Back in July of 2003, Art Asylum Toys released the first wave of Marvel Mini-Mates. These 2 inch high action figures were not only cute representations of some of the most popular Marvel Comics characters, but they were highly articulated and massively addictive. The concept of the Mini-Mates actually started a year earlier as a clone of a popular Japanese block figure known as Kubricks (which sought out various licenses to put together an ecclectic group of figures that included Planet of the Apes, TRON and Kellog's breakfast cereal mascots among others...in recent years the line has added more popular things like Star Wars and The Matrix).
The first Mini-Mates were actually 3 inches high and came from Rock Stars, Star Trek, Bruce Lee and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. But it wasn't until they got shrunk down an inch because of the Marvel license that they became popular. The popularity of Marvel Mini-Mates led Art Asylum to puruse other licenses and they were able to get DC Mini-Mates on the market, but in a slightly different format.
Due to existing licenses with other companies, Art Asylum wound up packaging the DC characters in Lego-like brick building sets they labelled as "C3" (Create, Construct, Customize). The first sets were based around Batman comic characters and Justice League cartoon episodes. While the sets were neat, it was the DC characters that drove the sales. Frustration with high price points, repetition of characters (ridiculous versions of Batman mostly) and a slightly inferior product to Lego eventually caused the demise of this line after less than a year (Fall 2004 thru Spring 2005).
This past week, Art Asylum & DC Direct (DC Comics own in house toy company) announced the return of the DC Mini-Mates...without the building sets. The control art shown is an amazing look at what will be a very exciting line.
While the Marvel Mini-Mate line has become stagnant with endless versions of Spider-Man and Wolverine (among others) and few villains, the first three waves of DC characters announced contain an amazing selection with only a few "repetitions". These Mini-Mates will also make use of the concept of scale better than the Marvel Mini-Mates by utilizing different sizes.While the Marvel Mini-Mates are restricted to the 2 inch size because of other licensing contracts with other companies, these are not. Most characters will be 2 inches high, but characters that are supposed to be bigger will be 2.5 inches or 3 inches high (it'd be cool if they had smaller sizes as well to work with characters like The Atom better).
Each wave will consist of four 2-packs of characters. Wave One arrives in August and consists of Green Lantern (Hal Jordan) & Star Sapphire, Armored Lex Luthor & Classic Superman, Modern Batman & OMAC and Joker & Harley Quinn. Wave Two arrives in October and consists of Doctor Fate & Power Girl, The Penguin & Robin, Blue Beetle & Booster Gold and Brainiac 13 & Battle Damaged Superman. Wave Three arrives in December with Aquaman & Ocean Master, Green Arrow & Deathstroke (Slade from Teen Titans), Wonder Woman & Ares and Killer Croc & Battle Damaged Batman.
That's 24 figures in 5 months that includes 4 female characters and 11 villains and only 2 repeated characters (and they at least make some sense). Compare this to the next two waves of Marvel Mini-Mates (Waves 12 & 13) which contain new versions of Wolverine, Colossus, Cyclops, Emma Frost, Spider-Man and Captain America (among others). There are no villains and the only women are Emma Frost and Kitty Pryde (well...I suppose Ronin counts as well assuming "she" comes with removable mask and hairpiece to add when unmasked like some figures do).
If this is the future of DC Mini-Mates, it's going to be a long fun ride as they hopefully eventually get the entire DC Uiverse shrunk down in miniature.
Other Mini-Mate lines for this year include Street Fighter (Waves 2 & 3), Battlestar Galactica (a classic series wave and a new series wave) and Speed Racer (Wave One with cars). There may also be a Wave Three of Lord of the Rings as it was announced last year, but has yet to be released (and may be cancelled because of poor sales).
Be seeing you.
Saturday, April 22, 2006
Sunday, April 16, 2006
Wednesday Wound Up Being Sunday...Is This Carvel?
Some day I'll get back on a more regular schedule for writing...but for now it's catch as catch can...
Some quick capsule reviews:
Everything is Illuminated stars Elijah Wood as a young man who "collects" stuff from his life (not the usual stuff, mind you, dirt, coins, food, werid shit like that). When he comes across a picture of the grandfather he never knew but was named for he begins a search that takes him to Russia. This touching and wonderfully made film is the directorial debut of actor Liev Schrieber. It's very obvious that Schrieber has a love for the material from the artful way he handles it. Why this film got overlooked last year is beyond me. It's now on DVD.
If we needed another remake of King Kong then Peter Jackson was definitely the right man for the job. Unfortunately he seems to gotten bit by the "George Lucas bug" in that he didn't seem to have anyone to tell him "no". At just over three hours long, this fun film is bloated by about an hour. The set up seems to work well enough, but it takes forever to get to Skull Island and then they're not only there for an eternity, but the action sequences sometimes seem to go on longer than they should (the most "offensive" one is the dinosaur stampede that winds up turning into the police car chase from The Blues Brothers). It's well acted and artfully directed. It's obvious Jackson has a love for his material...but it may have been a bit too much love.
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe keeps itself from getting too bogged down in Kong-like problems by sticking to the high points of the story and moving along without embellishing. While it's mostly a "kiddie" version of The Lord of the Rings, it's still highly entertaining and worth watching.
My family bought our first VHS VCR in 1981 and promptly joined a rental store called "Underground Video" (so named because they were located in the basement of another store). Their policy at the time, when there really wasn't a rental market and the concept of low priced sell-thru was about as far in the future as Harry Potter, was that you paid a $100 deposit and could take out anything in their library and then return it and continue doing so. If you wanted to own a particular film, you could keep it, but then in order to rent again you'd have to leave another deposit. So...the first film we owned (after maybe a year of renting) was The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother...a VHS tape I still have to this day...and now I can finally "retire" it as FOX Home Video has just released the film on DVD (and not only does it have an anamorphic widescreen transfer, but a commentary by actor-writer-director Gene Wilder as well). I wonder if the tape's worth anything??
Bwhahahahahahaha (laughing at his own stupid comment).
Lastly for today is a quick review of the first episode of Season Two (or Season 28...depending on how you'd like to look at it) of Doctor Who. While the Christmas special got David Tennant off to a fine start as Doctor Number 10, this episode tries to cram way too much into such a short time frame. Acting as a sequel of sorts to "The End of the World" from Season One, "New Earth" features the return of two characters from that episode, a new race of nun-nurse-Cats, zombies, clones, New New York (stolen from Futurama I guess), multiple body switches and a mystery to boot. While it's a heck of a lot of fun, it will probably wind up as being one of the lesser episodes by season's end. The thing that keeps everything moving is the acting and writing. If you liked Christopher Eccleston as The Doctor, you should also like David Tennant...he's the same, yet very different. Billie Piper gets to do a few new things as Rose as well. It's fun as I said, but next week's episode (featuring ninjas, werewolves and Queen Victoria) looks to have a bit more substance.
I hope to be back later in the week with something...
Be seeing you.
Some quick capsule reviews:
Everything is Illuminated stars Elijah Wood as a young man who "collects" stuff from his life (not the usual stuff, mind you, dirt, coins, food, werid shit like that). When he comes across a picture of the grandfather he never knew but was named for he begins a search that takes him to Russia. This touching and wonderfully made film is the directorial debut of actor Liev Schrieber. It's very obvious that Schrieber has a love for the material from the artful way he handles it. Why this film got overlooked last year is beyond me. It's now on DVD.
If we needed another remake of King Kong then Peter Jackson was definitely the right man for the job. Unfortunately he seems to gotten bit by the "George Lucas bug" in that he didn't seem to have anyone to tell him "no". At just over three hours long, this fun film is bloated by about an hour. The set up seems to work well enough, but it takes forever to get to Skull Island and then they're not only there for an eternity, but the action sequences sometimes seem to go on longer than they should (the most "offensive" one is the dinosaur stampede that winds up turning into the police car chase from The Blues Brothers). It's well acted and artfully directed. It's obvious Jackson has a love for his material...but it may have been a bit too much love.
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe keeps itself from getting too bogged down in Kong-like problems by sticking to the high points of the story and moving along without embellishing. While it's mostly a "kiddie" version of The Lord of the Rings, it's still highly entertaining and worth watching.
My family bought our first VHS VCR in 1981 and promptly joined a rental store called "Underground Video" (so named because they were located in the basement of another store). Their policy at the time, when there really wasn't a rental market and the concept of low priced sell-thru was about as far in the future as Harry Potter, was that you paid a $100 deposit and could take out anything in their library and then return it and continue doing so. If you wanted to own a particular film, you could keep it, but then in order to rent again you'd have to leave another deposit. So...the first film we owned (after maybe a year of renting) was The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother...a VHS tape I still have to this day...and now I can finally "retire" it as FOX Home Video has just released the film on DVD (and not only does it have an anamorphic widescreen transfer, but a commentary by actor-writer-director Gene Wilder as well). I wonder if the tape's worth anything??
Bwhahahahahahaha (laughing at his own stupid comment).
Lastly for today is a quick review of the first episode of Season Two (or Season 28...depending on how you'd like to look at it) of Doctor Who. While the Christmas special got David Tennant off to a fine start as Doctor Number 10, this episode tries to cram way too much into such a short time frame. Acting as a sequel of sorts to "The End of the World" from Season One, "New Earth" features the return of two characters from that episode, a new race of nun-nurse-Cats, zombies, clones, New New York (stolen from Futurama I guess), multiple body switches and a mystery to boot. While it's a heck of a lot of fun, it will probably wind up as being one of the lesser episodes by season's end. The thing that keeps everything moving is the acting and writing. If you liked Christopher Eccleston as The Doctor, you should also like David Tennant...he's the same, yet very different. Billie Piper gets to do a few new things as Rose as well. It's fun as I said, but next week's episode (featuring ninjas, werewolves and Queen Victoria) looks to have a bit more substance.
I hope to be back later in the week with something...
Be seeing you.
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