try combinations of old parts to see if they worked together. So, I proposed the idea of the stands, figuring others were also experiencing the same frustration.

Yeah, it's funny if you look at the old figures how they aren't quite symmetrical. The most noticeable point is that one leg sits lower than the other, making all early figures stand with a bit of a lean. That was the main reason why we revisited the body, the lean drove Robert and I crazy. The foot was indeed the replacement to the C3 smaller foot. Peg hole aside, which ended up to be very useful after we introduced stands (for my own selfish purposes, but I knew others would benefit too!) I think the smaller foot fits the aesthetic better.

It really depends on which body you're using. There were many updates to the tooling over the years. The last 'official' one, in that it was a complete overhaul, was 2012 when we digitally recreated the body from the ground up thus eliminating the lack of symmetry in the previous versions. From there, some tweaks were made though. Prior to that, there were some tweaks as well, such as the foot replacement. My own measurements would be the only official ones I suppose, in that I used them to create the tampo files. I basically measured dozens of figures and averaged them out to eliminate human error of using my calipers. Because of the surfaces I needed to measure though, some measurements would be lacking such as the circumference of the hands as they were not able to be completely tampo covered. I had a measurement for the area that was able to have tampo applied to it. When we got the digital bodies, I was able to confirm the new measurements needed for tampo, but I didn't ask to get anything else. A digital base body was used by the sculptors, but the only measurement for that given was it was an overall height from head to toe and a side view width / thickness. They would have been able to measure any other parts, but it was not necessary for my approvals. I only needed to know the overall height and width of the newly sculpted parts, which was called out each time. If I needed something called out, I would ask, but it was not a good use of their time to give me each specific measurement if it wasn't really needed.

Totally forgot, we designed Onslaught's final form... I never assembled the sheet though. I forget what wave it was intended for.

Generic singles isn't anything that I'm aware of, but then I was left out of a lot of meetings. I'm sure Robert and I could've discussed the idea of doing something like that at one point, akin to the Pathfinder characters, but it was never a concrete direction that we were headed in. The Minimates line was based solely on characters in the style of their appearances in the 80s cartoon. The general licence was held for other products though, and I can't see why it would have been exclusive to the show for MMs, so I suppose we could have done something with generic characters, but it was never seriously discussed. Thanks about the boxes, I was pretty proud of those! I used to sell D&D modules when I worked in a hobby / comic shop, so that was the first thing I thought of when coming up with ideas. I wanted them to be a bit more fancy looking in terms of a bound book with gilded pages though. I actually had set 3's box done, since the layout was already complete. It just needed the mascot and key art, so I did it on a free day.

I actually wrote this up before, so if you'll permit me to quote myself, then read on! I'll also add that Lego's systems of tampo application are far more advanced than ours were. They are completely automated, whereas ours were more hand-operated due to the small production numbers in comparison to Lego. The automation creates more precise application for less chance of errors, but the initial set-up cost for a machine that only prints on one specific part would be huge. Their numbers pay that off though. Some of our production runs would be equivalent to what Lego would be selling of one specific set to all of one store chain's locations in a single city. You can actually see a video on YouTube that Lego uploaded themselves of minifigures in production. There's no narration, but it does show the process.

That's awesome, definitely threw me for a loop to see a new solicitation image!