Barry

I put them away, so I couldn't double check, but I'm pretty positive that the gloves are actually that long and sit on the ends of the arms, not over the forearms. I have a set of unpainted gloves that have holes, which I think was the corrected pieces. This sometimes happens on FEPs where pieces are ill-fitting, and need to be adjusted.

I think of that "And now? Not" all the time! Some quick photos, I will most likely take lightbox ones at a later date.

Yes, it takes 3 years I believe, but you still have to either buy the rights or petition to obtain them. LOL, I totally forgot about those. That is sad.

While there are more than one product with a combination of the letters ‘Minimates’ (in that order, but with spaces or hypens included) you can argue that there brand confusion or an attempt to confuse a consumer with something similarly named that is also a similar product. A cooler you might not be able to argue as well as this figurine on Facebook. (I’m thinking we would have pursued this one…)

I forgot I owned these, let alone that they existed. They're factory samples for what would have been Marvel Animated Waves 13-15. 16 never made it to the factory paint phase (Magneto, Professor X, Beast, Mystique). This was prior to their reorganization into two 10-packs of heroes and villains where additional characters were added made from reused parts. Cool find on a lazy, rainy, summer day...

Yes, they were not as big numbers as W1 and W2, which did not help the case for a W4 either.

If you mean that they could have shifted to specialty 3, unfortunately it wouldn’t have been possible. The unreleased ones were TRU 3, so specialty 3 was locked as the other half. Corresponding location waves (TRU, Walgreens), were developed simultaneously with the specialty wave, so they hit the same milestones. In terms of factory production, they are treated as the same up until packaging. By the time TRU 3 was definitely not going to happen, specialty 3 had shipped. 4 was briefly started with only an articulated Robin created, but with no main characters left, specialty not being as interested in lower tier characters, and no TRU to help amortize tooling, the line died and those unreleased 4 died with it. They were not strong enough for their own release in a box or something similar unfortunately.

Those were an unfortunate casualty of TRU closing, and sending theme elsewhere wasn’t really possible as the line was slowing since the main characters were already done.

You’re too kind, but don’t forget that you brought a lot of character ideas to the table! I’d also argue that I was just a fan as well.

The friends were really downplayed for the first movie. We had no reference for them, and really knew nothing about them other than the internet rumour that Ned was Ned Leeds. Because we had a Spider-Man movie with two costumes, Iron Man and Happy, Marisa Tomei, and three villains (at least on paper, it sounded like Shocker and Tinkerer were bigger deals) it felt like we didn't need some high school kids. We didn't know Zendaya was MJ though, she was 'Michelle', and Ned wasn't singled out as being Peter's best friend. It sounded like Ned was a background character with Flash and Betty.

That's a good looking group, fantastic stuff!

Metal chains were easy to source, hence why they were sometimes used if flexibility of movement was desired. Depending on the application though, and how they had to be assembled, they became more expensive. This is why tooled chains happened a lot more often.

Maybe briefly about cloth capes, but they really wouldn't have solved any problems for us. I believe Lego does them more for playability, fitting into tight cockpits and behind the wheel of a car, and it's less so for cost. For us, they wouldn't have saved anything in tooling at that scale because they're small anyways, and we really didn't have vehicles to contend with. For Gallery pieces, Robert and I were discussing doing the AzBats one I'd designed with a cloth cape because capes at that scale can be their own tool. The BTAS Batman that I did had to have a reduction from proto to final because of that, (you can still see the original in promo photos, with a kicked up edge compared to the final's more conical version. So, if there's room in the tool for one more part, it can be a cape without costing us any more. Plus, we had the backlog of parts to choose from too, and generally capes are pretty generic. I also don't find that soft goods look very good at certain scales. For Lego it's very charming, and I actually dislike some of their sculpted ones, but for 3 3/4 figures, or even 6", I find it very off putting. For 3 3/4 figures, its usually done for playability, so I get it, but I was not fond of collecting soft goods Star Wars figures when they made the switch. For 6" it's probably more the tooling size, but they often just look bad.

Oddly, I like the Wave 59 version, but I took my Iceman head and hands and put them on the Bobby Drake body. (Just don't put Bobby's Head on Iceman's body... it's... weird.)

The way it was done for us was the 3D model was printed and then laid out in a tooling model which then created the sprue. The problem with going directly from 3D to metal is you can't test the tolerances. Plastic wall thickness might need to be adjusted in case it's too thin, otherwise you get tears and holes. Also, because the new parts are fitting on a pre-existing model, and not just interacting with each other, you need to fit them to the base body. Something might look good in a 3D render, and even with the knowledge of the millimeter measurement, sometimes you don't realize there's a problem until you see the physical object. To go straight to cutting metal is very expensive, and while tools can be altered post-tooling, it's not great to have to do. It's easier to remove more material than add it back, as you're working with the shape in it's inverted form (think of the tool as a big ice-tray of MM parts). So, because it's flipped, if a part is too thin you can carve out more to make it thicker, but if the part is too thick it's hard to add material back to make it thinner.