A quick comparison: Lego mini figures and DST Mini-Mates

Lego Fly (L) and MiniMate Tali (R)

One of the most common questions around Dimond Select Toys' MiniMates line from people who haven't seen them in real life is how they compare to Lego figures.  To help answer that question, I've taken some comparison photos of a representative from each line.

Our representatives for the day are both blind bag figures. On the Lego side we have The Fly (they call him "Fly Monster", I assume because it's not licenced as a movie tie-in) from the Series 14: Monsters release. On the MiniMate side, we have Tali from the Mass Effect: Series 1 release. Both figures have the standard body from each of their representative lines, although they do have unique head sculpts: the standard heads on both lines are peg-shaped.

Random Toy of the Day: X-Men Minimates (DST)

It's a new year, so how about some new (or at least new-to-me) Minimates?

My first new minimates of 2016 are the X-Men Beast, Storm, Cyclops, Shadowcat and Colossus, and came to me via Gwen of the cooking/AG blog A Peek into the Pantry (Cheers, Gwen!).  As usual, Minimates are pretty standard block figures, so there's not much to say about them, so on with the photos!

Random Toy of the Day: Minimates Falcon and Winter Soldier

In the box.

Alright, I'm almost through the Minimates!  Just a few more posts and my whole collection of the little things will be documented.  Of course at that point I'll probably end up picking up a few more (there's a Dragon Age series coming out this summer that I have my eye on), but that's an issue for another day.

Today's pair are Winter Soldier and Falcon.  These two both have the standard Minimate body, but come with more than the average number of accessories - two stands (one standard, one "flight" version), multiple weapons, and even an arm-sitting falcon. I'd say that the stand out piece in this set are the broad wings on Falcon.

Random Toy of the Day: Star Trek DS9 Minimates

Sisko & Dukat

Another week, another set of Minimates...

Up this time are Captain Sisko and Gul'Dukat from Star Trek: Deep Space 9 (which is, as an aside, my favourite Star Trek series).

The Star Trek line is no longer in production, but while it lasted DST released several sets (I believe there were 5 series, each of which had at least three sets, although I'm not 100% certain on that - if you know for sure, correct me!).  Most of these figures were of characters from the original series, although there was at least one set for each of the others as well.

Random Toy of the Day: X-Force Minimates

Happy Friday!  I just realized that it's been almost a month since my last Minimates post. At that rate I'll never get through them all, so I think I'll try to post one per week going forward.

In the line-up today are the X-Force boxed set of Rictor and Boomer (or Boom-Boom, as she's sometimes called) and their teammate Shatterstar, who I picked up as a loose figure.  As with previously featured Minimates, the quality and level of detail are fairly standard, so I won't be going into a great deal of detail here.

Rictor and Boomer in the box.

Minimates Week: Alpha Flight

The Alpha Flight Minimates, in the box.

This two-box set is a good example of why I wasn't quicker to get into collecting these toys.   I really only wanted two of the Alpha Flight figures: the twins.  And of course they separated them into two different sets, which means that I needed to either pay a premium to someone who had the full series and had unboxed it, or buy the whole thing.  I did the latter, so instead of two new figures, I now have eight.

Grumpiness about the inability to purchase individual figures aside, overall I was quite impressed with these - each figure had a solid amount of detail and clearly looked like the characters from the comic.  The accessories were decent as well, and included an ice effect for Snowbird, air platforms for the flying characters, and a hand-holding joint for the twins, (who also each had two hair options although Aurora's dark wig doesn't actually fit on her head).

Minimates Week: Mass Effect Blind Bags

Wrex, Liara and Tali

I've been on the fence about Diamond Select's Minimates line for a while now.  On the one hand, they offer a wide variety of pop culture figures which are generally very detailed for the size.  On the other, they're Lego-style figures (although slightly larger than actual Lego-brand people), which makes them challenging to display in a non-cluttered way.  That would make sense if they were sold as play figures, but they're very much aimed at the collector market.