Barry’s Blueprints of Hits and Heartbreak

[cylonchaney]

3 hours ago, buttheadsmate said:

Over the years ,my 'collecting' of Minimates led to many 'whys' .why are minimate feet separate pieces (?) would be one. It's very handy (pun intended) but interchangeability of Minimate feet between characters is not paramount...is it ?

It pains me to my sole to read such a callus criticism of Minimate feet. How would you feel if the shoe was on the other foot?

[buttheadsmate]

I don't kneed this ,I always take great steps to ensure impartiality & your corny puns don't help.

In all seriousness I don't suggest that  all separate minimate 'feet' shouldn't have been interchangeable , I just felt that there have been many occasions when it was completely unnecessary .....the list would be long .

On another note you mention 'Pepe the Prawn' ,  IMHO the Pepe the Prawn / Newsreader set is amongst the 'least seen Minimates' on ebay .   

[Barry]

Personally, I like the aesthetic of the hands a lot.  We did run into problems with accessories being held in that very small slot when items were hand-sculpted.  Often we'd get sample parts and find we had a "hand buster" despite the sculpt measurement being accurate.  You know the ones, where they slowly pushed their way out of the hands, or stayed in place and permanently warped the hand.  I think the early accessories worked better because they weren’t as detailed.  You could grab a pre-existing styrene rod of a specific diameter and sculpt it into the accessory as the grasping point.  But as sculpts became more detailed, it became harder to ensure the grip thickness would actually fit.  When we moved to 3D sculpting though it became much easier.  We could measure grasping points down to fractions of a millimeter instead of relying on calipers which still vary depending on the amount of pressure you're applying.  Despite their exactness, they're actually not that exact as different people can get different measurements.

Fun fact -- the first fully 3D-sculpted piece was the Nova Corps gun for the first Guardians movie.  The sculpting house didn’t even tell us they were trying it, they just sent photos for approval and I was blown away.  I immediately asked if we could move everything over to digital.  They just needed time to train more people, and not long after we were off to the races.

As for feet, I rarely if ever posed them.  They always looked a bit odd to me when angled so I usually kept them aligned with the leg.  They do help in more extreme poses, but I didn't even use them in some of the last waves when I was taking the solicitation photos using factory samples (Marvel W84, Retro TMNT 3, Video Game TMNT). 

I don’t have a definitive answer on why they were made separate, since I wasn’t involved, but if I had to guess, it was probably to squeeze in an extra point of articulation for the marketing bullet points.  But, even as early as Marvel Wave 2 they were already using specifically sculpted feet for Green Goblin, so they might have also recognized the potential for removable feet to support character customization.

Almost everything I learned about Minimates design came from studying the first five Marvel waves.  It’s all in there. Whenever someone questioned a design decision we made, nine times out of ten you could point to a character from those early waves:  removable masks, alternate parts, working holsters, bulky chest pieces, oversized hands and feet, tampoed musculature, variants, even non-toyetic character selection.

A couple of things I was told I introduced were the over-pants underwear paint on the tops of the legs, and the torso-side curvature for female tampo.  I honestly hadn’t realized those elements weren’t used before I came along.  I added them without much thought simply because they felt right for the design.  I also was evidently the first to cover hands and feet in tampo for the Spider-Man 3 Preview set.  Evidently the factory was not happy with me on that because it's not an easy area to do, but the folks at Art Asylum liked the look so much they kept it just for the Preview set to be something more special.  That's why the regular Wave releases did not have the hand and foot deco.  

And I still find it funny that Lego adopted the underwear and female torso tampo elements long after we did. You’re welcome!  Give me a call, I'm available!

[buttheadsmate]

The S3 Previews set* is an all-time favourite of mine , the sheer beauty & cleverness of those 2 Minimates was not lost on me .    I always thought that the W2 Carnage was a deceptively simple Minimate yet that Minimate has a tampo on every viewable surface ....& the first (?) Minimate with fingered hands .    I don't hate standard Minimate 'hands' it's just that I prefer digits .  Aesthetically sound for Minimates but Vinimates  suffered .

I have a fantastic custom Minimate of Charlie Chaplin ( which I'm ashamed to say I'm not completely sure who made it ) I pose that one with his feet in the iconic Chaplin pose .  It suits Chaplin but Barry I'm with you regarding how odd Minimates in general can look if angled  . Each to their own I guess. 

* ironically (see Pepe above )  another 'least seen on ebay ' Minimate . In this instance I don't believe it to be 'rare' as in 'few numbers produced' I just reckon nobody wants to part with them 

[Trekker 42]

I got lucky with that Previews set getting it on a Luke Friday. I usually wait to check out until I’ve seen everything new in the store, but that one I just made a separate order for itself. 
it’s one of very few Minimate packs where i kept the box after opening. The others are the VHS sets, the cover only of Last Ronin, and Giant Sized X-Men

[Barry]

3 hours ago, buttheadsmate said:

The S3 Previews set* is an all-time favourite of mine , the sheer beauty & cleverness of those 2 Minimates was not lost on me .    I always thought that the W2 Carnage was a deceptively simple Minimate yet that Minimate has a tampo on every viewable surface ....& the first (?) Minimate with fingered hands .    I don't hate standard Minimate 'hands' it's just that I prefer digits .  Aesthetically sound for Minimates but Vinimates  suffered .

I must've taken the rules on hand and foot tampo from Carnage at the time.  But, I do remember being told that 'they didn't do that'.  Maybe they forgot about him, or maybe they meant beyond absolute necessity, or on Spider-Man...?  At any rate, I'm glad I put them on that set. 

Carnage is a hard one to leave that tampo off of.  Spider-Man without hand and foot webs seem to be OK but Carnage without them, even if you taper the tampo off before the end of the arms or legs, look strange with all red extremities.  

I understand that for Vinimates.  People seemed to not accept the style of them more than Minimates.  Minimates were 'like Lego' to outsiders, so they got that.  Vinimates confused more people.  That's why I removed the fake elbow and knee scribed line joints as soon as I could.  I never liked that detail, it was just more confusion.  I think more people would have been interested in them if they were posed neutrally with 5 points of articulation.  It wasn't in the cards though.

 

52 minutes ago, Trekker 42 said:

it’s one of very few Minimate packs where i kept the box after opening. The others are the VHS sets, the cover only of Last Ronin, and Giant Sized X-Men

Same here, that little box was very pleasing for some reason.  It's a nice little set.  It's the only box I kept that wasn't something I drew the cover for.  (As you mentioned - the VHS sets & Ronin, but also the Marvel 6pks.)

[thereasonsy]

I really want a Minimates book with Barry’s work similar to the XTAS behind the scenes books that have come out. I keep them on my coffee table. 

[DSTZach]

Barry, can you think of any other elements we did before Lego? I once said I thought Lego actually learned a lot from us and I was scoffed at. 

[Barry]

On 11/14/2025 at 7:41 PM, thereasonsy said:

I really want a Minimates book with Barry’s work similar to the XTAS behind the scenes books that have come out. I keep them on my coffee table. 

Honestly, so would I!

 

On 11/15/2025 at 12:17 AM, DSTZach said:

Barry, can you think of any other elements we did before Lego? I once said I thought Lego actually learned a lot from us and I was scoffed at. 

From time to time, I'd speak with Robert and one of us would mention that we'd seen Lego had done something new that we did in prior.  I don't remember them all, but there were more than I have here.

Large Hulk was one of them, and I believe chest caps were one as well.  They used entire head / torso covers for Chewbacca and Boba / Jango Fett, but not a stand alone chest.  That they used much later, which lead to characters in varying sizes.  I noticed recently the Spidey & Friends sets make characters in 3 different heights.  That typically was not done by them.

You could point back to flesh tones as well.  They started that with the Lakers set because generic 'all humans are yellow' versions looked wrong.  I personally believe that was the Simpsons' influence, as the public perception became that yellow meant Caucasian.  Diverse flesh tones didn't come until much later though, where sets like Clone Wars has the Clones in slightly darker flesh than Anakin and Obi-Wan.  We also had much more expressive and unique faces from character to character.  From 1999 to 2005 for their the SW Prequel they still used very slight variations of the classic Lego smiley face.  Tampo on limbs were another.

I swore I used to have a list of things other companies did after us that I kept for fun, but I can't find it now.

[DSTZach]

I felt like certain accessories and effects pieces were done after us. Small pets. Energy blasts. I still can't believe they haven't done action/flight bases like we did for so many characters. 

[Barry]

They definitely added tailor-made accessories after us, although I do wonder if that might've been a response to bootleg accessories like all of the Star Wars guns that resembled their on-screen counterparts over the original megaphone.  

I feel like licences that typically wouldn't be considered toyetic was something we drove a lot more than others, but that might've been in response to Funko Pop's toyification of media you wouldn't otherwise consider to make a product of.  

It's very hard to say if we were an influence, but I'd like to think that we were.  Some of it could have just been industry trends, but I do think that it's more likely that it's like-minded individuals coming to the same conclusions.

[Barry]

I've still got all sorts of unseen designs, but I'm finding it difficult to go through everything.  I'm also trying to maintain the "DESIGNED ON THIS DAY" posts on Instagram where a lot of these are showing up, but again, it's difficult.  So, my apologies for not keeping this thread very interesting recently.

At any rate, there was almost a wave of classic Tomb Raider in 2012.  It would have featured characters from the "LAU Trilogy" (Legend, Anniversary, and Underworld, for those who don't know).  These would have been two-packs, each with a Lara and an Enemy.  I'm sure the parts were probably not 100% accurate, especially the enemies, but reference material for these were hard to come by.  YouTube was not all about Let's Plays at the time, and people weren't ripping models from games nearly as much.  All I had to go on was digital camera photos I took myself from my copies of the games on GameCube and Wii.  The PS3 remasters hadn't happened yet so everything was what I could capture from 480p off-screen pics.  

Unfortunately, these were shelved to focus on the 2013 "A Survivor Is Born" soft-reboot game and never made it past the parts design.  I actually have resin castings of the pieces they got so far!  I tried to get a Lara Croft Through The Ages 4pk afterwards since parts were available.  It would have been the Legend, Anniversary, and Underworld Laras (minus the Winter one) plus the 'Survivor' 2013 Lara.  Again though, the focus remained solely on the 2013 game.

I really disliked designing parts prior to drawing printed elements and colouring the whole thing, but sometimes tight scheduling resulted in this in order to get sculpts going while the details were still being ironed out.  I found though that this lack of a coherent view of what the whole figure would be was not easy to work with. 

Anniversary Lara Croft:

Expedition (Legend) Lara Croft:

Jungle (Underworld) Lara Croft:

Winter Gear Lara Croft:

The Unknown Entity:

Atlantean Natla:

Mayan Thrall:

Viking Thrall:

[THE_CRIPPLER]

I would have loved those Tomb Raider Minimates. I wasn't a fan of the other Minimates based on games (Jak and Daxter, etc). I never played them so that is probably why. I played and beat almost every Tomb Raider game though and loved the mates that were released for them.

Edited December 23, 2025 by THE_CRIPPLER

[Padrino]

The lines I spent the most on were the lines that came with tons of accessories. The initial Tomb Raider line did not disappoint. I would have bought a f@#king ton of these!

[Navaan]

Same. Absolutely gutted.

[Barry]

For a variety of reasons, I'm at the point where I'm very seriously considering parting with a significant number of items in my collection.  There's so much to go through that I'm looking for a little information on what types of items would have the most interest upfront.

For those of you who are genuinely interested, please quote the bottom part of this post after the line of tilde symbols and write "VERY", "SOMEWHAT", or "NOT" next to each bullet point based on how interested you are.  If you can also answer the questions that would be a great help.  If you can't think of answers then just delete the question(s).  Also, if you have anything else you'd like to add, please feel free to!

I'm not saying I'm definitely doing this, but it's more likely than ever.  And, if I do come around to doing this, it will take some time.  It's a LOT of work to sort through and itemize.  I just thought I would put the feelers out there to see if it's worth the effort.  I really appreciate the time you take to look this over.

Here are some definitions of the listed terms as well to help understand what types of items there are.

PAINT MASTERS
- hand painted, one of a kind samples used in solicitation photography to gain public interest for pre-orders.  Parts that are NOT new to a certain figure are repurposed from 1st Shots or Retail Samples and have been repainted.  Parts that ARE new to a certain figure are either resin casts or 3D printed prototypes and are often quite fragile.  Tampo elements are applied with water-slide decals.  The base body figure may not be posable due to tampo placement, parts interference, or paint.  Parts may be damaged or broken, and decals may be peeling depending on the age as the figures travelled a lot and were frequently handled.

1ST SHOTS
- unpainted parts cast at the factory that are used to see if any changes need to be made before creating the entire run of product.  Sometimes there are errors or differences between the 1st Shot and the final Retail Sample, or sometimes the part may be in pieces as they were not glued together to create a complete part.  Parts may be warped from being created with a lesser quality recycled plasic.  These do not include base bodies for the parts to fit on.

FEPs or FINAL ENGINEERING PROTOTYPES
- fully painted figures produced by a factory.  These sometimes have differences from the final retail products, mostly errors or things that needed to be changed at the request of a licensor.  They may be incomplete as well as to all the parts or accessories included.  The vast majority of the time they do not include the factory code or legal lines, but on rare occasions they do.  In some cases, they may be identical to the final retail product, mainly only distinguishable by the lack of legal text, or the date code being the earliest available, but they would be the very first figures off the assembly line.

RETAIL SAMPLES
- these are exactly what you would buy at any store, but the figures here would be the first ones off the production line after the FEPs.  They would be taken from boxed retail samples sent to me by the factory for approval and would have been in my personal display.

QUOTE THIS PART FOR YOUR ANSWERS:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

HOW INTERESTED ARE YOU IN:

- Paint Masters of Unreleased Figures
- Paint Masters of Released Figures
- 1st Shots of Unreleased Figures
- 1st Shots of Released Figures
- FEPs of Unreleased Figures
- FEPs of Released Figures
- Loose Retail Samples of Unreleased Figures
- Loose Retail Samples of Released Figures
- Boxed Retail Samples of Unreleased Figures
- Boxed Retail Samples (with Errors) of Released Figures

1. Yes or no, in general, would you be interested in any of the above but for Vinimates?

2. List the top 5 licences you would be interested in obtaining something from.

3. Are there any other TYPES of items that you would be interested in in case I unearth something I forgot I had?

4. Are there any SPECIFIC items that you would be interested in that you figure I might have lurking around?

Edited January 6 by Barry

[Trekker 42]

1 hour ago, Barry said:

HOW INTERESTED ARE YOU IN:

- Paint Masters of Unreleased Figures Very
- Paint Masters of Released Figures Not
- 1st Shots of Unreleased Figures Very
- 1st Shots of Released Figures Not
- FEPs of Unreleased Figures Very
- FEPs of Released Figures Not
- Loose Retail Samples of Unreleased Figures Very
- Loose Retail Samples of Released Figures Not
- Boxed Retail Samples of Unreleased Figures Not
- Boxed Retail Samples (with Errors) of Released Figures Not

1. Yes or no, in general, would you be interested in any of the above but for Vinimates? no

2. List the top 5 licences you would be interested in obtaining something from.

Marvel, Godzilla, Trek, Universal Monsters, DC

3. Are there any other TYPES of items that you would be interested in in case I unearth something I forgot I had?

4. Are there any SPECIFIC items that you would be interested in that you figure I might have lurking around? The Invisible Man, if there’s unreleased Godzilla, the Ghost Rider movie series

I’m interested to see what appears. I’m sorry you feel you have to let these go. 

[luke314pi]

I would be interested in unreleased figures in any format and paint masters of released figures from these licenses: Marvel, Marvel vs Capcom, T2, Transformers, and Kingdom Hearts. 

[Dave]

any rogue figures?

 

[Padrino]

I would love the inferno and D&D sets, if they still exist

[Smashmaster12]

Hoooh, now that's a heavy question. Giving up something that you were a part of its creation must be a weird feeling. Truth be told, is it wrong to say Very to everything? There's such a unique history in the production of figures, the artistry of them coming to life. 

- Paint Masters of Unreleased Figures: Very
- Paint Masters of Released Figures: Somewhat
- 1st Shots of Unreleased Figures: Very
- 1st Shots of Released Figures: Very
- FEPs of Unreleased Figures: Very
- FEPs of Released Figures: Somewhat

2. List the top 5 licences you would be interested in obtaining something from: Kingdom Hearts, Sonic, Marvel Vs Capcom, Playstation, oh god I could go on

3. Are there any other TYPES of items that you would be interested in in case I unearth something I forgot I had? Artwork in general, whether behind-the-scenes stuff or general marketing snippets. 

4. Are there any SPECIFIC items that you would be interested in that you figure I might have lurking around? I have a pair of production sketches from way back when, I'm pretty sure they're Uriel's work but if you had anything like it of your own that would be amazing.

Thank you for everything you've done for the community, everything you've been posting has been eye-opening and is incredibly rare to see.

[THE_CRIPPLER]

QUOTE THIS PART FOR YOUR ANSWERS:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

HOW INTERESTED ARE YOU IN:

- Paint Masters of Unreleased Figures   Very
- Paint Masters of Released Figures       Very
- 1st Shots of Unreleased Figures            Somewhat
- 1st Shots of Released Figures                Very
- FEPs of Unreleased Figures                   Very
- FEPs of Released Figures                       Very
- Loose Retail Samples of Unreleased Figures      Extremely
- Loose Retail Samples of Released Figures          Extremely
- Boxed Retail Samples of Unreleased Figures      Exremely
- Boxed Retail Samples (with Errors) of Released Figures   Extremely

1. Yes or no, in general, would you be interested in any of the above but for Vinimates?  No

2. List the top 5 licences you would be interested in obtaining something from.   G.I. Joe, Transformers, Aliens, Marvel, AEW

3. Are there any other TYPES of items that you would be interested in in case I unearth something I forgot I had?  Any random colored blank minimates?

4. Are there any SPECIFIC items that you would be interested in that you figure I might have lurking around? Anything G.I. Joe related!!

[buttheadsmate]

On 1/6/2026 at 6:05 PM, Barry said:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

HOW INTERESTED ARE YOU IN:

- Paint Masters of Unreleased Figures VERY
- Paint Masters of Released Figures SOMEWHAT
- 1st Shots of Unreleased Figures VERY
- 1st Shots of Released Figures SOMEWHAT
- FEPs of Unreleased Figures EXTREMELY 
- FEPs of Released Figures VERY
- Loose Retail Samples of Unreleased Figures EXTREMELY
- Loose Retail Samples of Released Figures SOMEWHAT
- Boxed Retail Samples of Unreleased Figures SOMEWHAT
- Boxed Retail Samples (with Errors) of Released Figures SOMEWHAT

1. Yes or no, in general, would you be interested in any of the above but for Vinimates? VERY

2. List the top 5 licences you would be interested in obtaining something from. Marvel, DC, BSG, Aliens , Walking Dead.

3. Are there any other TYPES of items that you would be interested in in case I unearth something I forgot I had? Anything unique/obscure/unreleased.

4. Are there any SPECIFIC items that you would be interested in that you figure I might have lurking around?  Artwork

 

[nandoninny]

i'm definately curious about all of these.  most likly will be more interested once i see more.  the unreleased stuff especially!

main one i'd love to get my hands on is the malificent from kingdom hearts if it exists or any street fighter 

[luke314pi]

Hey everyone, @Barry will be joining me for Live Q&A on Instagram today at Noon Central Time. For those of you who can't make it, I will save a video to my account: https://www.instagram.com/luke314pi