TBT!

Because I'm not a toy collector and one or two on my desk would look cool, esp that Iron Man... Well that's how it started, it's funny I hear about you guys that picked up wave 1 and feel like a complete newb as I started at wave 6, yep the Iron Man/GhostRider set was my first set. Nearly 10 yrs later I have literally thousands of the little blighters and although I loved the early minimates for their simplicity I'm amazed how far the line has come. I love that they are almost all the same scale ( Thanks for sticking to your guns on that one Chuck!) & cover so many licenses. I love that they are easily taken apart and put back together, and with a little imagination even those with little paint/sculpting skills can make some awesome customs an modifications Finally, as others have said the community rocks, whether its the guys here who have gone from people on the internet to become friends or just that folks here treat each other with kindness and respect like no other place I've seen on the internet. T.

Here's my two part post. Chuck, It's been a while! - Although Zach is almost filling your shoes admirably. I Hope life is treating you well & you're not too exhausted from San Diego? Please don't take anything you've read too much to heart, you know SDCC is a crazy house and from what I can tell getting worse every year, people always have short attention spans there and to be on the way to this panel or that giveaway line. I for one always appreciated that the Diamond booth was one of those places where the staff would take time to talk, even if I wasn't some bigwig from TV or Hasbro exec. Everyone else, Something must have stung for Chuck to make a post like that, and that makes me a little sad. I like Chuck, He's always been approachable & mostly friendly (when he's not trying to control a line of people who are getting unruly.). Talking to him at conventions can be interesting, informative and entertaining, you just have to interact in a way that lets him open up a little and actually listen to both what he says and also what he intentionally doesn't say. (Look for the 'Chuck twinkle' in his eye, it's a dead giveaway) I don't always agree with him ( I still don't believe that series 4 of Trek killed the line but it was because wave 3 was clogging shelves at retail because of bad character choices & no one wanted to order more with wave 3 still hanging around.) but I do realize & respect that the man has been in charge long enough to put out over 50 waves of a toyline through a recession and that the brand is stronger now than it's ever been. So must know what he's doing even if there is the odd blip. T.

Hey Zak, That Dexter is pretty sweet Who did you use for head/hair? T.

Nice... did you sculpt the head or is it modified from another toyline? The 3&3/4 inch lightsabers work with minimates but you have to shorten them a little.

Age of Ultron. Canada

In the zone converter it said that it'd start around 20:30 according to my time. Guess i put some wrong numbers. Anyway, thanks for the info! My guess is you converted to East coast time, San Diego is West coast which is 3 hrs behind that. T.

Kostis, It's 1.30pm, it's 10.50 ish now, so about... 2.5hrs T.

Happy Birhday man! Hope you haVe a great day! T.

http://minimatedatabase.com/figure.php?i=431&n=Marty+McFly+in+Disguise T. "All hail Ivan" - http://minimatedatabase.com/figure.php?i=431&n=Marty+McFly+in+Disguise Although not exactly the easiest figure to find. T.

Actually they're the second & third nods to ToyBiz.... Way back I wondered why they didn't look like those in the comic and did a little digging...The paragraph explains all and ripped from the OAFE review of the Vault Guard. "This Vault Guard is more heavily armored than the version you're familiar with - he uses Lex Luthor's boots and gloves, and the bulky chest armor introduced for Series 23's War Machine. Why this, rather than the more familiar look the Guards have always sported in the comics? It's a rather obscure reference, really: in the '90s, ToyBiz made a toyline to tie into the Iron Man cartoon; four series reached shelves, but there was a fifth planned that got cancelled; ToyBiz didn't want to let the tools go to waste, though, so they purposed the bodies into a few different lines - that's the reason there are entire series of X-Men andSpider-Man wearing armor, for instance. Anyway, the planned "Lava Armor Iron Man" was painted yellow and green, and released in the "Spider-Man: Techno Wars" line as the Vault Guard. So this one's bulky armor is a reference to that. Don't like it? The set includes extra hands and feet so you can make the plain version if you want." T.

Pathfinder? They've been awfully quiet about that lately. T.

Well there's a blast from the past... Adam was great to chat to, as he didn't seem to have much of a filter on what he should and shouldn't tell. I do remember that conversation with Adam and If memory serves he also said that the guys at Mattel knew AA were onto a winner with minimates and had even tried to get them to sell the 'minimates' brand once. T.

SDCC has changed so much in the last 5 yrs. It used to be busy but bearable but now it's just a Zoo and IMO getting too mainstream for it's own good. I can see it getting to the stage where it implodes and because it cant grow any further ( The reason they cant sell more tickets is that they are maxed out on all of the safety reuirements for the convention center.) and people will get fed up with hassle to get tickets and dealing with it. T.

Happy Birthday old man! As my gift I'm considering going back and deleting all the dancing bunnies from this thread! T.

Please tell me there will be a God Killer Iron Man coming soon? (ideally not at TRU so I don't have to jump trough hoops to get him). Also with the high profile they seem to be getting, how much longer before we see a Guardians of the Galaxy 4 pack Zach? T.

I suspect this is because Marvel put a stop to Zombie merchandise of their heroes because they didn't want small kids seeing a flood of zombie stuff and seeing spiderman as a zombie and getting confused/upset. With a set of villains it makes more sense that Marvel would let that happen? T.

Thanks YB, So most likely one leaked set from DST as they are in Timonium, MD. T.

So have we actually seen these in stores yet? T.

Nervous hit the nail on the head, going to one of the big cons can be really expensive. You have to think of these giveaways as sweeteners and incentives for people who spend hundreds or thousands of dollars to go to SDCC or NYCC. Having these exclusives is supposed to be a 'look I went to this con' memento for someone to keep like a concert t-shirt or program for a sports game. We pretty much have the same debate every year around this time and to an extent Zak is right, (albeit he didn't explain himself as well as he could). If you want a con exclusive then either go to the con or admit that you'll have to pay a premium because it was an item for a special occasion and you didn't go. Even when you do go it can be a total pain in the arse to get exclusives, I've done more than my fair share of SDCCs and few other cons and there its not fun having to decide if you want to attend a really cool panel or stand in line to get a freebie that is only given away at a certain time. I'd also like to remind everyone here to play nice! T.

You're all wrong. Connery in From Russia with love is the definitive bond IMO. Moore was very much a bond of his time. I've always thought Dalton was closest to the books in temperment but given horrible movies to work with. I was pretty sure I wouldn't like Brosnan when he was given the part, but he grew on me an is prob my second favourite bond. Lazenby... who?? nuff said. Craig is good but watching him doesn't feel like a bond movie to me. T.

This is probably the best idea I've heard, it's a simple works for everyone middle ground. T.

Thanks for the Art Zach, Still wish we had a proper weapon-x in 'diaper and VR helmet thingy' or sentinel toasted 'metal skeleton' from DoFP wolverine, but these actually look pretty cool, considering how many versions of this character we already have it must be getting hard to give us something new everytime. T.

Yeah, still has always on kinect and the $100 extra means I'll prob still go PS4 next gen. I don't know if I should praise Microsoft or laugh at them for having the balls to come out and say "yeah, we got that horribly wrong". Either way it's not very confidence inspiring. Given the reviews 'the last of us' is getting my next console purchase might be to finally bite that bullet and get a PS3 to go with my 360. T.

Try looking at 1/64 toy car cases. Turned on their side they make very nice display cases for most minimates. T.

As a huge IM fan, I'm probably passing on this one, because I have all of these already, I don't have that specific version of Pepper which is pretty cool, or that head swap Tony but I don't feel they are worth spending $50 on. I really like Pat and he's given us some great exclusive sets in the past but I wonder if AFX made a mistake with this one? They aren't a brick and mortar store like TRU or Disney, so sell mostly to collectors online. Collectors that will likely have a high percentage of those minimates already. The only real upside is that with the right packing I can see these doing well at the CON for people who don't collect minimates. Beyond that I can see them being a buy a $100 of minimates get this set free deal for AFX to move them down the line. So yeah, put me in the disappointed group. T.