Cappy

As often happens, I find myself quoting Lobsterman:

I think they've generally struck the right balance between sculpted pieces and block figures. I don't mind the "clamp" hands, but I also wouldn't mind action-specific sculpted hands (spellcasting, kung fu, as have been mentioned).

Iron Man has been gifted with a couple hand styles that are uniquely sculpted, but still say "Minimate". The folks at DST can get a lot into the clam hands and I see no need to stray too far from that.

But then, I've been a fan of simplicity from way back. My favorite 'Mates are the blanks! heh

That being said, I've been buying up all of Halo and will dive deeply into Battle Beasts. I can live with this because those lines just feel different: they started out as sculpted figures and, to me, are really just 2" action figures, not block figures.

As this thread is about the evolution of Minimates, I will prophesize that sculpted 'Mates are the way of the future. DST sees too much potential in this format and the new kids don't seem to mind it. I just wish that lines which started as block figures, like Marvel, would stay that way. So may original Spider-Man will still look standing next to 10th Anniversary Spidey.

In addition, you can gain a huge degree of satisfaction by customizing your own characters with relative ease – some paint or decals on the base body is a lot easier to do than the extensive sculpting needed to customize traditional action figure lines. While not impossible, it's going to be much more difficult, and present a higher barrier to entry, to create custom Battle Beasts – customs will become a project, not a quick pop-together-some-pieces-in-10-minutes affair...I can imagine the line losing a lot of that modularity as we progress down the road of having more character-specific sculpted structural pieces.

And herein lies another danger to the evolving sculpted look of the 'Mates. The new lines have not only lost their block figure status, but are not longer quick custom fodder.

Gotta say, I LOVE the style of these. They remind me of the Seventh Kingdom figures by 4 Horsemen which is awesome because those are some of the best action figures on the market.

BINGO! Thank you, Punisher, for nailing something that's been niggling me since I saw pics of Vorin. These guys will be like collecting affordable 7th Kingdom! Yay!

This picture on ebay has been haunting me for months

18 Dead Sixes ....who would want them ? There are some very odd people here.

Rather off topic, but hey, I'm quoting. With the popularity rise in zombies, upcoming Walking Dead and all, Dead Six should be shooting up in value. Just saying.

Any one who has brought this much joy to the universe deserves a happy existence. Here's wishing you and your wife a feeling of warmth and safety while you recover.

To a mod, any chance someone can change the subtitle on this thread to remove the "little rubbing guys" line? With the effort Zach was exerting to make sure people knew these aren't associated with the old line, we should probably do the same.

Actually, I believe that whoever started the thread can change the subtitle. In this case, some newbie called "buttheadsmate"?

...do you know how hard it is to be the 'oldest' collector of Minimates in the world without any recognition

There might be a memory of such for me, but it seems to sunk into my boggy brain.

youbastards, groundhog7s, thanks for your incredible attention to our needs. I know how these booths, panels, conventions are and constantly worrying about documenting the event for others kind of drains some of the fanboy joy from it. So thank you.

So... I think I scored some of these from TRU.com (my first attempt at doing such). How long does it take them to kick out the "you're effed" email? Is there a point where I can feel assured I'll get what I ordered?

I would advise anybody else to do the same because you can then concentrate on enjoying the show without needing a porter to carry all your stuff.

Unless, of course, you do have a porter along with you.

While I don't have an answer to your question, now you've got me wondering. If they are not reacting to sunlight, is it something in the storage container? A mold release on the plastic box (in Aapje's case). BS, what container were your discolored 'Mates in ? Their original boxes?

No, I was thinking Megabloks, but I don't have any here at work, so I was going off of my crappy memory.

Which is why you should always carry one of each block figure with you at all times. Okay, at least the mainstream four....

I can tell you that Minimates do fit in the ODST drop pods, even a fully armored Spartan. (Not to mention hapless blanks...) Which is great, because the drop pods are the coolest Minimate vehicle released in 2010!

Minimates are almost twice the size of the Megabloks figures. There's no way they'd work with the vehicles.

Ummm.... no?

Also, MegaBloks tends to overscale the proportions on their vehicles, it's almost like they design them with Minimates in mind. Adjusting shouldn't be too difficult, although I haven't tried it with any of the Halo vehicles... yet.

TENIME_art, you're probably remembering the previous generation Lego-like figures. They were much smaller.

anyone else in washington state found these yet? i'm in the Tricities and have yet to see em...

Haven't seen these yet in the northern Seattle area (Northgate thru Everett). There's been one sighting at the Silverdale Mall (Bremerton). ugh.

I'm more than a bit confused about the M.A.X. TRU Wave of figures.... & the vehicles for that matter ....... I was under the impression that the figures had done quite well sales-wise whilst the jets had fared less so. I again assumed that the BTTF TRU vehicle was perhaps the only vehicle that had done well in the entire range of vehicles produced ?

Now I read that they're on clearance....is that bad news or just a normal occurence at TRU?

I'd say it's just stragglers. Of the four stores I've visited in the past couple of weeks, one of them had a few 2-packs, another had a jet. That's it.

(And none of them had any sign of Marvel Wave 9. grrrr)

...which is why I never understand all the panic that comes out if people don't find these in the first 48 hours of their sitings.

X-Factor Angel/Warpath

Bullseye/Moonstone

Granted, these were both 1 per case packs, but the secondary market prices really screwed over a LOT of collectors and when new TRU exclusives are released, everyone is reminded of those 2 releases.

That wound hasn't really healed, thus people scrambling to get these when they finally hit the market.

And let's not forget Hulkbuster.

Scalpers aside, there are some areas of the country where certain waves literally never, ever, arrived. Because of the unreliable distribution, one can't be sure he won't see a given 2-pack at retail until it's too late.

My local TRUs got in new cases of the FF wave after Christmas. I don't expect to ever see Wave 9 in the stores.

Updated the checklist on page 1. Now covers all of 2010.

Say what you will about Disney, but it was a pleasant surprise to enter a retail store and actually find the promised exclusive. What a concept! Haven't seen that since the days of Suncoast Video.

Hey, zfisher, thanks for asking. By all means, use it as you see fit, as long as you're not making money off of it.

If you can stand to wait two days, I'm updating it right now to cover all of 2010. Just waiting to see if anything ships today (comic book day, don'tcha know).

Just a gentle bump to the mods -- when might the Halo threads be moved out of the Licenses Future forum?

Unless that title means "licenses which take place in the future"?

Got my series 1 set and a dump case. Seeing how varied the IM2 dump case was ( a lot of collectors got different ratios of mates per case), I thought we could see if DST got their act together with their QC. Here's the breakdown of my dump (case that is):

Elite Assault armour (gold) x 1

Elite Assault (khaki) x 2

ODST (olive) x 2

CQB Spartan (cyan) x 3

Mark VI Spartan x 4

Anybody else get the same or something way off?

My set matches that.

and finally i now have enough master chefs to do this:

Anybody care to show me how to fit six figures into a Warthog? (As promised on the packaging.)

By all means, MINI MYTE, run with it this year. If you need a hand, feel free to call on me.

I know this bugs some people, but to do it right, you'll have to wait until January, what with the slew of 'Mates coming in at the end of December.

It must be well-designed to hold Klaw, Abomination, and the Absorbing Man at once.

Well of course it is, it's from Luke's Toy Store! Get all your law enforcement supplies there.

An update is certainly long overdue.

I have no idea but I'm probably the most interested amongst those that are interested in what you have in your studio

Don't let him fool you, when it comes to blanks, I'm the most interested! As a side note, I even own a Create-A-Mate.

Whoa, thanks for all of that Lurch. These look like great fun.

On the downside, I have no idea how I'm going to catalog these in the database. I think I can work through the basic figure duplication, but I don't know how I'll be able to show how the different looks associate with different packages. It's too bad they don't have specific names either. "Firefighter Chief" isn't as interesting as "Chief Ned Nederlander" or "Sergeant Alex Murphy".

Still looking forward to picking them up nonetheless.

Heh. As Lurch's initial posts opened up, with the descriptions and images spreading across the screen, my first thought was: "Good luck databasing this, Ivan!"