A Small Resurrection

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.