DSTChuck has released a new Diamond Select Toys Q&A over on their
Art Asylum website for your viewing pleasure.
In this weeks edition focuses on Minimates questions. Check out the entire Q&A below:
Luis de los Rios
Hii!! I loove your minimates. they’re fantastic. could you make minimates of the Prince of Persia movie please??
DSTChuck: Right now we do not have the rights to Price of Persia and are not in discussions to acquire the license. Sorry.
Kyle Osterhoudt
Hello I saw some photos from the toy fair convention around Feb. and one of the photos was of a poster of Marvel Minimates. The poster was almost like the original Marvel Minimate poster that had Cyclops shooting his laser in the air, but this one had updated and new Minimates on it. My question: Is there any way you could put this image (high resoulution) on Art Asylum’s gallery? Thanks
DSTChuck: Yes that’s exactly what it is, an update of the old poster. Check it out if you’re going to be at Comic- Con, it’s going to be a huge banner at our booth. We might add it to the gallery but we have some other plans for it for now.
Rustin Parr
Fathers Day!? I’m surprised no one has brought this up yet but what the story on those prototypes shown at Toyfair, and please tell us more about the much-desired child-sized minimates (”micromates”?)! Also, any chance of selling 5-10 of the flight stands poly-bagged through your store or just at conventions? I have a massive amount of older figures that could use them! Many thanks, and keep up the good work!
DSTChuck: I think we have addressed the question about the father’s day MM already. We have talked about accesory packs or something like them for the website but its not something we’re ready to work on right now.
Kyle Eirich
I’ve been big fan of the Marvel Minimates for awhile. I have a good collection. And I thought of a good idea. Make a Stan Lee Minimate. Also Star Wars would be a great idea as well. I’ve also seen the Beatles Minimates, I would love to see them in stores. Where can i find them? But the Stan Lee is my original idea. I would love to have a Stan Lee in my collection. Please write back.
DSTChuck: Glad to have you onboard as a collector! Funny we’ve had some of those same ideas. For now the folks at Lucas do not want Minimates for their properties. We’re cool with that but we’ve told them we’re going to keep asking…The fine folks at Apple (who represent the Beatles) are not fond of the common cylinder shapes for the heads of the Fab Four. As for Stan, that would be very cool but we’d of course have to take a license from Stan directly since he is not part of any Marvel license we currently hold.
John Hooper
First, YES jubilee very happy I saw your working on that , second for a nightcrawler remake have you consider bending the feet 90 degrees so he can bend his knees and walk on his toes in the comics? (and a clear purple nightcrawler A.K.A. “bamf” nightcrawler? with swords!!!!!!!!)
DSTChuck: John I have to be honest, I don’t think we’ve ever thought about changing the feet or how we would go about doing that.
Benjamin Hayden
I have a few questions about your Marvel Minimate figures. 1. How come you are not making anymore Marvel Zombies Minimate figures? I would really like to have Zombie verions of Thor, The Sentry, & The Fantastic Four. 2. With the new Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions game coming out soon, I was wondering if you are going to make some Minimate figures based on both the Noir & 2099 versions of Spider-Man?
DSTChuck: 1. Marvel has asked us not to make anymore merchandise based on the Zombie versions of their characters and being good partners of theirs we are happy to oblige.
2. Maybe- that’s the honest answer, but I do love my Spidey variants.
Feroz Nazir
Hi, I was glad to hear that you will give us the opportunity to add Bishop and Jubilee to our 90’s X-Men teams. However, the pictures shown at this stage were a little disappointing. While Bishop looks cool, something seems a little off with Jubilee. I think you have proven in the past to be capable of capturing the most iconic look for each Marvel character and I feel Jubes is missing something. Her shirt could use some details, but most import of all is the hairpiece. Jubilee should have a hairpiece that features her trademark shades on top of her head and some big earings to complete the look. If this would proof to be too expensive, would a reversible face without shades be an option? The rest of the figure looks fine, don’t change a thing about it. Keep up the good work!
DSTChuck: The Jubilee that was shown was the hand made prototype so there will be changes but nothing as dramatic as what you are asking about. Perhaps that can be a new version we do down the road. Glad you at least like the rest of the figures.
Sam Ford
Hi, TM2 again. I was just wondering if yall ever went back to look at James Bond minimates again. Those would be great. Thanks!
DSTChuck: I think if we even hoped to try to go down that road again, we’d wait until there was some new movie or such to drive interest for the retailers to key off.
Christopher Sheldon
Do you think you will ever make a minimate with real fingers and toes? Also will you make a life-size minimate?
DSTChuck: Nope, even though the designers will sometimes sneak some figures in there, in hopes that I will allow it or that it will sneak by, we have no plans to change the look of the figures.
We’ve messed a little with larger formats but nothing like 6 feet and I don’t see us doing that in the future.
Joshua Hesselgrave
Hi again Chuck. As always, thanks for your time and honesty. I wanted to clarify something brought up last Q&A about the troop builders in the TRU waves. In 2 TRU waves, we saw packs with AIM Soldiers and Vault Guards-why haven’t we seen any since? It seems like putting troop building figures in a wave would help push more product. Just curious why this stopped. Also, can you comment on what kind of accessories we’ll be seeing in any of the SDCC exclusives? Thanks again.
DSTChuck: Joshua, since that was done, we’ve been doing more and more in the line planning to interconnect the exclusives with the TRU waves with the comic stores, this has allowed us to create more teams and more rounded story lines and themes. The army builders were done as a way for buyers of the comic two packs not to end up with useless doubles when they buy the short packed two pack (if they open the items). 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. We’ve got some in package pics going up this week for the SDCC sets so hopefully that will help your accesory question.
Donny B
Let me just begin by saying that I think you’ve all been doing an amazing job with the Marvel minimates as of late. Really superb work all around (almost… you can’t make everyone happy, right? lol) That being said, I have two comments: First, I love how you designed 90’s Beast and the Sentinels, just to name 2 as examples - putting the tampo underneath the big chest piece, and including additional parts for us to give them either the bulked up look or the basic minimate look that the line started out with all those years ago… I was ecstatic, and I thought it was a wonderful way to appeal to both camps of minimate collectors; those of us who love the new overly-sculpted and beefed up look, as well as those of us who are fans of the more ‘minimalistic’ look. My comment is: please continue with that tactic! If you’re set on releasing more and more figures with big bulky pieces, like wave 37’s Thing (with all those massively rounded sculpts), then you would do well to appeal to those of us who dislike that approach, by giving us a figure we can essentially customize to our liking - it worked wonders with the Hydra figures, to name another example :) and my second comment/question is this: Since you, and any company, basically needs to release big name characters to balance out sales for the lesser known characters, that means we’re guaranteed more releases of Spiderman, Iron Man, Wolverine, etc. In response to how you’ve handled that need - thank you soooo much for staying comic-oriented, instead of giving us weird market-exploitive designs like a neon green “Scuba Gear Spidey”, for instance. And since you’ve been so gracious in giving us faithful recreations of so many comic-centric costumes, is there anything you can tell us on when you’ll be releasing what’s left of the fan favorite moments (like bag-head Spidey or Spider-Phoenix, for example)?
DSTChuck: I’ve got to be honest I am not sure how I feel about the wave 37 Thing. I know the NY guys really like it but I’ve got to get used to it I guess. I never say never here but we’ve got NO plans to take Minimates in a direction that has “made up variants”. There are so many versions from the comic or different techniques for design I’d see no need.
Arnim Zola
Hello. Early on in the exclusive TRU waves of minimates we got a pairing of Bucky Captain America, AIM solder and X-Force Wolverine/Vault Guard. When will we see more army builders in TRU? Since there are more mates produced for TRU than regular comic shop waves and since DST still hasnt gotten into army builder single packs, having these army builders in TRU was a great way to actually get enough mates to build a small army since most comic shops dont order enough stock to build a small army for even one customer. I had to build my skrulls off the secondary market and that got kind of expensive, please bring back army builders to TRU, and thanks for all the great mates you have given us so far!
DSTChuck: Arnim, I just answered a similar question from Joshua, we’ll keep an eye on the popularity of the army builders and see what adjustments might need to be made, ok?
Joshua Hesselgrave
Hi again Chuck. I had an additional question about Toys R Us exclusives. Has it ever been discussed to have some of the harder to find TRU exclusive re-released in future waves or even as a ‘best of’ wave of sorts? I know you’ve mentioned before that you don’t watch the secondary market much, but if you look most TRU exclusives go for high amounts that show there’s still interest in them and that distribution wasn’t enough to meet the demand for them. Could this ever happen? Thanks.
DSTChuck: Welcome back! Its been discussed but just in general terms so nothing is pending but we’ll keep an eye on it . If we ever did do it , we’d do something like we did for Ghostbusters so it’s not the exact same release.
Khair Gulifield
I’ll start by saying I love your work! I have three questions. 1.Is there any chance that we could see some Dragon ball z minimates any time soon? With the new series drawing in an audience I think the minimates would be really successful . I really think you could do a lot with that brand especially with mini vehicles ,maybe the saiyan pod could come with a random saiyan and some main characters like Vegeta, Raditz, Bardock etc. The army builder saiyans would be amazing with things like swapable heads and different hair pieces . Also playsets like the cell games arena and the world tournament arena just for an example. My second question is about the marvel line. Do you have any plans for the horesmen of Apocalypse? I would love to see dark Gambit (Death) remade into minimate form. 3. Will we ever see an X -Mansion? It would be great to see the danger room and even some classrooms where the mutants learn.Thank you for reading this.Keep up the good work!
DSTChuck:1. No plans, at the time way back I think they went with Imen and we’ve just not been that interested on in the property since then. You never know though.
2. Yes I think that’s possible, though nothing is planned right now.
3. No I don’t think so, our current license does not allow play sets and they are very expensive to make.
Chris Gren
Are there any plans to either re-release the Toys R Us Battlestar Galactica minimates or make them available in the UK? As a long time collector of the Galactica line (both the figures and the minimates), I feel like I’ve missed out on these figures (especially the Humanoid Cylons such as Cavil and Simon)
DSTChuck: No I am very sorry but we’ve tried many times to line up a distributor for the EU but none of them think there is enough demand for Minimates for them to take on the line. TRU would have allowed the sale if there had been interest.
David Haiman
Any chance of a second Defenders box set with Nighthawk, Gargoyle, Hellcat, and Hellstorm? Speaking of B-listers, how about a Jocasta and Tigra to round out my Avengers collection?
DSTChuck: I don’t think we’d do a second box set but instead we’d mix them in some waves to TRU maybe. I can say none of those are in our plans just now.
