DSTZach

How do you think they got there?

I talk to him, I'm a Poppies judge. I don't think he would do Minimates. Not really his type of product. But I guess there's no harm in asking.

Reached out to the Full Force Podcast, as well as a couple more vloggers YB recommended.

THanks!

Funny, they didn't let us...

You can see some of the sites I supplied here: (121) gi joe minimates - YouTube And here, if you skip all the Luke videos : Find 'joe minimates' on TikTok | TikTok Search There are not a ton of active Joe sites, but I have requested product for Hisstank, so they'll be diving in soon.

New vendor would not be for Marvel, but I'll keep everyone posted.

I meant from when we offered a set to release would not be faster. It's currently six months or so. The 84 reveal obviously happened too early, but once we offer it it will be six months. Announcing the X-Men series was WAY premature, since Walgreens dropped out after I announced it. I get too excited for this stuff, and tend to spill the beans too early. That said, the X-Men set is one of the ones we had talked about offering online, in whatever format, but it is not yet on the schedule for a specific date.

Should have been Megatron!

I think I've gone over this. We have no idea if GI Joe Wave 3 would outsell the Adventure Team. It's anecdotal. So we are offering these FORMER EXCLUSIVES mainstream, to see how they do. Maybe Series 3 will become an exclusive, who knows. I get it, we duplicated characters, but where are you looking for advertisements? We have advertised to retailers, in Previews; to toy collectors, in ToyCollectr; and to kids, in Archie comics. We also do online ads, on FB and the Diamond family of websites. We can't advertise in Entertainment Weekly for a $40 product we make less than 5000 of. I sent the MInimates to Review Spot, most likely. I send him a lot of stuff, but he also buys a lot of stuff. I'll see if I sent him Series 2. I also join a lot of fan clubs on Facebook, but I'll see if I can find a good Joe one. I post on the Minimates fan groups, of course. Vehicles are a tough sell at the numbers we do. If a major retailer was involved, sure, but I don't know how much a vehicle would cost at specialty numbers. $100? You really have to amortize that tooling.

It's a discussion. I mean, sure, I flamed out on Thereasonsy, but it's that time of year again, I guess. I seem to have one of these every 12 months or so. Let's get this over with... What are you talking about? Honestly would like to know. Fans have a lot more freedom than we do. For instance, I can't shoot pictures of Marvel Minimates and post them on DST social media without getting them approved by Marvel. I can't mix Minimates of different brands without getting a stern talking-to from both licensors. That's why I try to work with fans to get content out there, in the form of influencers shooting photos. I have a long list of people who shoot for me, and more and more of them are getting into Minimates. Which is great. We even share them sometimes, as fan work. Believe me, I'm starting to regret it. ;). I do NOT do this all day, just enough that people know I'm here and listening, to the good and bad, passing along ideas and opinions to the powers that be. I just take things a little personally, sometimes, because I'm passionate about it. Which is why, most of the time, I am on here at night. You're right, I should have reached out before March happened. And I will not do it next year. I will instead coordinate with my social media team and make sure that we do another Minimates photo contest, far away from March. We did one for the 20th anniversary, and I will try to make it annual. I never asked for an explanation. But a DM after I reached out would have been nice. Even if just to say, "No thanks." You're right, you put together a great event, that lasted a month, and you spent money out-of-pocket to finance the prizes. We'd probably have to pay somebody a lot of money to do that. I guess I just wanted to be involved in some way, personally (which is why I shot for it) as well as professionally (which is why I offered to supply prizes, late). Sorry to have bothered you, or tainted what should have been a great celebration of Minimates. Still curious about the image thing. DM me if you want.

The Bucks will have removable jackets. And Orange Cassidy and Mox in Set 2 will also have removable jackets, I believe. They are coming!

I believe we had exclusive sets set aside for them, ASSUMING they would want to get on board. Pretty sure that was communicated to them, if not by me then by Sales. Oh, well -- I just sent a couple of sets to the owner, maybe he'll check them out. I'm on the wrestlefigs message boards regularly, but I am sending out a press release today to about 350 toy and wrestling news sites. We'll see how that does. Not sure why the cover and interior don;t line up. May just have been how the pics worked.

I won't quote YB because holy cow. But I find it so strange when a list of failures includes a line that ran for eight series, plus box sets and TRU waves (TWD). That's a success. Ditto Aliens, NBX and 201X TMNT. Successful lines. Not every line lasts forever. More later.

This from a person that tries to get the hype going on Minimates on Instagram but blocks the company rep and refuses to get the company involved? Hey, all, I tried to provide prizes and publicity for March of Minimates, but "Minimated" did not respond to my outreach. I still can't see their posts. Un-effing-believable. I'll do it myself next year.

YB, I think BHM just called you a chicken.

I... thought we were talking abotu Minimates. THAT SAID I have no idea what Westworld figures you are talking about. We did two Walgreens exclusives that were absolutely not available anywhere else. The rest were not exclusive. Vampire Willow may have been a shared exclusive, I forget, I was at ToyFare but I didn't do the deal. As far as TRU vs LCS goes... both outlets got exclusive figures, I don't know which you're specifically talking about.

I honestly don't know how their success will be viewed, or what will be the result. I think the performance of our SDCC TF exclusive will have just as much of an impact, if it does well. BUT the Adventure Team will be, AFAIK, the next Joe release. And it will be carded, AFAIK. FYI, the Adventure Team Commander, according to his bio, is Joseph Colton, founder of the GI Joe team, and the Adventurer is Lonzo Wilkinson, a.k.a. Stalker, so do with that information what you will.

I personally showed the owner of Ringside Collectibles Series 1 and 2 at SDCC 2022. As far as I know, they did not order it. I do not know the reason. Maybe we can get them to buy some now that it is in stock.

Aside from this one example, which happened before my time and I'm sure has a logical explanation, are there other examples? I cannot think of any times we released an exclusive MM/set then offered it somewhere else.

We have a ship dates calendar on our website, that breaks things down by quarter. I know, three months is a big window, but we can't tell people exactly when they'll be in stores (or in our webstore, for that matter) until they are in our warehouse. International and trans-continental freight shipping is too unpredictable, plus there are warehouse workloads to take into consideration. I just gave everybody a one- to two-week heads-up, but that may be the best I can do. AEW MM ships tomorrow, MMPR Series 2 ships NEXT WEDNESDAY. So you get to spread out your purchases a little. That said, I'm willing to bet that VERY few people outside of hardcores will be into AEW AND MMPR MM, causing a purchasing dilemma. And only hardcores "need" to buy these on release day. Everyone else will buy as they discover them in stores, see ads online or in various publications (Previews, ToyCollectr, and yes, Archie) or see reviews online (I ship this stuff out regularly). I believe we are dropping Kingpin. We made a great Kingpin not too long ago. Don't quote me, we'll all find out next month, I think.

I don't remember us marketing the FCBD set as being the only place to get those characters. If that was ever presented as a fact, I apologize. I don't know that I knew full details about the carded sets at the time, but I certainly thought future variants of those MAJOR characters were possible. And again, this is not a "course correction." We didn't develop these as an alternative to ARAH, but as an interesting exclusive at some point in the line. But with ARAH not selling well, we are TRYING these instead, to see if it is Joe in general, or just ARAH fatigue. Between Hasbro, Ultimates and ReAction, there is a lot of ARAH out there. If they do well, great, maybe we can revisit ARAH at a future date. I certainly hope so. BTW, I have corrected an oversight on my part and requested Joe MM for HIssTank. I honestly thought I had sent him Series 1, but now he will have everything. Thanks for the heads up.

It's not Mary. And we're trying to make sets more affordable, so unless we cut paint apps or new parts, fewer characters per set is the game plan. The price is going to go down, is my understanding. I showed a sneak peek of 84 artwork at NYCC because 82 was out and 83 was on pre-order, and that's traditionally when we reveal the next series. I honestly thought they would have been solicited by now, I'm trying to get them moved up, but I guess sneak peeks need to be spread out more or eliminated. Not sure how Kickstarter would change anything, aside from making them available to fewer retailers and killing the line entirely. Amazon, BBTS, EE and Luke currently support the line, I don't know how that would change if we went direct to consumer as our primary venue. Also not sure it's faster.

Checked out Cotswold, as I remember they used to be very into retro Joe. Now, they seem to specialize in very high-end 1/6 scale, with some 1:12 from Mezco and some 1/18 Warhammer stuff. It's possible they may be interested, maybe I'll send them some hints. THanks!

As far as I know, they will be exact reproductions, minus the light-up features. So Luminos will be translucent. We tend to do clear prototypes in white, but we should really have some extra clear bodies made so we can prototype clear Minimates. I'll suggest it. Checked with my Hisstank contact to see if I have sent him anything, but it's possible I may not have. I will get him samples. YoJoe seems to be largely inactive, I'd love for them to create a MM database, but unlikely. Luckily there is Ivan! Glad to see there are some fans out there. I never had Super Joes, they were a little before my time, but they were always fascinating to me being around Mego scale. I think we had a couple in the toy library at ToyFare. Ditto the Adventure Team, there was a guy in my area who used to take great realistic photography of those bearded dudes doing different stuff, so I have a fondness for them.