New Q&A stuff from AA's site

[buttheadsmate]

So BHM, you don't believe the surprise/disbelief evidenced in the previous Q&A over the low quality of the Spidey Foes set was on the level?

I once questioned Chuck's integrity once before in one of my posts & his swift rebuttal on the forum....for me at least...proves my previous argument that 'they watch'..........so I have to be careful Sam Was he on the level with his disbelief/surprise? If he was then he really needs to get his QC guy by the throat & ask him WTF he didn't know.

[groundhog7s]

GH, I don't think it is inevitable (or even that likely) that Marvel winds down. DST has been able to keep it going by being fresh and creative in terms of detailing and accessories, their choice of characters released in regular waves, as well as decisions re: TRU waves and exclusives. Marvel may well lose steam, but if so, I think it will be due to bad decisions regarding releases, or people getting tired with Minimates generally, rather than the nature of the license itself. Marvel is a well-spring of great, recognizable, colorful figures.

I think eventually Marvel will have to end, but I don't foresee it for a long time

The one thing that DST could benefit greatly from (and I'm assuming they don't have) is a group of collectors outside of their company that they bounce ideas off of before samples are produced and shown to retailers. I know it was brought up already in this thread, but I've thought about it a lot in the last few weeks that any company their size, that can't afford to make samples that never make it to production, miss out on the resource that is free and usually accurate-the fans. I understand they don't want to give away secrets to everyone, but you can't tell me they can't find a few trusted individuals that could give enough feedback to say things like 'carrying cases made of cardboard won't go over well with collectors' or 'is there really a big enough market to sell 'Beverly Hills Cops' Minimates'. I know they went under, but that is the best reason that Palisades toys could make as big as an impact as they did with their product-they took fan feedback into consideration. It's my opinion that most people have to know there job so well that they usually become out of touch with how most people percieve their product. this explains, to me, a lot of the entertainment industry, but also applies to toys. And since DST can't act like a Hasbro or Mattel, who can afford to put some crap on the shelves that isn't received well, you'd think they'd value some feedback from the people who will be buying their product more than the retailers (which, at that point, they've already invested money into the product regardless). And that's something I hope does get read by the appropriate person who could give it some thought.

*gets down off soap box and joins the rest of the disgruntled geeks hoping for something better*

[drgnrbrn316]

I can see them not wanting to flood the market this year, considering we've reached about as far as some of their licenses will go. Terminator and BSG winded down by the end of last year and you can't tell me that Ghost Busters has much steam left in it. The tone sounds like they aren't sure if they'll go on in 2011. Marvel is stable, but you can't build a brand on one license, so it sounds like they're going to shift off of what's already established next year and try introducing the new lines. Marvel provides the backbone, especially with the TRU line, and your Pirates, Battle Beasts, etc will branch from that.

They need to find another strong line to go along with Marvel. DC is pretty much out, since I don't see DST and DCD burying the hatchet anytime soon. Back to the Future is done. Ghost Busters is pretty much done. Halo has some promise, considering how many fans there are for the games, but that won't last forever either, since you hit an upper limit to how many colors you can paint the Master Chief armor, and there's only so many other characters to choose from.

Pirates, Battle Beasts, and the MAX stuff is pretty much the only option available to them for a long running line that can be done cheaply. With their own lines, they don't have to pay licensing fees, and with their own made up universes, they can introduce new characters with no problem. Pirates: take a blank, slap a peg leg/hook/eye patch on it and you've got a new character. Battle Beasts: think of an animal, put it in armor, add weapon, done. MAX: doctors, police, firemen, army, cowboys, ninjas, whatever is popular with the kids.

So, I can understand them not wanting to rush what could be the future backbone of their product.

I'll agree that it sucks that they won't do blanks though. Hell, they could release a single pack/2-pack/4-pack once a year as a con exclusive and it would probably sell. It would be the cheapest product they could release, since there is no sculpted parts, no tampo, no licensing, no nothing that would have to be done. I'd buy it in a plain brown box with Minimate written on the top in Sharpie. I'd even donate the Sharpie. Of course, I can see how it would be a tough sell to their various distributors. Comic Shops would be wary since its just a blank, and TRU might be wary as well. Con exclusive or through the DST site might be their best choices, or through an online retailer who carries customizing tools in their store. I just don't see what it would hurt to try. Stick some blanks up on a pillar at one of the toy shows and gauge interest. Put it up for preorder. If they don't get the numbers they'd like, at least they tried and it might shut us all up for a day or two. If they see a response, then they just made some money. And they'd lose, what, ten bucks if they get no response? We'll take up a love offering if it comes to that.

[buttheadsmate]

I can't believe Marvel went to DST & said "Please could you do Minimates for us ?" ......DST went to Marvel. WTF can't anybody at DST go to those daft xenophobic fuckers at Underground Toys & beg for the bloody rights to produce Dr.Who Minimates? Bugger me I'll do the begging for them & I would genuinely mortgage my house to help produce them. I AM NOT a demented Dr.Who fan who wants a set of Minimates for his collection, I'm a calculating responsible adult who sees the vast potential for them in the US & the UK . It is so frustrating how numpties like that shower of shit at Underground manage to get these licences?

Edited June 7, 2010 by buttheadsmate

[Jatta Pake]

I'll agree that it sucks that they won't do blanks though. Hell, they could release a single pack/2-pack/4-pack once a year as a con exclusive and it would probably sell. It would be the cheapest product they could release, since there is no sculpted parts, no tampo, no licensing, no nothing that would have to be done. I'd buy it in a plain brown box with Minimate written on the top in Sharpie. I'd even donate the Sharpie. Of course, I can see how it would be a tough sell to their various distributors. Comic Shops would be wary since its just a blank, and TRU might be wary as well. Con exclusive or through the DST site might be their best choices, or through an online retailer who carries customizing tools in their store. I just don't see what it would hurt to try. Stick some blanks up on a pillar at one of the toy shows and gauge interest. Put it up for preorder. If they don't get the numbers they'd like, at least they tried and it might shut us all up for a day or two. If they see a response, then they just made some money. And they'd lose, what, ten bucks if they get no response? We'll take up a love offering if it comes to that.

I've been thinking a lot about the blanks issue. Fans have been begging for blanks for years, and they got them in the form of the FCBD offerings of 2007 and 2009. Fans have also gotten blanks in various colors as promotional items for many events, most recently Ghostbusters 25th Anniversary.

What fans are wanting and not getting, though, are true blanks with no logo tampo. I have several theories as to why DST repeatedly tells fans (and retailers) why they won't do blanks:

1) A market exists for the tampo promotional blank. Selling un-tampo-ed blanks will undercut this market, and DST wants to have something in reserve to offer potential customers. They can point to ebay and say, "Buying tampo blanks can be a great promotional device, look at the ebay prices for a Tower Records blank - $15.00 for a blank for company that doesn't even exist anymore!"

2) Fear of customizers. Not sure if this holds much water, but there could be fears that enterprising entreprenuers could take a bunch of blanks and tampo them into a new product that competes with the main brand.

3) Cost. The factory churning out the Minimates may not provide a cost effective option for making blanks. Meaning, it could very well be cheaper to manufacture the product with accessories and tampos than without. Sounds strange, but factories are incredibly efficient these days. Making true blanks may require factory line changes that end up being very expensive.

4) Line maturity. Early on, Art Asylum and DST were hungry for the brand to gain traction and were more responsive to ideas that offered short term benefits without regard to long term consequences. Diluting the world with blanks would diminish the percieved value of the license product. (If a blank only costs 50 cents, why pay $9.99 for two accessory-less tampo'ed Spider-Man minimates? 2000% mark up for license? Fans would be outraged.)

Wanting cheap blanks seems to be a simple win/win in the eyes of fans. But I suspect there are strong business reasons against ever doing blanks. Cheap blanks could kill Minimates.

I hate to say it, but the REAL oppurtunity for entrepenuers and customizers may not be acquiring stockpiles of blanks. It might be the BrickArms route of producing independently owned copyrights for accessories for Minimates. Some legal jujistu and massive creativity might allow entrepenuers to release waves of accessories that could possibly allow for the easy customization of heavily demanded production Minimates for unavailable licenses ...

[youbastards]

The one thing that DST could benefit greatly from (and I'm assuming they don't have) is a group of collectors outside of their company that they bounce ideas off of before samples are produced and shown to retailers. I know it was brought up already in this thread, but I've thought about it a lot in the last few weeks that any company their size, that can't afford to make samples that never make it to production, miss out on the resource that is free and usually accurate-the fans.

Okay, so GH and I are forming the official DST MiniMate Consumer Illuminati, we've got 3 spots left...

EDIT: Will this eventually lead to MiniMate Civil War??? Secret Blammoid Invasion???

Edited June 7, 2010 by youbastards

[groundhog7s]

Okay, so GH and I are forming the official DST MiniMate Consumer Illuminati, we've got 3 spots left...

EDIT: Will this eventually lead to MiniMate Civil War???

I don't know, but I'll pm you where to send your dues...

[buttheadsmate]

... where to send your dues...

Israel?

[NorthRaider]

As long as I maintain control of the Miscellaneous Mini Factions Imperium, nobody gets hurt.

Well, not unless the Hasbro Heroes and the Shockinis decide they want to join forces and wage a revolt or something. I can't help you there.

[buttheadsmate]

Palisades actually touted quite heavily for corporations to use blank Palz figures for promotional use whilst the 'old arch enemy' kubricks have literally masses of blank kubricks that have been produced to promote entities as diverse as 'ebay' & 'rock bands'. The kubricks are generally completely blank,often transparent & incorporate the logo on the torso (surprisingly ). The most famous of the blank kubricks are the Pantone sets which I believe Ivan once featured( somewhere) & are quite something & quite expensive. As for Minimate blanks I have a few 2 & 3" ones that are pretty unique,, the flesh-coloured ones being my most precious.

[TBT!]

The discussion on flesh colored blanks had moved to:

http://www.minimatemultiverse.com/index.ph...ic=8294&hl=

So we can keep this thread on topic for the Q&A stuff.

T.

[battlecat]

I know parts of DST's business plan can be annoying sometimes, but the fact that Minimates are still around after all this time means they're doing something right. The whole "we could tell you how to run your business better than you do" thing always falls a little flat for me, because we, as fans, have wrongly predicted successes and failures as much as anyone. With our advice they could have avoided the whole DSS fiasco, except it was instead a bestseller. And we could have told them not to bother putting *another* bloody Spider-Man in the Secret Wars poll, except the non-board voters voted for him like crazy. DST include their little feedback mailer things, communicate with us a lot more than any other current toy company, and mostly probably look at sales -- to say they don't listen to the fans, just because they don't do exactly what you as an individual want, is kind of crazy to me. But as usual YMMV.

Happy to hear we will be getting two different mates with the Deloreans after all.

Edited June 7, 2010 by battlecat

[groundhog7s]

FYI, I'm not saying I can tell them how to do their job better. I'm just saying that any time you get more feedback from people that are outside the sphere of being involved int eh production of a product gives you a different perspective. Many successful companies use test groups for this very purpose, I just think they would benefit from gathering some opinions from outside their organization on risky ventures. I think overall they do a great job, but they make some choices that most people that know the product and the market from this end look at and cringe and usually those things either don't get produced or don't sell well. I want to support this line until the last Minimate gets made if possible and hope that I'm backing a company that uses all it's resources to provide good products to stay competetive in this market and I don't feel that Chuck and company are using one of their most useful and cheapest resource effectively (or at all).

[karamazov80]

I was thinking myself about how the fans are speaking with their wallets and DST is listening. Fans wanted more Ghostbusters as evidenced by buying habits, and DST listened. Deadpool flew off the shelves, and they quickly got another in the pipeline. But beyond that, DST seems to have tried their best to appease the more hardcore fans in many instances. Fans here begged and pleaded for characters like Deadpool, Cap Britain, Gambit, Sabretooth, army builders, more BSG figures (despite previously lackluster sales), even generic figures like Pirates and special ops guys, etc. Do they care about everything we say? Perhaps not. But I wouldn't go so far as to say that they were actively ignoring us, or failing to appease the fans when it makes sense to do so (not that anyone is actually saying this. . .maybe the straw man I created in my mind).

The Spidey box set QC issues is something I still can't quite understand, but there may be more than meets the eye there.

Edited June 7, 2010 by karamazov80

[battlecat]

FYI, I'm not saying I can tell them how to do their job better. I'm just saying that any time you get more feedback from people that are outside the sphere of being involved int eh production of a product gives you a different perspective. Many successful companies use test groups for this very purpose, I just think they would benefit from gathering some opinions from outside their organization on risky ventures. I think overall they do a great job, but they make some choices that most people that know the product and the market from this end look at and cringe and usually those things either don't get produced or don't sell well. I want to support this line until the last Minimate gets made if possible and hope that I'm backing a company that uses all it's resources to provide good products to stay competetive in this market and I don't feel that Chuck and company are using one of their most useful and cheapest resource effectively (or at all).

I wasn't trying to say test groups are bad, just that every now and then the mindset pops up that this board completely represents the consumer base of Minimates. I don't really think it does. I think the Spidey/Wolverine/DSS buyers outnumber us by far.

With the Spidey box QC thing, I've mentioned before, but I haven't seen Chuck lurking since the live chat. Maybe I've just missed seeing him, but it's possible he sometimes keeps up with board reaction (enough to swiftly rebut BHM!) and other times is too busy.

[dr baghead]

To me, the confirmation that we aren't getting a Final Battle Whiplash from IM2 is the biggest disappointment.

I think they were just explaining why he wasn't in TRU wave 2, not that he was never coming... I wouldn't be surprised if we don't get him because the window of time could close, but I don't think Hasbro or Hot Toys has made him either so it might just be a matter of time and TRU wave 2 came too soon for him to make it.

Mark my words, the Pirates line will never come out, if they aren't even planning until 2011, then they aren't committed to the line and it's dead before it started.

I could see that being more a case of buyers wanting to wait to order a Pirate line closer to when there's a media buzz for Pirates 4.

Think of it this way: Back to the Future minimates released with decent success. Ghostbusters has the game to remind casual fans they exist, minimates sell like Gangbusters (off topic: should we start referring to non-marvel minimates that sell well as "selling like Ghostbusters"? No, no we shouldn't), Ghostbusters success leads fans of 80's comedies to look into minimates, see they made BttF and now you can't get BttF set 1 for less then $60.

They wait until next year and people will have Pirates on the brain, they go to buy some Ghostbuster minimates (which yes, I think those will be around in 2011 too, at the end of last year we didn't think they'd be going into 2010 and yet here we are...) and they say "OH HEY! Pirates in scale with Ghostbusters, nice!" or they go to buy some Pirate Mega-Bloks (or legos now maybe?) and see these "off brand lego pirates" and say "Hmmm, this $45 ship only comes with Captain Jack and 'new chick pirate', maybe I'll grab a couple of these $7 two-packs to give li'l Stevie a nice crew instead of buying these $15 'build-a-cannon' sets that only come with one guy"... that's called synergy! If they had made "minimates: DRAGON RIDERS!" or "minimates: Greatest Greeks" I can guarantee those would have been rushed out he door earlier this year to cash in box office returns much like this year "minimates: armoured billionare" was a big success at retail to leech off a similar movie, but since it was Pirates, gotta wait...

How many times do we have to request blank minimates, DST? I've never seen a company so blatantly ignore what their consumers want.

Me: "Dear Kelloggs, I love Raisin Bran, but can you sell just Bran cereal without raisins?"

Kelloggs: "Fuck you consumer, pick out the goddamn raisins if you don't want them!"

This made me laugh out loud... I wonder if they have a Q&A where they're like "Hey, we would have loved to see those Kelloggs minimates released too! Stop bugging us and go bug DST! If they want to release them we're all for it!!!" and "I'm sorry, but we no longer have the rights to make C3P-O's, we have a small window of time after each movie to release a tie-in product..." and those 'Raisin Fan' commercials are actually mean spirited jabs at the members on the "KelloggsMultigrain" message boards.

[groundhog7s]

New Q&A is up now.

And once again, Luke keep confusing people with his customs.

And I was right that the X-Men box set shown is a prototype-too bad Jubilee might still suck from the sounds of it.

And sad news for Tigra, my favorite Avenger that hasn't been made.

Edited July 8, 2010 by groundhog7s

[Danny]

Really interesting to see that Chuck wasn't sure about the Thing in wave 37 either.

[youbastards]

Glad to see my questions/comments about QC issues was completely ignored.

[groundhog7s]

I know for me, in times past, that if I submitted a question a week or two before the answers it didn't get answered until the next Q&A.

Or Chuck just doesn't like you.

[youbastards]

Or Chuck just doesn't like you.

Then apparently I pissed off their "Customer Service" dept too... :biggrin:

[boyd]

Really interesting to see that Chuck wasn't sure about the Thing in wave 37 either.

Yeah, I found that interesting as well. And reassuring in some small way.

Hopefully with two questions about army builders at TRU, they'll think about releasing some in the future (box set! box set!)

Edited July 8, 2010 by boyd

[luke314pi]

And once again, Luke keep confusing people with his customs.

[karamazov80]

Let me shoot a word of thanks to whomever asked for a second Defenders set. Now, the seed of Hellcat and Nighthawk has been planted. MWAHAHAHAHA!

Edited July 8, 2010 by karamazov80

[Donny B]

Is it just me, or did Chuck's answer about the TRU releases of army builders have some faulty logic?

Since we can only release so many two packs per wave, those spots in TRU seem better served now as additions to box sets of comic release etc..then a duplication of the work already being done in comic and specialty stores.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't every TRU wave have re-releases of the work already being done in comic and specialty stores? We usually get at least one, usually two packs of characters that are the same as the ones in the comic store sets (for example: TRU's 7th wave gave us Neo Classic Iron Man & Silver Centurion, and Crimson Dynamo & Stilt Man). Not that I'm complaining or anything - especially with characters like Stilt Man, whose re-release enables us to have an easier option for building a 5-foot-tall minimate ... I just can't help but think that any of the re-releases could easily be replaced with an army builder.

I do feel kinda bad for Chuck, though. He seemed, to me at least, a little agitated when he answered the second question about TRU army builders...

Oh well - at least we're getting army builders. I'd rather have that than nothing

Glad to see my questions/comments about QC issues was completely ignored.

You're not alone. The highlight of my question was to find out if they could give us any idea of what big character variants we might be getting down the road (like Bag head Spidey). And I guess I can understand it being skirted over (since I didn't really spend much time asking that question - I didn't want to get too annoying. I know the likes of it have been asked before) ... but I was still a little bummed to not even have the question part of my second comment acknowledged

And while I am rather encouraged by his thoughts on wave 37's Thing (not to insult anyone who like the new approach - personally, I'm not fond of it, but that's my opinion), he still didn't really acknowledge the point of that comment either. I wonder how feasible it is (cost-wise, etc) to make a character that can be turned into a different version of that character. Personally, I love it (Beast, Sentinels, Ultimate Hulk, etc... made to appease both camps. Wonderful idea, imo!) but I would imagine that it might take a lot of extra work and expense to give those to us...