Barry

I must've taken the rules on hand and foot tampo from Carnage at the time. But, I do remember being told that 'they didn't do that'. Maybe they forgot about him, or maybe they meant beyond absolute necessity, or on Spider-Man...? At any rate, I'm glad I put them on that set. Carnage is a hard one to leave that tampo off of. Spider-Man without hand and foot webs seem to be OK but Carnage without them, even if you taper the tampo off before the end of the arms or legs, look strange with all red extremities. I understand that for Vinimates. People seemed to not accept the style of them more than Minimates. Minimates were 'like Lego' to outsiders, so they got that. Vinimates confused more people. That's why I removed the fake elbow and knee scribed line joints as soon as I could. I never liked that detail, it was just more confusion. I think more people would have been interested in them if they were posed neutrally with 5 points of articulation. It wasn't in the cards though. Same here, that little box was very pleasing for some reason. It's a nice little set. It's the only box I kept that wasn't something I drew the cover for. (As you mentioned - the VHS sets & Ronin, but also the Marvel 6pks.)

Personally, I like the aesthetic of the hands a lot. We did run into problems with accessories being held in that very small slot when items were hand-sculpted. Often we'd get sample parts and find we had a "hand buster" despite the sculpt measurement being accurate. You know the ones, where they slowly pushed their way out of the hands, or stayed in place and permanently warped the hand. I think the early accessories worked better because they weren’t as detailed. You could grab a pre-existing styrene rod of a specific diameter and sculpt it into the accessory as the grasping point. But as sculpts became more detailed, it became harder to ensure the grip thickness would actually fit. When we moved to 3D sculpting though it became much easier. We could measure grasping points down to fractions of a millimeter instead of relying on calipers which still vary depending on the amount of pressure you're applying. Despite their exactness, they're actually not that exact as different people can get different measurements. Fun fact -- the first fully 3D-sculpted piece was the Nova Corps gun for the first Guardians movie. The sculpting house didn’t even tell us they were trying it, they just sent photos for approval and I was blown away. I immediately asked if we could move everything over to digital. They just needed time to train more people, and not long after we were off to the races. As for feet, I rarely if ever posed them. They always looked a bit odd to me when angled so I usually kept them aligned with the leg. They do help in more extreme poses, but I didn't even use them in some of the last waves when I was taking the solicitation photos using factory samples (Marvel W84, Retro TMNT 3, Video Game TMNT). I don’t have a definitive answer on why they were made separate, since I wasn’t involved, but if I had to guess, it was probably to squeeze in an extra point of articulation for the marketing bullet points. But, even as early as Marvel Wave 2 they were already using specifically sculpted feet for Green Goblin, so they might have also recognized the potential for removable feet to support character customization. Almost everything I learned about Minimates design came from studying the first five Marvel waves. It’s all in there. Whenever someone questioned a design decision we made, nine times out of ten you could point to a character from those early waves: removable masks, alternate parts, working holsters, bulky chest pieces, oversized hands and feet, tampoed musculature, variants, even non-toyetic character selection. A couple of things I was told I introduced were the over-pants underwear paint on the tops of the legs, and the torso-side curvature for female tampo. I honestly hadn’t realized those elements weren’t used before I came along. I added them without much thought simply because they felt right for the design. I also was evidently the first to cover hands and feet in tampo for the Spider-Man 3 Preview set. Evidently the factory was not happy with me on that because it's not an easy area to do, but the folks at Art Asylum liked the look so much they kept it just for the Preview set to be something more special. That's why the regular Wave releases did not have the hand and foot deco. And I still find it funny that Lego adopted the underwear and female torso tampo elements long after we did. You’re welcome! Give me a call, I'm available!

There was a Wave 6 for the first 2" line designed, but I only did supporting design work and colouring. It was The Borg Queen (incomplete and repurposed into Legacy W1), TWOK Chekov, Data, Khan (redesigned into Legacy W1), TWOK Terrel, DS9 Worf, and First Contact Worf. There was also a Jem'Hadar started for Wave 7, but was also repurposed for Legacy. No Legacy Wave 2 was ever designed. There was also the 50th anniversary bridge crew which I've shown here before. They were painted an on display for a Toy Fair. There were also TNG designs from before I worked at the company. They appear to be concepts even before Minimates were started, prior to the original 2" and maybe even 3" lines. The base body design is not quite correct, so I think these might have been an exploration of what could be done with the brand while they were still cementing what the base body looked like. I have not gone through all of those files though because they are a hot mess, but they do exist.

Yes, they were. Even the tampo was hand-stamped, meaning it was applied by a machine that held the aligned piece, but the machine was manually operated. It wasn’t like the recent LEGO assembly line video where the parts are automatically rotated and the neck tampo was scanned to ensure the arms were in alignment. This is sometimes why some errors were made, I'm sure, but over time they really got the process down pat. I did find it funny (and maybe a bit frustrating, as it was for posterity) that the Minimate Database seemed to get all the weird misaligned tampo samples. I would personally see dozens of samples, some of which were final retail sent via the DCD Warehouse so they weren't hand-picked specifically to show me, and never saw the errors that are featured on the Database. Although I never met the people involved in person, I regularly communicated with several of them. They were all fantastic to work with, and were genuinely kind and thoughtful people. I often told them to congratulate their teams on jobs well done, and tell them how happy I was with their work. We’d talk to each other to solve production issues or find ways to streamline processes. They were always quick to answer questions and often suggested design adjustments to make certain details easier to produce. They taught me a lot about the process and how decisions were made, which helped me think differently and grow as a designer. The sculptor was a funny guy. He'd always come up with these great one-line assurances when I asked for a change on something. It wasn't just 'OK', it would be 'we were half done before you even asked!'. He once travelled to NYC for a trip. He met with Robert but was disappointed to not meet me, not knowing until he got there that I lived in Canada. He told me after he'd have to stop by some time. Our correspondence was personal too. We’d wish each other well on birthdays and holidays, and I reached out when I heard they’d been hit hard by a monsoon. They were very appreciative and kept me updated on how they and their families were doing. When my son was born, they sent me a care package of clothing from everyone at the factory, which really meant a lot to me. One person emailed me out of the blue one day just to say she really enjoyed working on our projects and with me. I replied, but never received a response. I later learned she had passed away from a brief illness. Evidently, she had continued working because she was happy doing what she did and it kept her mind off what she was experiencing. That one really hit me. Also, if the POTA Heston had come out, then Soylent Green would have actually been made of Minimates.

We tried to get him in a few times, namely Wave 82, but it just wasn't meant to be. Wanda's hair was always new. The Femme Fatales Medusa hair tooling was not able to be used since it was too old, and we needed the hair, if it was 'at rest' to cover half her face, so it was newly designed. I did a lot of research to make sure I wasn't stepping on any pre-determined colour scheme's toes, whether the character be featured somewhere in colour, or if their hair colour was mentioned somewhere. I tried to make sure characters didn't all look the same, and used the cues of black & white colouring to determine if the colours were intended to be very bright, mid-range, or dark. I got some grief from longtime TWD fans for colouring someone's hair the wrong colour (I forget who). Evidently it was said to be light coloured in a novel or something, but in the comics it was always coloured to look dark brown or black. I really forget who that was though. The licence was from the comics though, so that's what I always went with. And if they were indeed shown in colour anywhere, then that became the 'canon' look. Some characters really just fell by the wayside, especially if a theme wave didn't make sense to have them included, or if there was no other media tie-ins to push the character (especially for big-box retail waves). Watcher really could have made sense at any time I suppose, since he's theoretically in the shadows behind any storyline, but he was tough to get included at times. You're welcome! I think a lot of what I'm telling now is new news because it was more my personal day-to-day experiences. We had a very early push for behind the scenes info when the Asylum blog was active, but that was eventually dropped and we never really looked back. Anything I'm sharing isn't anything that couldn't be told over the years, it just happened that it wasn't. I do hope it's provided some insight as to why things were done the way they were done.

The only reason why the What If set was from the Marvel Zombies episode was because it was easiest to make with minimal new parts as they were just zombified pre-existing MCU designs. I was able to fit Scott Lang's Head's cape and jar and Wanda's hair into another tool being prepped at the time. Anything else would not have fit unfortunately. If we'd had full tooling, there was brief (like, 5 minute) talk that Guardians of the Multiverse could have been the set, but I probably would have made it the more unique characters from Season 1, and less episode-themed: The Watcher, Captain Carter, the Hydra Stomper, Strange Supreme, Ultron, and Scott Lang's Head.

I had heard about it, and the novel, but never knew what it was about. I just read up on it now... That's... messed up. It says something when the Wikipedia article on it defines the genre as "Tragedy", which I have never heard used as a genre title before.

Oh, I completely understand that! I've had similar thoughts about similar situations with other licenses. We dealt with this type of input on a daily basis, often times with comments that felt completely unreasonable, but sometimes there were comments that sparked a bit more discussion. It does seem bizarre given how we would be trying to adapt a piece of media whose identity can revolve around more graphic elements. The idea of something from a world like that being dubbed 'unsettling' is surprising. That said, I think the person's reaction does make some sense. A toy of an adult zombie meets with the expected tone of the series, but a zombie child hits differently. Especially when you consider that these were consumer products meant to sit on retail pegs. It works for the comic book storytelling as it's contained within the pages of the book, but can seem inappropriate or jarring when translated into a toy form when there's no story context given. It raises the question of 'what is a toy?', to which I know a lot of people would say 'it's not a toy, it's a collectible', but that raises even more questions from different parties like 'why is something like this considered collectible?'. It was a girl under the age of 10 with a dead face, lips and eyelids gone, wearing a metal collar with a chain. It's hard to defend. Considering too, the following year brought the controversy of the Breaking Bad action figures at Toys R Us. That easily could have been us with TWD in the form that it was actually released, but somehow we flew under the radar. I think a dead child in chains might have greatly increased our chance at our own controversy rising. As I said, I had my own personal struggles with the subject matter, but I completely understood that it was a case of it just wasn't for me. I didn't project that outwardly on other people, it was something that I had to deal with if I wanted to get paid. I actually found some fun in trying to diversify the zombie offerings, and enjoyed finding new looks for the human characters for some world building. But, when someone expressed discomfort with Penny, I didn’t see it as an overreaction because I understood the types of feelings they were having. They were probably like me, feeling a bit squeamish about the whole subject matter, but this element was just a step too far for them. It seems like they're just being overly sensitive, a lot of comments on other licences were definitely that case, but I do appreciate that sensitivity being brought into the discussion because when it would happen (not just here, but in other licences too) it reminded me that even within a piece of media that is more extreme than others, there were still boundaries that hit people differently. As a designer, and a project manager, those are things I had to consider and weigh even if I didn't agree with them.

TRU Wave 8: TRU Wave 9: Wave 9:

TRU Waves 8 and 9, and Specialty Wave 9 were the big losses, but other than that most characters we designed were made. Wave 9 actually had it's own unused character in a half-faced zombie. It was not designed, but a zombie was picked out from reference. (More on that later...) The Trucker Zombie from TRU 8 was made into a sample too which I have. I don't believe Michonne from that wave was though, but I could be wrong. The only designs that were finished and not used were Riot Gear Tyreese, a very generic Lurker Zombie in multiple colours, and Zombie Penny. She was deemed too disturbing by someone, and I don't remember who that was, but most likely a retail buyer. I remember they found the face we drew unsettling, and the idea of it being a dead child upset them. I completely respect that decision too. I am on record in interviews saying that I had a hard time working on this line and only in the latter half became a bit more desensitized to it. I'm not belittling people for liking zombies and horror either, it's just not something that's for me, and when that person was uncomfortable with Penny I understood why. The stories of the people in TWD interested me as I learned about them at the time, but the zombie parts I just couldn't handle. Fortunately, at this time, we had Yuri Timg helping us out on Minimates because we were working on so many concurrently. At that point, I have record that more individual designs were completed in a year than there were days in a year, and that includes not working weekends and holidays. Yuri primarily designed Select figures, and drew the TWD banks as well. He designed the first few waves and was very good at the gory little details. I took a pass at his linework after to make it a bit more on model to the MM look, but still kept a lot of what he did. In later waves when I was designing them on my own, I ended up reusing tampo elements he drew which is something I never did. I never liked reusing tampo because I felt it made the figures seem cheap, but my weak stomach for guts and gore required the reuse until I became more comfortable with it. Yuri was also just better at drawing it than I was. Anyway, long story short, Penny was shelved in favour of another zombie, but I don't have record on which specific one replaced her. She was intended for Wave 4. There's also preliminary, uncoloured designs for a zombie with a shovel stuck in his face, and a zombie 'Cindy', although I can't find a comic character by that name. We might've just named her that due to her style. I had prelims for 'Fat Zombie', 'Bar Girl', 'Zombie 21' but the files are corrupt. (Originally zombies were just numbered, and we came up with themed-names later.) Those were most likely shelved because after the first couple of waves, it was requested that we showed reference of each zombie in the actual comic, and cite what issue and page they were from. This made zombies very difficult to make because after awhile in the books the zombies became very generic. So, we started to pull anyone who was slightly different than the others, even if they were almost a stick figure in the background of one panel, and give them a theme. For instance, I saw a zombie in one panel that maybe looked like he was wearing a coat, so I'd flesh out (no pun intended) his story in my mind and he became the Winter Zombie. In case you're interested, the Roamer in the first box set was me, wearing the same coloured clothing I was wearing the day I assembled him. The Lurker from that pack was based on a certain youthful ward who likes to wear red vests, specifically his animated civilian appearance. I thought it was a good colour scheme for someone wearing a sweater vest over top of a collared shirt. Other facts I just found in my files, here's the breakdown of the zombie fan poll: Prom Zombie 24% Beard Zombie 17% Fanboy Zombie 15% Librarian Zombie 14% Chains Zombie 13% Old Man Zombie 9% Hoodie Zombie 6% Overalls Zombie 2% I'll pull the designs for the unreleased waves and post them later.

Thank you! I've been a big Zelda fan ever since the first game's original release (I'm dating myself here...). I know it's become an Internet 'thing' to make fun of that cartoon, but at the time it really was a window into imagining what the world of Hyrule was without an 8-bit lens. Even watching it now I find parts genuinely entertaining; it's really not bad for a late 80's cartoon. It's also fun to see how a lot of series firsts happened on the show, (Link's fairy companion, Zelda wielding a bow with light arrows, shield surfing...).

Still going through old files (since there's nothing else to do...) I thought I'd share that the Bruce Banner from Best Of Wave 3 had a VERY small Easter egg that, for good reason, goes unnoticed -- the light gleam on his eyes were actually radiation symbols.

Most likely two Foot Soldiers, although I'd thought about adding tech detail to Krang to make that 12" Playmates version of him.

Cool beans!

Some retro inspired repaints for TMNT if we'd made a second 'Collector's Colours' box set. I really wanted these, the first box set included, as TMNT toys were what got me first interested in the world of toy collecting. I was always envious of the kids on the boxes playing with the toys before they were released. Made me wonder how I could do that too, but the best my 8 year old brain could figure was to become a hand model (an avenue NOT pursued, thankfully...)