Barry’s Blueprints of Hits and Heartbreak

[Barry]

21 minutes ago, Padrino said:

was there ever a design for Super Nova? I have no idea if she was in the animated show. I had stopped watching by then.

Do you mean Supergiant from the Black Order?  If so, no, we only designed Proxima Midnight and Black Dwarf.

[cylonchaney]

3 hours ago, buttheadsmate said:

I've got to dig in on 'Motorcycle legs'.   There are so many 1/24 & 1/25 scaled die-cast bikes available that a vast number of Minimates could use them .    I'm no customiser but I have thought about a solution several times & one idea I had was a modified crotch-piece with extended-outwards 'balls' which would allow a more bow-legged gait .   

John Wayne hips. LOL

 

[Padrino]

20 minutes ago, Barry said:

Do you mean Supergiant from the Black Order?  If so, no, we only designed Proxima Midnight and Black Dwarf.

yes. that is who I meant. thank you!

[thereasonsy]

These animated Minimates are so impressive. That Punisher…dang. 

[buttheadsmate]

3 hours ago, cylonchaney said:

John Wayne hips. LOL

 

Get on (off?) your horse & drink your milk. 

[Barry]

Some unused MCU pieces.

[Navaan]

@Barry Any Endgame Thor or Caps in their actual outfit (not the time travel team suits)?

[Trekker 42]

Okay I give up who the hell is that first one?

[Navaan]

1 hour ago, Trekker 42 said:

Okay I give up who the hell is that first one?

Pretty sure that is a Hogarth from Netflix.

Edited August 8, 2025 by Navaan

[Barry]

No other Endgame Thor or Cap outfits.  By the time we were done, their reference was still not yet available.

Yes, that’s Jeri Hogarth (Carrie-Anne Moss) from Jessica Jones.  Luke Cage replaced her.

[Dave]

those war machines, dang

 

[Padrino]

Love these! Even the clearly very overworked attorney.

Was Binary supposed to be translucent? I will never stop campaigning for a powered-up Carol Danvers!

[Trekker 42]

3 hours ago, Navaan said:

Pretty sure that is a Hogarth from Netflix.

Boy that is a character I completely forgot happened. 
 

I really do wish we’d gotten that white Widow figure. The black suit we got looks great but that white would’ve really made her stand out among the Widows we’ve gotten. 

[nandoninny]

those war machines are pretty darn impressive!!

[Barry]

15 hours ago, Padrino said:

Love these! Even the clearly very overworked attorney.

Was Binary supposed to be translucent? I will never stop campaigning for a powered-up Carol Danvers!

All of the yellow on her upper body and upper body parts would have been translucent with coloured tampo printed on top to make it look like she was glowing. 

[thereasonsy]

8 hours ago, Barry said:

All of the yellow on her upper body and upper body parts would have been translucent with coloured tampo printed on top to make it look like she was glowing. 

This would have been epic!

[Barry]

I completely forgot these were designed - Extreme Ghostbusters proposal.  Only front views were ever done.  No accessories either.  

[thereasonsy]

@Barry these ghost busters are awesome. It did make me think to ask though are there other mates that you worked on that would have completed a team?

For example, Phoenix 5 Namor and Magik or the Greg C X-Force designs. 
 

Also, did you make the Puck flip hand? I have so many Pucks because of it and always wondered why it wasn’t used more often. 

[Chooch]

Yeah the incomplete X-Force rosters are my biggest regret.

[Barry]

X-Force's Sunpot and Warpath are really the only two I can think of off the top of my head.  I'm struggling to think of teams that we didn't complete.  Not to say that we made everyone, just sometimes my brain is foggy on older releases that never happened since they can be over 10 years ago now.  Also, what sometimes was considered 'complete' in that we got the main necessary cast made was not considered complete by others, such as Age Of Apocalypse.  I believe most sets that people would consider 'incomplete' didn't have additional characters designed that were then cut.  If they were cut, they were most likely cut in line plan form due to a retailer dropping out, or lack of sales interest.  So, no, there was never a full Phoenix Five designed, which is kind of odd to think about.

I did design the Puck hand.  It was specifically included with him because he was often depicted as cartwheeling around, or in group shots, standing on one hand.  It's always great if a part can become reused, and some parts were designed to do just that, such as hair pieces not including sculpted earrings (which I decided on after I found I was tooling new parts just to get nearly identical hair to an old piece just without the earrings), but other times it's just not worth trying to reuse a part even if they're generic enough to do so.

The problem with reusing any previously tooled part is you have to dig out and, depending on the age, clean up an old tool to just use it for one singular piece.  It costs money to do so, so it's best to use multiple parts that come from a single tool when possible, or use the newest version of a part that's similar.  This often informed decisions on what parts were used.  If something was absolutely necessary to complete the look of a figure then the choice was made to get that one piece.  But, if there was a suitable piece that came from a tool where other pieces were also useful for a wave then that piece would win out.

I know that the hand would be applicable to other acrobatic characters, but even characters like Spider-Man are not known for standing on one hand.  There were often 'wish list' versions of designs where everything thought of was included, but then you'd step back and see that a single wave had far too many reused parts.  That, or I could practically hear my factory contact doing a spit-take through the email as he politely let me know to trim it a little before he gave an official quote.  I frequently had to ask myself, "does it really warrant digging out that one tool for that one part?"  Useful?  Yes.  Essential?  No.

For instance, I wanted everyone in the Spider-Verse set to come with a pointing finger hand so you could create your own Spider-Man pointing at other Spider-Men memes, but it would have required pulling out a tool from 2013, then running that tool five times for each singular box set to get a hand for each of the five characters.  It starts to add up for a part that consumers wouldn't even consider including, therefore it's something that isn't missed for not being included. 

Even after Echo needed to be cut from W84, (First Ronin was cut, then Echo all together), there was additional parts that also needed to go - a "Daredevil Dead?" newspaper for Elektra, a "Daredevil's Identity" folder for Kingpin, and two swords and flame balls for Typhoid Mary instead of the included one each.  Echo aside, because she was non-negotiably awesome, were the other parts cool?  Sure.  Necessary?  No.

This is in part why webslinging hands took so long to include.  We knew that if we included them, there was no going back.  Any Spider-Man release without the webslinging hands would feel like they were missing them.  He already pretty much required a webline as well, so that became 3 essential reused pieces for any one Spider-Man, who was already a price problem due to complicated tampo.

A bit of a tangent about reused parts, but another example that I've heard frequent complaints about was the new L-bar Captain America shield.  It's not as good as the original one because it's one piece, so you can't have it on a chest harness, or an arm strap, or separate from both for throwing.  I agree with all of this!  But...  every time you need a shield you have to get out 3 parts, or at least two for the shield and the arm strap if the character doesn't have a chest harness.  Over time, those specific parts became old, so I had to tool new parts.  Parts with a hole in them required more space in a tool (for long, drawn out reasons I'm not going to bother to get into...), so both the arm strap and the shield would need that extra space.  Take into account that a newly tooled wave might only have 10 new parts allotted to it, so a new strap and a new shield means one-fifth of the tool is the shield.  Now, with the extra space required for the holes in the strap and shield you take up more room, so suddenly you only get 6 additional parts because the strap and shield are in the place of parts 7, 8, 9, and 10.  Now, two-fifths of the new tool is shield.  On the other hand, a new shield with the L-bar has no holes and therefore is only taking up the room of 1 piece.  Then your wave goes back up to 9 new parts with the shield being part 10.  That's far better for the overall wave, and easier to grab one part for reuse later on.  So, why was it designed to be multiple parts to begin with?  Why not just jump straight to the L-bar shield?  Things, and costs, changed over time.  What was originally a viable way to do things had to be reevaluated to keep costs down.  (Does ANY of this make sense?  I feel like I'm incoherently rambling with red yarn connecting Polaroids on a corkboard here...)

Basically, this is all to say that I know it seems like not including Puck's hand is taking a bit of fun out of a figure, and I do agree with that.  Cuts are never fun to make.  But, if a set is going over budget then the unnecessary elements, or at least ones that will go unmissed by the vast majority of collectors, need to be cut.  Those elements could be old parts, new parts, tampo hits, or paint applications.  Every bit has it's own cost and they all add up in the end.

After all of that, I almost forgot about Sunspot and Warpath:

 

Edited August 11, 2025 by Barry
Sp.

[buttheadsmate]

 What a marvellous post.  

Regards "making sense " ?   I've been into Minimates for several years & it is perhaps the most-enlightening post that I have ever read here.  

[elhonez]

1 hour ago, buttheadsmate said:

 What a marvellous post.  

Regards "making sense " ?   I've been into Minimates for several years & it is perhaps the most-enlightening post that I have ever read here.  

+++++

[Padrino]

thank you so much for the "window in" to this amazing world of minimates!

 

 

[minifigvig]

definitely an interesting peak behind the scenes for the process

the sun-spotted takeoff stand, muito bem!!

[Trekker 42]

I think the most obviously egregious incomplete team is the Inhumans. Black Bolt and Lockjaw and it just sorta stopped. But given that the team was in and out of favor for so long I get it.