hellpop

Apparently Castle Greyskull is available from Wal Mart now, and will be everywhere else in a month. I'm gonna hold out for a discount, personally.

Not a bad list. Indiana Jones and Rocky though don't really fit though; no matter how many movies they have to draw from you'll still have people that will only want the title characters (you can also throw James Bond into that category). The other one I'd add is Harry Potter; I really wish DST had tried to lock that up before Lego brought HP back. And maybe they did! I remember Chuck saying that he thought Harry Potter's time had passed in an AskDST a few years ago, and I thought he was crazy, but maybe that was just a smokescreen.

Jerry Lawler was who I was referring to as well. If and when Luke does tag teams, I'd love a Midnight Express with Jim Cornette figure. For Bobby Eaton, you'd need a bunch of those Invisible Woman mullets.

There's one thing you didn't mention with a tentpole license, though: library of characters. There's really only a few things that have a wide enough pool of characters to pull from to sustain a line basically indefinitely. DST has one, Marvel, and had one, DC, but that's it. Lines like Aliens, NBX, and Ghostbusters are always going to be limited because there's only so many figures you can make before you start repeating them. But I think YB's right, the bigger problem is that there's not something ready to jump in and take its' spot.

Can I assume he comes with a crown?

I guess I'm kind of the one that started all this with my offhand comment in the other thread, so...you're welcome? Anyway, this has been a thoughtful discussion so far, so thanks to everyone for that. I personally think that Minimates, if not dying, are in decline. I don't think they will ever fully go away, if only because DST owns it as an intellectual property, so it's in their best interest to keep it alive in some fashion. But the signs have been there, from the dwindling of the direct market to the disappearance of convention exclusives to recent cancellations. None of these things are good. I know that a lot of people want to lay these changes at the feet of DST as mistakes, but the realities of the market make Minimates a tough sell. They are a niche of a niche of a niche (collectible action figures> minifigures> Minimates) that peaked in popularity a decade ago. More than anything, it's pretty amazing that DST has been able to sustain Minimates while nearly every other minifigure has disappeared. I think YB is right that the lack of tentpole properties is huge. It's been basically Marvel and only Marvel for years now, with a couple others (Walking Dead, TMNT, and Kingdom Hearts) all looking like potential compliments, but all petering out. DST needs something other than Marvel to keep the line afloat, because (let's face it) they've more or less exhausted the Marvel character library. TRU's closing has had a drastic effect on Minimates, which I think we all could have predicted. It was clear years ago that the direct market wasn't going to be enough to sustain Minimates, and the failures of the classic animated TMNT and Kingdom Hearts lines to generate enough orders to go into production is the last word on that. Walgreens has been a nice complimentary partner, but as the primary retail outlet they have been lacking. Of course, it's easy to say "DST should just sell Star Wars Minimates to Target, problem solved!" Of course they know that. It's easy to second guess and make assumptions from the outside, but we're not privy to all the information that goes behind DST's decisionmaking. I don't always agree with the choices they make, but I do know that they always have the wellbeing of the line in mind. Anyway, I think this is a challenging time, probably the biggest since DC Direct cancelled DC Minimates. I don't know if DST can sustain it, frankly, but I'll be happy to get as many releases as we have left.

I think Hellcat and Paladin are good guesses!

None of these clues fit Speedball! I guess I need to bite the bullet and make him myself. Not making any guesses myself yet, but I look forward to seeing everyone else's.

They are tremendous. My Pop buying has been rather limited recently, but I'll be getting these.

This is a perfectly reasonable point, and you expressed it well. I went too far in saying something about Minimates dying, but I was grumpy. So I take that back. Yes, that's basically my point. I dunno, I've certainly become more sensitive to this kind of stuff as I've gotten older and online discourse has gotten worse and worse. Furthermore, because I've gotten to know several of the DST staff and designers over the years I tend to want to defend them in a way I don't, say, Mezco. I guess I just think it's cool that we have a community here devoted to an obscure brand of minifigure, and it just bums me out when we're overly negative. I do feel that Minimates is on the decline, and that if TRU's closure wasn't the nail in the coffin the looming trade war will be, so every release is something to celebrate, even if it's not exactly how we'd like it to be.

Wow dude, you sure put me in my place. Saying things like "I don't like these pairings so I'm not buying them" adds nothing to the conversation. But sure, if you want Minimates to die, keep nitpicking.

Ugh, the complaining.... Very cool sets. Glad you were able to get an exclusive Luke!

JLU figures are all 40% off right now; each one is $16.80. I bought Flash, GL, and J'onn to basically finish the set (I have the previous Superman figure, already bought WW and Hawkgirl, don't need another Batman, and don't care for that version of Aquaman). Also, they have the Grey Ghost and Scarecrow in stock, though at $30.

I use Plano cases myself; I don't know how any serious Minimate collector goes without them.

Curious what you mean by that. I assume it's how they've changed the comics to more reflect the movie versions?

Dreadnought has a nice metallic blue, though it's a bit lighter than the Rescue armor looks.

I always figure that if it was that important, I'd remember to whom it belongs.

Love it; I had no idea you were doing all this! But now I'm following you on Instagram, and I should probably start using that a lot more. I've been customizing a lot more recently; I find that I go through phases where I don't really do it much at all, and then when I do it fairly obsessively. in 2018 I only made a few, but this year I've made dozens. I feel like our customizing community has gotten a little quiet recently, so I'm glad that you're restarting the conversation a bit. I really enjoyed your piece about picking out parts. This is both my favorite and least favorite part of the process. There's nothing quite like cracking the code on a character and realizing that you've got all the pieces to bring them to life, especially if it's a unique part that's been cluttering your bin for ages (last night, for example, I realized that the Squadron Supreme villain the Scarlett Centurion wears basically the same cape as Raven). But I *hate* searching for parts. I feel like I spend way too much time sifting through my bins looking for that one foot that has the printing that I want. I recently moved all my parts to a setup like the one you have, and that's helped at least. I never considered using a spreadsheet to track customs. I do keep a list of all the characters that I want to make, and when I finish one and put them away I write Done! next to their name and boy is that satisfying. My biggest problem is that I sometimes set aside parts for a custom and then forget who they are for. That's embarrassing....

I saw it on Amazon and preordered it, but it's been delayed. I haven't bought any of their stuff; I know they are slightly bigger than Minimates, but I think he'll work with them. They also make Game of Thrones figures, for anyone that is making customs of them and wants dragons (or just wants dragons for non-Got Minimate reasons).

Curious if anyone has bought this:

I voted for the only one we REALLY need... I'll let you fill in the blanks.

Oh man, I'm sorry to hear that PL.

When Minimates started they were actually at that size, and you can still find some of those early big figures around. It wasn't until the Lord of the Rings line that they developed the now-familiar 2" body. I'm not sure why exactly they moved to that one, other than just liking the aesthetics better.

Wow am I glad I avoided this thread.

Crowdfunding is an interesting idea. It's not all that different from, say, soliciting an item, see what kind of preorders you get from retailers and if they don't meet your threshold cancelling the product. I'm not sure how it would work to make a product for a licensee from a big company like Marvel; you might not be able to offer a Wrecking Crew box set through that means. But could you make, say, cowboys? Or public domain horror characters? Or small-press comics characters? Sure. I don't think anyone should extrapolate the experience with Agent 88 to what a larger crownfunded campaign from Diamond would be like. Digger clearly was only interested in getting his movie made and exploited his ties to DST and Minimates to get it done. But Diamond is in the toy business, and I'm sure they will deliver what is promised. Diamond has always seemed resistant of doing things in new ways, and as an arm of a big company I suppose they have never really had to. But clearly the markets have changed, and all sorts of niche collectibles have thrived by this method. I'd love to see Diamond give it a try.