Barry’s Blueprints of Hits and Heartbreak

[Barry]

On 7/21/2025 at 2:56 PM, Chooch said:

Also, Invincible which left a lot open.

Sorry, missed this before.  No additional plans were made, not sure why.

 

23 hours ago, BuffaloDelorean said:

Were designs done up for the packs for the Thor movies that never made it out? Are there two sets of unreleased Hoguns and Fandrals?

For the first movie we did indeed have another Fandral and Hogun that didn't make it.  Also "Powered Up" Thor (angry face, translucent blue Mjolnir) and "Truck Driver" (IYKYK).  Still working on showing those, just not now.

 

23 hours ago, thereasonsy said:

@Barry did you do any work on the Spider-Man Homecoming movie?

Also is there an Minimate you designed that got cut that you loved? 

I did all the Homecoming ones.  Nothing on the cutting room floor though, other than a Civil War version of Aunt May before we got reference for her in Homecoming.  Sometimes we did that as placeholders.  I'll show these later, still going through the files.

I really loved some holiday themed comic concepts that never made it anywhere.  Nobody asked for these, they were just brainstorming ideas.  "Summer Fun Spider-Man" was a SDCC idea from 2013.  I don't think it was ever even submitted for approval though.  Then there were Christmas 2-packs in 2019 that I came up with with Robert.  These were really fun to come up with and reuse parts on, or just think of details like Goblin having a Rudolph-painted glider or the garland webline.  Spidey's my favourite here, especially the tacky sweater pattern.  I also took too much pride in writing the newspaper headlines:

GOBLIN & DOOM STEAL CHRISTMAS!
NEW YORK - It's beginning to look a lot like a crime wave!  The good citizens of the Big Apple woke up this morning to a giant lump of coal in their stockings, as the Green Goblin and Dr. Doom teamed up to spread some holiday jeer.  "I've never seen anything like it," said eyewitness May Parker.  "I was on my way to my nephew Peter's for our traditional Christmas Day wheat cake breakfast when I saw it all happen."  SEE "CHRISTMAS" ON A2.

SPIDER-MAN STILL A MENACE!
Editorial by J. Jonah Jameson
Christmas.  It's a time for reflection.  It's a time for family.  It's a time for caring.  But do you know what it's not time for?  Spider-Man!
SEE "MENACE!" ON A2.

[cylonchaney]

Those are awesome!

Gobby should have got a red Santa style touque with a pom pom. And christmas ornament bombs. A good use for metalic red paint.

[Navaan]

54 minutes ago, cylonchaney said:

Those are awesome!

Gobby should have got a red Santa style touque with a pom pom. And christmas ornament bombs. A good use for metalic red paint.

+1 to this

 

Barry, I LOVE these

[thereasonsy]

2 hours ago, Barry said:

Sorry, missed this before.  No additional plans were made, not sure why.

 

For the first movie we did indeed have another Fandral and Hogun that didn't make it.  Also "Powered Up" Thor (angry face, translucent blue Mjolnir) and "Truck Driver" (IYKYK).  Still working on showing those, just not now.

 

I did all the Homecoming ones.  Nothing on the cutting room floor though, other than a Civil War version of Aunt May before we got reference for her in Homecoming.  Sometimes we did that as placeholders.  I'll show these later, still going through the files.

I really loved some holiday themed comic concepts that never made it anywhere.  Nobody asked for these, they were just brainstorming ideas.  "Summer Fun Spider-Man" was a SDCC idea from 2013.  I don't think it was ever even submitted for approval though.  Then there were Christmas 2-packs in 2019 that I came up with with Robert.  These were really fun to come up with and reuse parts on, or just think of details like Goblin having a Rudolph-painted glider or the garland webline.  Spidey's my favourite here, especially the tacky sweater pattern.  I also took too much pride in writing the newspaper headlines:

GOBLIN & DOOM STEAL CHRISTMAS!
NEW YORK - It's beginning to look a lot like a crime wave!  The good citizens of the Big Apple woke up this morning to a giant lump of coal in their stockings, as the Green Goblin and Dr. Doom teamed up to spread some holiday jeer.  "I've never seen anything like it," said eyewitness May Parker.  "I was on my way to my nephew Peter's for our traditional Christmas Day wheat cake breakfast when I saw it all happen."  SEE "CHRISTMAS" ON A2.

SPIDER-MAN STILL A MENACE!
Editorial by J. Jonah Jameson
Christmas.  It's a time for reflection.  It's a time for family.  It's a time for caring.  But do you know what it's not time for?  Spider-Man!
SEE "MENACE!" ON A2.

These remind me of the Toy Biz Santa Spidey and MJ. Such amazing and beautiful pieces. I’m bummed they never came about but you have inspired me to start thinking of Christmas decorations and using mates on the tree.

[CBMM1]

Oh wow, these are lovely Barry! Such a shame we never got them

[Trekker 42]

Truck Driver was how we almost got Stan Lee? Out of all the cameos? 

That may be my favorite piece of Minimate trivia yet. I would've loved that Powerup Thor and the other Warriors too.

But those holiday mates are absolutely hysterical. Love the use of Pai Mei's beard on Doom and Santa on Ben. The Sandman head on the MJ set is a really funny little touch too. And looking at that MJ design... Anyone else miss @Danny?

I don't think I ever realized the newspapers had actual text outside the headline. I'll have to look much closer at the ones I have.

[thereasonsy]

52 minutes ago, Trekker 42 said:

Truck Driver was how we almost got Stan Lee? Out of all the cameos? 

That may be my favorite piece of Minimate trivia yet. I would've loved that Powerup Thor and the other Warriors too.

But those holiday mates are absolutely hysterical. Love the use of Pai Mei's beard on Doom and Santa on Ben. The Sandman head on the MJ set is a really funny little touch too. And looking at that MJ design... Anyone else miss @Danny?

I don't think I ever realized the newspapers had actual text outside the headline. I'll have to look much closer at the ones I have.

Trucker Stan and Zendaya would have made me feel like the movies were complete lol. 

[buttheadsmate]

Sandman head ? 

& that smile ....I'll leave it right there. 

 

[Trekker 42]

3 hours ago, thereasonsy said:

Trucker Stan and Zendaya would have made me feel like the movies were complete lol. 

We absolutely would’ve gotten MJ if they’d done Far From Home. 
 

God I wanted MCU Mysterio.

[Onyx_6]

I didn't realize the truck driver was the missing character from those Thor 2-packs. Curses heaped upon the bones of Borders for closing!!!!!!

And those beach/summer designs are drool-worthy. I love the Sandman base too!

Thank you @Barry for sharing all this stuff. So cool to see!

[Trekker 42]

Thinking back there were two Fantastic Four movies released during Peak Minimate time. Were they ever considered or designed?

[Navaan]

Are there any more sheets or examples of Darkstalker or Street Fighter characters? I am ready to have my heart broken.

[Barry]

On 7/23/2025 at 9:20 PM, cylonchaney said:

Gobby should have got a red Santa style touque with a pom pom. 

He originally did have a Santa hat, but it made him look less like Goblin and more like the Grinch.  

 

On 7/24/2025 at 8:42 AM, Trekker 42 said:

Truck Driver was how we almost got Stan Lee? Out of all the cameos? 

I don't think I ever realized the newspapers had actual text outside the headline. I'll have to look much closer at the ones I have.

This was the first cameo we knew about before the film released, hence why it wasn't discussed for Iron Man 1, 2, and Hulk.  After IM1 released, "Hef" was on a short list with Fury and Coulson in case we wanted to extend the line.

 

On 7/24/2025 at 9:36 AM, thereasonsy said:

Trucker Stan and Zendaya would have made me feel like the movies were complete lol. 

She was greatly downplayed prior to release, and we weren't given any reference for her or Peter's friends.  In hindsight she's a big gap in the line, but prior to release, on paper we had a Spider-Man movie with Iron Man and Happy Hogan, three classic Spidey villains -one being Michael Keaton, and Marisa Tomei.  The friends all seemed incidental, akin to co-workers at the Daily Bugle in the Raimi trilogy.

 

16 hours ago, Onyx_6 said:

I didn't realize the truck driver was the missing character from those Thor 2-packs. Curses heaped upon the bones of Borders for closing!!!!!!

He was axed prior, it wasn't Borders' fault.  Cameos, in any movie at any studio, aren't included as licensable characters.

 

11 hours ago, Trekker 42 said:

Thinking back there were two Fantastic Four movies released during Peak Minimate time. Were they ever considered or designed?

I don't believe they were considered, definitely never drawn.

 

11 hours ago, Navaan said:

Are there any more sheets or examples of Darkstalker or Street Fighter characters? I am ready to have my heart broken.

Those were prior to my time.  I have the designs, and protos for W2, but I'd have to dig them out.  I feel like E.Honda was designed, but I could be very wrong about that.  I think since Series 2 was cancelled that's as far as they went. 

I tried to get the remainder of the available original SFII World Warriors into a SFxTekken Wave 3, but it didn't move forward.  I thought that those more nostalgic characters would drive sales, and I knew I REALLY wanted them being a fan of the original SFII on SNES and in arcades.  The idea was M.Bison & Jin, Blanka & Paul, Dhalsim & Bob, Balrog & Law, Juri & Asuka, and Vega & Christie.  E.Honda wasn't included because he was not in the game.  No designs, just lists. 

[youbastards]

Barry - This is an odd question, and I know the wound is still fresh.  If the line is indeed dead, do you think you would ever entertain the idea of mocking up new designs for Minimates just for the fun of it?  I would love to see your take on the Endgame (and post Endgame) Marvel MCU stuff that never got released.

I think my biggest regrets for the line is that we never got a proper "Final Battle" Endgame release or a Wrecking Crew boxset.

Maybe your own "What If?" thread? 

[buttheadsmate]

With respect yb ....total respect yb.... Mr.Bradfield no longer gets paid for 'mocking up new designs'  WTF would he want to do it just for fun ?  

 

[thereasonsy]

@Barry looking at your awesome website, I noticed the coin bank section has Batmobiles. Do they scale with Minimates and did you ever pitch having coin banks to get around the no vehicle rule?

[Strider]

Wow those are great! My wife likes to put up decorations for the different seasons so I would snuck the Christmas ones out for winter and the beach ones out for summer. 
 

 

[Barry]

On 7/26/2025 at 6:07 AM, youbastards said:

do you think you would ever entertain the idea of mocking up new designs for Minimates just for the fun of it?

On 7/26/2025 at 8:58 AM, buttheadsmate said:

WTF would he want to do it just for fun ?  

Evidently I'm very long-winded today.  Apologies in advance.

I can definitely see both sides to this.  On one hand, it's very exciting to see new designs.  This was me before I worked on them.  I created my own fan designs, primarily extending the DC and DCAU lines.  Those designs can be directly cited for helping me get the job.  The thought of what could be or could've been is very exciting.  I get it and I appreciate that kind of enthusiasm more than I can say.  I have found myself sharing that enthusiasm over the years while working on the line.  I worked on Minimates for 18 years, day in and day out.  In 2012 and 2013, I worked on more than 365 of them in each of those years.  That’s more than one a day when factoring in weekends and holidays.  It became second nature.  I genuinely enjoyed it, and I genuinely miss it.

On the other hand, there’s a fair question about why I’d keep putting time into something I’m no longer being paid for.  That’s something I’ve asked myself.  When they're made professionally, the time investment is balanced out with compensation and the idea that they're going out into the world for people to add to their collections.  There's a rhythm that comes along with doing it as work, the deadlines, the collaboration, the approvals, the feedback.  Without the framework, I'm not sure what I'd be doing it for.  Is it for me, for others, for closure, for nostalgia?  Am I doing because I enjoy it or because I refuse to let go?

But in 2025, I haven’t designed a single one.  I find myself wondering how much do I need to keep working on them if I'm not WORKING on them.  People love to say, “Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life,” but I really dislike that phrase.  I understand the sentiment, but anyone who’s actually done what they love for a living knows that’s not really how it works.  Work is still work, no matter how fulfilling.  There were days I had to draw characters I wasn’t excited about, or make changes I didn’t agree with because of licensor decisions, or make notes for the factory which were very mentally draining.  I loved it, but it was still a job.  Now, in saying that, I never dreaded sitting down to work, and the time flew by while I was drawing.  I never looked at the clock and said disappointedly, "It's only X o'clock?"  It was always a surprised, "wow, it's already X o'clock!" 

But if I had the choice to draw anything I wanted, would I have drawn what I did draw?  There’d definitely be freedom.  No line plans, no tooling constraints, no licensor approvals.  I could do whatever I wanted.  But would people actually want to see what only I cared about?  Even in the dream lines I’ve imagined for years, there are always a few characters that just don’t excite me to draw.  

James Bond is one I always wanted to do.  I even line-planned 4-packs for each movie.  Drawing iconic Bond looks, the more prominent villains and women - that’s fun.  But then there’s a character like Aris Kristatos, (whom if you're making a set based on For Your Eyes Only you'd need to include), and I think, "Do I really want to spend an afternoon drawing him?"

Earlier this year, I thought about how we never made Savage Land Rogue.  I wrote her name on a Post-It and stuck it on the corner of my Wacom.  It’s still sitting there.  I haven’t drawn her.  And maybe that’s my answer.

But honestly, I don’t want to say no and definitively shut the door.  At the same time, I don’t want to say yes and give people false hope or get anyone’s excitement up.  Right now in this very moment everything still feels too fresh.  Just this past weekend, I found myself struggling emotionally when I saw other companies’ new reveals for SDCC, especially ones in categories or licenses we used to work in.  Not seeing ours hurt.  Not sharing ours hurt.  Not seeing others miss us hurt.  That all stung a LOT more than I expected.

Minimates weren’t originally my creation, and they were absolutely a team effort, but I was the sole designer from 2016 onward (save for Bruce Lee).  I poured so much of myself into them.  Customs of my wife and myself as bride and groom topped our wedding cake.  I became deeply attached.  So the idea of letting them go for good really does hurt.

I honestly don’t know whether it would be more therapeutic to revisit them or to let them go.  I’m still figuring that out, and I think part of figuring that out is sharing what I can with fans so we can all grieve a bit.

I don't want this to all sound overly negative though.  I'm just still processing everything.  Thank you for asking the question, it does mean a lot to me that there'd be interest.  

 

On 7/26/2025 at 11:22 AM, thereasonsy said:

@Barry looking at your awesome website, I noticed the coin bank section has Batmobiles. Do they scale with Minimates and did you ever pitch having coin banks to get around the no vehicle rule?

I don't think of Minimates as having a scale, because that implies that micro-measurements came into play.  I wrote '2" Scale Base Body' on the design sheets after a point when a number of licensors were making unreasonable production requests, like fabric pattern detail, and then were shocked to find out they were only 2" tall.  There's no difference between a 5-foot person and a 6-foot person.  It was more "are they really small characters or are they really big characters?"  When it comes to scaling them with each other, props, or vehicles, it's more "do they fit visually", which I guess is more the question.

This is all to say that I suppose the cars might be fairly reasonable stand-ins alongside Mates, but they're not really scaled.  The '66 version might be about 1/25 scale at 9" long, but the TAS version was also 9" long and if it were a real car would have been a lot longer than the '66 version.  It's hard to say what scale it was since it varied on the show.  The cockpits might fit visually, (despite them not being usable by a figure) but the tires don't, they'd seem fairly large.  

The problem with banks as stand-ins is that they needed to be a certain size to hold coins, so a vehicle would have to be quite large at times compared to a Minimate.  We didn't set out to make a 18th or 24th scale vehicle, it was literally that the largest standard circulation coin needed to be able to navigate the interior vessel without getting jammed inside.  This dictated how thick the thinnest point needed to be.

Banks were never optioned as vehicle stand-ins.  I think Marvel was the only real license with no vehicles, and the only vehicle I ever heard that people missed owning was Ghost Rider's bike.  I know there's others that could be made, like the Fantasticar, X-Jet, or Spider-Buggy, but no one was requesting them.  Also, we didn't have a Marvel bank license.  If there were other licensors that had a no vehicle clause, they would have caught on pretty quickly as to what we were doing if we'd tried to make one.

For one brief afternoon there was a very VERY slim chance we could make Batman '66, so slim that I may have been mistaken in my understanding, but I concepted a Batmobile in the proportions of other Minimates vehicles.  Not sure why I didn't start with a character honestly.  I have a design sheet labelled for Batman, but all that's in there is a Slimer flight stand with a "POW!" effect floating on it, and even that's not finished.

  

 

[cylonchaney]

😍

[Chooch]

@Barry those conflicted feelings make total sense.  Do what's right for you.

On the subject of vehicles though, how did that Thundertank statue thingy that scaled decently to Minimates come about?  I never bought one due to price, but it looked neat.

[Barry]

The tank was made by Icon Heroes under their Thundercats licence, it was not made by DST.

[buttheadsmate]

Regards long-windedness ,please keep it going because I'm loving it .  Me ? I'm noted for my short, drivel-like,pun-laced crap ....I type with one -finger with my eyes glued to  QWERTY .  Your observations on scaling are, of course , spot on & although I originally felt that the Minimate vehicles 'weren't the way to go' much of the stuff has become an unmissable part of my collection .  Whether they were a commercial success or not is not for me to say but the logistical effort (for me) of importing them from the US to the UK was tough , that's a big package if you're theoretically a completist figure collector & I wasn't just buying one of each !   Vehicle-packaged Minimates are IMHO usually unique issues & very rare.

"Ghost Walker "  ? I know of a few perfectly-scaled bikes from other lines but the inability of a Minimate to sit astride always killed it . I'm not sure whether a D&D Venger-type hip-piece might have solved this or a simply-moulded bowlegged  -piece .  My apologies to any 'bow-legged' reader 

Finally my-genuine thanks for defusing my rather pompous response to my friend 'yb' .    I shot from the hip, thought about deleting the response but considered it heartfelt .    

 

Edited July 29, 2025 by buttheadsmate
sp.

[thereasonsy]

Barry,

Thank you for such a heartfelt and generous response. This is such a difficult time and I sincerely appreciate the candor. It’s one thing to go through this as a fan, another when it’s your job, and a third when you’re creativity has such a stamp on what Minimates has become. Thank you. 

[cylonchaney]

7 hours ago, buttheadsmate said:

Regards long-windedness ,please keep it going because I'm loving it .  Me ? I'm noted for my short, drivel-like,pun-laced crap ....I type with one -finger with my eyes glued to  QWERTY .  Your observations on scaling are, of course , spot on & although I originally felt that the Minimate vehicles 'weren't the way to go' much of the stuff has become an unmissable part of my collection .  Whether they were a commercial success or not is not for me to say but the logistical effort (for me) of importing them from the US to the UK was tough , that's a big package if you're theoretically a completist figure collector & I wasn't just buying one of each !   Vehicle-packaged Minimates are IMHO usually unique issues & very rare.

"Ghost Walker "  ? I know of a few perfectly-scaled bikes from other lines but the inability of a Minimate to sit astride always killed it . I'm not sure whether a D&D Venger-type hip-piece might have solved this or a simply-moulded bowlegged  -piece .  My apologies to any 'bow-legged' reader 

Finally my-genuine thanks for defusing my rather pompous response to my friend 'yb' .    I shot from the hip, thought about deleting the response but considered it heartfelt .    

 

Another option would be to sculpt the legs onto the motorcycle and then you just put a minimate torso on it.  Some toy lines do similar with horses. The figures legs go inside the animal and there is a saddle and legs sculpted on the outside.

I loved all of the Minimate vehicles except the DeLorean and Classic Cylon Raider prototype. I didn't find them a good resemblance. Now KITT and KARR on the other hand. Awesome.

Ghost Walker - LOL  

That Batmobile makes me want to learn some new 3d desgin tools. OMG.

Edited July 29, 2025 by cylonchaney

[DSTZach]

By the way, I am seeing all of this for the first time. I usually was not looped in until a product was definite. Later on, Barry and Robert were kind enough to share in-development things with me, and I thank them.