Barry’s Blueprints of Hits and Heartbreak

[Navaan]

Hey @Barryor @DSTZach was there ever any talk of Marvel Rivals Minimates? Break my heart, please...

[Barry]

No discussions, sorry.  Without TRU and Walgreens, it would have been a hard sell.  If no one wanted PS4 Spider-Man, even after it's success, Rivals would have been a risk to develop prior to launch as hero shooters outside of Overwatch were typically coming out of the gate in trouble.  Based on it's post-launch success, If Mates had survived, I'm sure we would have eventually done them though.

[Barry]

I should maybe clarify 'no discussions', in that, it was brought up to me that we could do it in a brief 'are we interested in this' sentence, and I said 'let's wait and see how it pans out'.  That was the extent of it.  The game came out December 2024, bankruptcy was declared January 2025.  So, it wasn't going to happen at that point.

[Navaan]

Dang. And the bankruptcy proceedings are still ongoing, even today. This whole thing was a mess, but more than anything, I hope you all landed on your feet. I'm sorry but thank you for answering.

[Trekker 42]

@Barry @DSTZach In the Luke Customs thread, Barry, you mentioned how excited you were to design an MCU property that you didn't get to touch before. Now I want to know which MCU movies or shows are you most annoyed that you missed out on. And perhaps what you would've wanted the lineups for those waves to be. 

Edited Thursday at 02:20 PM by Trekker 42

[Navaan]

And while we're at it, was there any talk for the Endgame non-time suit looks?

[Barry]

I was really disappointed at the time that we missed out on Far From Home, because Spider-Man is my favourite Marvel character, and it felt like the epilogue to the MCU up to that point in a "Life goes on, back to basics" way.  It was the first MCU movie we missed out on, and that hurt since we were there from the beginning, and even got praise from Jon Favreau on our designs in the special features of the Iron Man Blu Ray.

I would have been more disappointed for No Way Home if I hadn't had the opportunity to make the other two Spider-Men before.  It still would have been nice to have Goblin and Doc Ock, but at that point I think I was more okay with missing out on movies.

If we'd had the full gamut of waves for Far From Home, it might've looked like the following. 

FAR FROM HOME
Shared Walgreens / TRU 2pks:
Spider-Man (Upgraded Suit) & Water Elemental
Mysterio (Full Costume) & Earth Elemental

Walgreens EX:
Spider-Man (Stealth Suit) & Fire Elemental
Nick Fury & Maria Hill

TRU EX:
Spider-Man (Iron Spider) & May Parker
Quentin Beck (Motion Capture Suit) & Peter Parker (with EDITH glasses)

Specialty 4pk:
Spider-Man (Battle Damaged Upgraded Suit)
Air Elemental
MJ
Ned

To be clear though, we never planned these, this is just off the top of my head, and not really curated the way I'd curate an actual wave.  Also, I feel like we would not have been told about the final elemental, J. Jonah, Jameson, or the Skrulls until it was too late.  (Maybe the upgraded suit too.)

Wave 77 was heavily influenced by Far From Home because we had been in early talks to make FFH product, so we knew things about the movie.  Black Costume Spidey and Kraven was just because I wanted to make the buried grave cover and we needed an anchor for a Spider-Man wave.  Prowler and Miles were because of Spider-Verse, and I had heard elsewhere that Miles was in FFH very briefly.  Hydro Man and Molten Man were because of the Elementals (along with Mysterio, of course) and Vulture was just a Homecoming callback.

I also pitched Agents of SHIELD a LOT because we could have done easy reused parts sets.  There were never any takers for those.  I think I tried at least twice a season.  I was Agent Coulson's biggest advocate ever since Iron Man 1, I don't know why really, I just liked the character a lot.  I tried to get him in an Iron Man 1 box set, in the Iron Man 2 waves, and finally I think we got him in Thor to keep me quiet.  I was thrilled he was the Principal in Ultimate Spider-Man because I could make a great 2-in-one version of him (which was even better when I got a photo of Clark Gregg holding that figure)  I even designed a Marvel Select and Gallery of him, lol!  This is why he was the guy in the W69 Mandroid armour too, which was missed out on the package.  That's officially Coulson.  But enough of my bromance with a fictional character...

There was no real non-time suit talk for Endgame because they were considered spoilers and they had embargo dates on them.  Because of Walgreens, we often were on shelves long before those embargo dates happened, and by the time the dates came around retail wasn't interested in having refreshes of those lines.  I know a lot of people wanted all the 'missed' figures from previous movies, but movie tie-in product often has a very small window of retail interest.  It's a hard sell to go back on something when the next movie is on the horizon.

Also, some of them were also not visually settled on until it was too late to do create new product of them.  Even the time suits went through numerous changes.  We'd submit for approval and be declined because the reference had changed since we first saw it.  I think they went through 4 rounds before they said we could proceed to production.

Edited Thursday at 03:52 PM by Barry
More info on wave 77

[Navaan]

Gosh, toy design sounds absolutely wild...

[Barry]

It was indeed wild!

Also, just a bit more information on W77, thinking about it more, there might have been some influence on Black Costume Spidey because we heard he had an all black stealth costume.  Also, I think we heard there might've been a Vulture cameo.  At any rate, that was our FFH wave as such.

[minifigvig]

coulson being the one in the mandroid suit is a pretty cool fun fact! that’ll round out my 616 SHIELD team

[Trekker 42]

Yaknow I thought that was Coulson in the Mandroid armor. I knew getting two Mandroids and putting that head on a normal SHIELD body was a good idea. Even if it wasn't Coulson, I was gonna use it as Coulson anyway.