Best Yard Sale Ever?

[DSTZach]

It's the town-wide yard sale in Pawling, NY, where I work at the library, and I took a break and went across the street to see what one house was selling. Lo and behold, a dozen Walgreens- exclusive Minimates two-packs, from Captain Marvel, Thor Ragnarok, Black Panther and Avengers 1000000 BC. I probably have all of them in and out of package, but I'm pretty sure some got taken apart by my kids, so for $2 a pack I emptied my wallet.  

[NerdyTrev]

These are always the best, most exciting finds.

[luke314pi]

That's awesome! I have found Minimates at good will stores and garage sales in the past. It's always a nice surprise. 

[Shanester]

Score!

[DSTZach]

Except at conventions, when I saw it happen, I have almost never found physical evidence that someone has actually bought Minimates. Sometimes I'd notice some were missing from the pegs in stores, and i hear about the great scores at Luke's, but to see someone had purchased Minimates was limited to basically here. When I was at DST it was disheartening.

Finding that someone bought all these sets and never opened them or played with them in ten years is almost as disheartening. I'm not sure why they were purchased. I bought them as much to give them a home as anything. 

[Barry]

9 hours ago, DSTZach said:

Except at conventions, when I saw it happen, I have almost never found physical evidence that someone has actually bought Minimates. Sometimes I'd notice some were missing from the pegs in stores, and i hear about the great scores at Luke's, but to see someone had purchased Minimates was limited to basically here. When I was at DST it was disheartening.

This was exactly the same for me!  It was almost unbelievable to me that people actually bought them because I never saw it happen.  I once saw a kid at TRU want to buy one of our banks and his dad was trying to talk him out of it.  I was so damn excited that this kid wanted it.

When I was at NYCC, a kid in a Wolverine costume came into the room we were signing in, and I assumed he was in the wrong place.  We’d had a lot of people come through looking for Stan Lee for some reason, so I assumed that was what he was there for.  Then his mom said he loved Minimates.  I assumed (wrongly again) she meant Marvel.  She corrected me that it was actually Minimates.  I don’t know if you remember, Zach, but we gathered as much free stuff we could find to give him.  Everyone was so excited!

No offence to anyone here, I fully believe you like Minimates too, it’s just extremely rare and strange to find people like that in the wild, (even at a con!)

[DSTZach]

That's why this place is so magical. 

[Shanester]

I will tell you this, my nephew, who is now an officer in the US Army, absolutely loved Minimates.  That's all he wanted to talk about with me.  When visiting him, we would go out and check local comic shops and TRUs, just to see what we could find.

Also, at one time we had a very active member named BatmitesMom.  Her son loved Minimates and she came to the Multiverse to find out as much information about them as she could, because she had a hard time finding them "in the wild".  Many members, including myself, sent care packages to that lucky kid.

Interest was there and I really think the medium helped because it was easy to swap parts for imaginative play and simple customization.

[cylonchaney]

I bought a single counter display Cylon on a whim. Google led me here and here led me to a collection over 1000 of these little guys.

Minimates were the impetus for my 3d printing hobby and even moreso my 3d design hobby. I was so determined to 3d print a Minimate that I taught myself CAD.

My spirits have been raised by the many laughs I've had here and by the generosity of so many members over the years. The Multiverse truly is a wonderful place.

Thank you Shanester! And thank you, community.

[MisterPL]

The only time I saw someone else buy Minimates was when I got a coworker hooked on The Walking Dead 'mates. We ran to TRU on lunch hours a couple times but I soon became her proxy shopper. Her interest waned because of the hard-to-find figures, which is usually a death sentence for my own interest as well.

As someone who's developed licensed consumer products, I enjoyed lingering in the store aisles to overhear parents and kids assess my work. It was always interesting. I wish more folks at DST could have overheard the first-hand gushing collectors here muttered in person when finding a fresh wave on the pegs.

[Barry]

It's really nice to hear that people are out there and had those experiences.  Outside of comic stores, Minimates weren't sold in Canada, or at least widespread, so I didn't encounters in the wild.  If I met people, at parties or whatever, and told them what I did, they were always blown away, but no one had ever heard of the brand.  They understood when I compared them to Lego, but not quite Lego, but I felt bad in doing so.  I had one old customer from the comic store that I worked in prior buy all of my Marvel covers and get them signed by me, but he didn't know the brand, he was just happy to see my work on a real Marvel comic. 

I worked in a void, honestly. It was always just me, working from home on my own.  I'd get calls from Robert frequently. We'd chat, sometimes for minutes, sometimes for hours, not always about work. Often about Batman or Star Wars or even other action figures.  I'd get brief approval emails, emails from Zach about line plans or other ideas he'd had or seen, supportive emails from Uriel (he's the kindest person you'd ever meet, and we still message each other) and funny chats with Jeff and Brian about line plan "sales death" lists of Z-listers we wanted to make.  But mainly, it was just Robert and I.  And even then, if he was busy, I could go a whole work week without talking to anyone.  The joke became that if I wanted Robert to call, I'd put on the long-play complete 2 hour version of the Phantom Menace soundtrack.  For some bizarre reason only known to the cosmos, he'd call right as it got to the Duel Of The Fates, without fail, without him even knowing I was listening to it.  It was super weird.  That, or I'd go to the bathroom.  He had a sixth sense for that too.

He and I would see negative feedback online, or get it sent to us by others, and talk about that, considering whether it was worth taking seriously or whether it was just people shouting for the sake of shouting. The problem with any product on the internet is that people tend to go online to complain, not to praise. Just look at Amazon reviews where the person gives a product 1 star because a porch pirate took the package.  Not the product's fault!  And honestly the feedback we did see wasn't often positive, but not just that, it was sometimes insulting which could be very hurtful at times.  And just to be clear, I'm talking more about YouTube reviews, customer feedback forms, and emails from individuals, not the forums.  I really didn't come to the forum much at all, but I'll get to that.

When I briefly had a DST email address, people were able to figure it out from the naming convention and started sending me hate mail.  I quickly abandoned that account and went to a Gmail address so I could be anonymous again. (I was also getting company wide emails about a "weird smell on the third floor" or someone's lost sandwich in a building I'd never been to, in a country I wasn't living in...)

The key moment was that I once had someone tell me that I should die in a house fire because I hadn't made Black Widow's breasts big enough for their liking. Right then, I just stopped. I put my head down and stayed away.  I didn't want to hear it anymore.  If someone at DST really wanted to get a complaint through to me, they could, and I'd listen if it was constructive. Otherwise, I honestly just made the toys for myself, for Robert (he was not an artist, but he knows exactly what he likes and exactly how to articulate what's needed to be done) and of course for the licensors, because without them stuff isn't getting made. I was enough of my own worst critic that I felt I didn't really need the internet to tell me what worked and what didn't. When reviewing samples, I already knew what I wanted to improve, and what I could do next time.  If a licensor was happy, then that was enough too.  But even the licensors could be cruel at times, some making very unprofessional feedback suggestions. It wasn't enough to say, "We don't feel that this is working" Sometimes the comments could be pretty scathing or mocking of the art.  Those kinds of comments stuck with me, even though I knew they were most likely made by one individual trying to elevate themselves by putting someone else down.  Most licensors were great to deal with though, but a few bad apples...

Once in a blue moon, we'd hear what a celebrity thought of something we'd made via the feedback loop, and those were VERY kind words to hear.  That, or I'd find a photo of them with a product, or talking about being excited for their figure when they stumbled across it.  I actually kept a page at the back of my notebook specifically to write those moments down, and I'd reread them when I was feeling particularly low.

Anyway, I kept away from places like the forums where I might have encountered positive comments partly because I didn't want to attract unwanted attention.  I wasn't a spokesman, I didn't want to inadvertently become the face of a brand somehow, and I also didn't want licensors to think I might be spilling secrets, and I do know for a fact that I was being monitored for that in some online places. I had a Facebook account only so I could point to it and say "This account is mine, notice how it never makes comments anywhere".  I never looked at customs because I didn't want someone to accuse me of stealing an idea.  I didn't even go to defend myself when people were being overly harsh because I didn't want to be perceived as someone who couldn't handle criticism.  And I know that probably sounds contradictory by my staying away from the Internet, but I honestly wasn't incapable of handling criticism if it was constructive.  I was taught during my animation training how to handle harsh feedback in a professional environment, and I knew how to separate useful criticism from the rest.  But the 'rest' is what can bring you down, especially when you work alone.

The other problem is as fan reviews shifted from blogs and personal websites to YouTube and monetized platforms, the more you'd get reviews that were cruel for the sake of cruelty.  It wasn't good feedback for us, but it got those individuals clicks, and that's all that mattered to them.  Make fun of it and it gets 25K views.  Give it a positive review and it might only get you 800 views.  (Don't get me started about the video game industry, with any game below an 8.5 being absolutely unforgivable disasters in reviews, so the game sells poorly, the studio makes cutbacks, then those same reviewers shout 'For shame!" to the parent companies as if the reviews had nothing to do with it.  They don't call them influencers for nothing.)

What I couldn't handle and frankly shouldn't have had to handle was cruelty for the sake of being cruel. When someone tells you that you should die by fire, trapped in a house, suffocating while your skin burns off, because they're unhappy with how underwhelmingly horny they were for a 2D drawing...?  Sorry, but I'm done. That's not criticism in the slightest.  And people would always tell me to brush it off, let it roll off my back, but in the same way that no one comes online to say positive thing about a product, you don't tell your family about your day starting with the positive things.  You jump right to the negative, because that's what sticks.

Anyway, I've really started rambling here, but I wanted to say thanks to everyone who has shared their experiences and let their enthusiasm shine through. Maybe I should have looked for those experiences more as they were happening.  When I did happen to notice that kind of enthusiasm, it meant a lot to me, more than people probably knew.

[cylonchaney]

That's the double edged sword of the internet. It can expose you to a much wider audience. However, that audience contains a percentage of psychopaths. The bigger the audience you gain, the more psychos. 

But also more experiences like the good ones above.

[buttheadsmate]

I typed & deleted several responses to Barry's post ......nothing seemed to represent what I wanted to say , nothing was /is worthy . 

I may delete this. 

'buttheadsmate' has always tried to resemble the real me , I am not particularly brave but I am definitely not a coward .   'buttheadsmate' would never ever 'say' or do anything on the internet that I ,  **b B*a*i* ,wouldn't say in person to the recipient of my written word.   There have been several occasions over the last 20 years & 13K posts that I have almost cringed when re-reading what I've written , on occasions when I have directed my Minimate-orientated frustrations towards Chuck & I am sorry to say ..Zach .  I realised of course that Zach was between a rock & a hard place , I  ultimately felt we agreed to disagree on many an occasion ?  One area however where buttheadsmate 'sat alongside' Zach  was when he was promoting Minimates... on a Battle Beast forum .  I did my best there to fend off one or two of the, almost ,xenophobic cunts that posted there   Thereafter I realised what he was up against & I always kept that in mind ..... when I was criticising Battle Beast Minimates  

I first met Zach at a convention ,  he had no idea who I was & he spent a good few minutes answering my mischievous question "What are these things?" .....   then I smiled & said "hi I'm buttheadsmate" .  A great moment for me! 

Reading Barry's post brings home the reality that it is just my 'hobby' that is having a hiatus , it has been much more than that for many other people .

 

 

Edited September 26 by buttheadsmate
sp.

[elhonez]

Thanks for sharing that Barry. People can be really shitty, you deserved better than that.

This brand, this hobby, whatever we choose to call it has inspired and continues to inspire a pretty unique devotion. Maybe it never caught the full fire it deserved, but those of us who "get it" got it, and saw the limitless potential. That you were designing the whole fn' line across every license is staggering, and that you were doing it all while toiling away in relative isolation is bonkers. 

I can gab on in a blabberingly effusive manner but that probably wouldn't land as well as this: I have two kids, now 7 and 5. And when I felt they were old enough for me to drop some of these sweet toys into their hands, they instantly "got it" and started ripping them apart and putting them back together again, asking whether or not their favorite characters existed in this format, and populating their elaborate Lego and Magna-Tile fortresses with them.

There's your 5-star review. Everything else is dumb, pedantic and sometimes cruel noise from peacocking bloviators.

[DSTZach]

Funny,  i only ever got people telling me Minimate breasts were too big! Someone messaged me about breast size around the time the Zenescope Minimates came out, but they were actually pissed off about Stargirl from the DC line. Apparently she was too buxom for her age. 

And man, that Battle Beast forum was unforgiving. There was one guy there who swore up and down that he had single handedly kept Battle Beasts alive, and that we were profiting off of his hard work.  I didn't point out that the creators of Battle Beasts had not bothered to hang onto the name, it was so dead. And when I met him at C2E2 in Chicago, and he was trying to finaigle freebies, I actually called him on how rude he was to me online. 

But I loved the BB MM line as much as I loved the 1980s figures. They were great. I actually suggested we make action figures based on Barry's (and Valerio's) designs when I saw the various lines of animal warriors that were being made, on Kickstarter and elsewhere. Chuck seemed intrigued,  for a moment. 

Oh, and meeting Barry at NYCC, doing the poster signing at the MM exhibit with him and Uriel, and getting dinner with him and Robert afterwards was one of the highlights of my time at DST. Above getting celeb pictures with Minimates, and there were a lot of those. 

[Trekker 42]

@DSTZach did you ever find any particular celebrity was the most stoked on having a Minimate? I know Kat Dennings brought them up on an interview once (though she thought they were Lego. Whoops) but was anyone else just extremely excited about getting one of them?

[cylonchaney]

10 hours ago, Trekker 42 said:

@DSTZach did you ever find any particular celebrity was the most stoked on having a Minimate? I know Kat Dennings brought them up on an interview once (though she thought they were Lego. Whoops) but was anyone else just extremely excited about getting one of them?

I remember seeing Favreau with an Iron Monger that he seemed to think was pretty cool.

[Barry]

On 9/25/2026 at 6:42 PM, cylonchaney said:

That's the double edged sword of the internet. It can expose you to a much wider audience. However, that audience contains a percentage of psychopaths. The bigger the audience you gain, the more psychos. 

I always have said that the Internet was a better place before it was on everyone's phones.  If you were angry prior to jumping on in the past, usually the wait for dial up to complete the connection allowed you time to cool off.

 

On 9/26/2026 at 5:29 AM, buttheadsmate said:

There have been several occasions over the last 20 years & 13K posts that I have almost cringed when re-reading what I've written , on occasions when I have directed my Minimate-orientated frustrations towards Chuck & I am sorry to say ..Zach .

Reading Barry's post brings home the reality that it is just my 'hobby' that is having a hiatus , it has been much more than that for many other people .

Oh, I know this feeling well!  WAY back, in the mid-90s, I began a Batman Animated Series website, which later merged with a Superman TAS message board and became "The World's Finest", which for a good while was the largest DC Animated site on the web (still might be...?)  I reviewed every episode of the series there and reading back on some of them now, they're just sad.  I either didn't understand the point of the show, or was negative about decisions that I didn't understand.  I wouldn't call them scathing as the Internet is today, but they're definitely uninformed and naive.  I don't think I attacked anyone personally, but I was negative towards work that other humans did, when they were doing their best in the circumstances that they had.  Now, that I have worked in similar situations where there's corporate intervention and too many cooks in the kitchen, I get it, and wish I could go back and change those reviews.  Especially now that I know that the creators of the show were reading those reviews at the time, which is all kinds of embarrassing. 

 

On 9/26/2026 at 10:42 PM, elhonez said:

I can gab on in a blabberingly effusive manner but that probably wouldn't land as well as this: I have two kids, now 7 and 5. And when I felt they were old enough for me to drop some of these sweet toys into their hands, they instantly "got it" and started ripping them apart and putting them back together again, asking whether or not their favorite characters existed in this format, and populating their elaborate Lego and Magna-Tile fortresses with them.

There's your 5-star review. Everything else is dumb, pedantic and sometimes cruel noise from peacocking bloviators.

That's an awesome review, I love it.  Thank you!

 

On 9/27/2026 at 12:17 AM, DSTZach said:

Funny,  i only ever got people telling me Minimate breasts were too big! Someone messaged me about breast size around the time the Zenescope Minimates came out, but they were actually pissed off about Stargirl from the DC line. Apparently she was too buxom for her age. 

 

Oh, and meeting Barry at NYCC, doing the poster signing at the MM exhibit with him and Uriel, and getting dinner with him and Robert afterwards was one of the highlights of my time at DST. Above getting celeb pictures with Minimates, and there were a lot of those. 

Haha, I'd never heard about them being too big!  A lot of people got on my case about Starfire too, forgetting that she was not very buxom in her early days.  (Also, that licensor had to approve these, and that part of the market was children.)  I also often heard that the women with come-hither smirks looks were getting tiresome, so I gave them more stern looks with angry eyebrows or gritted teeth, which then got me comments about why the women didn't have sexy come-hither looks.  There's two different bits on the Simpsons about kids in focus groups being highly contradictory with their ideas, one about the Funzo toy and one about Itchy & Scratchy.  I thought about those scenes often.

That whole weekend was honestly one of my biggest highlights too.  The convention was great, but walking from Javits to go get dinner, and just hanging out as a group.  I felt like I was officially part of the New York office, and like I was part of a team at that moment.  It was also just a lot of fun!  Robert took me to the office either that night or the next, and showed me around (and when I say 'around', it was like a 15x15 foot room, if that).  I sat down at a drawing table and he said "I guess this would have been your desk", which choked me up a bit.  I would have loved to come to more conventions to do that again, but since it was not being paid for, I just couldn't work it.

 

On 9/27/2026 at 8:46 AM, Trekker 42 said:

@DSTZach did you ever find any particular celebrity was the most stoked on having a Minimate? I know Kat Dennings brought them up on an interview once (though she thought they were Lego. Whoops) but was anyone else just extremely excited about getting one of them?

Zach probably has a lot more encounters that I did.  I often heard indirectly through approvals or stories from conventions.  I usually heard about people who played characters that wouldn't have got toys in typical action figure lines.  They seemed happy that we felt they were an important enough part of the story to be featured.  I feel weird telling those stories though, and I don't really know why.  Maybe sometime in the future though.  

The one I love the most might be the photo of Clark Gregg holding his Agent Coulson from Ultimate Spider-Man.  It was definitely a posed photo, it was on Marvel.com, but since I championed getting Coulson made for ages it was cool to see the man himself holding one.  Not sure if he liked it, but it still made me feel good.  The other part of that picture that's great is at the very edge, you can just barely see Chloe Bennet in profile coming into frame, and she seems genuinely amused by the figure, which is pretty cool too.

 

14 hours ago, cylonchaney said:

I remember seeing Favreau with an Iron Monger that he seemed to think was pretty cool.

Yes, that was actually on the Iron Man behind the scenes documentary!  I almost spat my drink when I was watching that and the scene of them approving the paint masters came up.  We had no idea that was going to be in there.  He said it was the best Monger yet, and was asking how he could get some of these, which really made me happy.  I briefly entertained someone who had entertained millions, which really helped mend some of the impostor syndrome I was experiencing about the whole job at the time.

[DSTZach]

I remember Chris Jericho sitting and staring at his Minimate for a long time, I don't know what was going through his mind. I remember CM Punk and Britt Baker were kind of excited. Even Orange Cassidy gave his a thumbs-up.

Before AEW, I remember Anson Mount (Black Bolt) being goofy with his, and Vincent D'Onofrio posed with a set, but I don't remember his reaction. The Defenders posed with their statues, I'm not sure they saw their Minimates.  

I even got Stan Lee to sign a Spider-Man set, but I'm not sure he knew what they were. 

[Barry]

I have a photo of Krysten Ritter and Mike Colter (in costume!) each with Jessica Jones set.  So, they saw them, and I gather we’re each given one.

D’Onofrio I have a photo too, which is funny, because we technically weren’t allowed to make him.   I’m not sure if that was a likeness thing, or if it was a Sony / Disney Kingpin thing though.  At any rate, I was worried when I saw the pic, in case it was at his request, then we might have upset him.  But I gather now from interviews with him about wanting to fight Spider-Man that it was probably a shared character problem.  We might’ve accidentally got around it by calling him Wilson Fisk, which was only really because he wasn’t called the Kingpin in Season 1.

[Trekker 42]

1 hour ago, DSTZach said:

I remember Chris Jericho sitting and staring at his Minimate for a long time, I don't know what was going through his mind. I remember CM Punk and Britt Baker were kind of excited. Even Orange Cassidy gave his a thumbs-up.

Before AEW, I remember Anson Mount (Black Bolt) being goofy with his, and Vincent D'Onofrio posed with a set, but I don't remember his reaction. The Defenders posed with their statues, I'm not sure they saw their Minimates.  

I even got Stan Lee to sign a Spider-Man set, but I'm not sure he knew what they were. 

Wait what Anson Mount character got a Minimate? Or was he messing with the comic Black Bolt?

[Captain Paco]

I so wish I could find MiniMates at a Garage Sale.

I live in Normal, IL. We once had a Toys 'R Us and I know others in the area liked MiniMates as they were always picked over. I have never seen anyone looking at MiniMates on the pegs at my local TRU nor the Walgreen's. However, they always had been picked over when I could get there to get what I wanted.  I have always scoured the local garage sales and never see any MiniMate items on them.

So I am jealous that some have been found at a garage sale.  My other new passion is for Fisher Price ImagiNext DC Superhero Figures and I have a hard time finding them at garage sales as well. When I do find them they are in not so good condition.

[buttheadsmate]

Suddenly ,being able to buy Minimates online from TRU.com levelled the playing field for me.   I became the guy emptying the previously, unobtainable inventory that became available.   This was my garage-sale. 

[Padrino]

3 hours ago, Captain Paco said:

My other new passion is for Fisher Price ImagiNext DC Superhero Figures and I have a hard time finding them at garage sales as well. When I do find them they are in not so good condition.

I'm a huge imaginext fan! DC minimates were my gateway drug. When they ended, I started buying these figures any change I got. The character options are amazing!

My holy grail was two sets that were never sold in the US. A Wonder Woman set with Donna Troy, Artemis, Hippolyta, Cheetah, Steve Trevor and Hercules, and a Gotham female character set with Batwoman, Huntress, Killer Frost, Katana, Star Sapphire and Jessica Cruz. It took me ages to find them online below the price of a monthly mortgage but they do pop up now and then. I was only able to buy one of each but they are prized possessions!

[DSTZach]

On 9/29/2026 at 8:21 PM, Trekker 42 said:

Wait what Anson Mount character got a Minimate? Or was he messing with the comic Black Bolt?

Sorry, it was an animated black bolt, I think. I remember I showed Chuck the picture and he almost punched me for not telling him I was getting it. He is a huge Hell on Wheels fan.