Upcoming posts for August 2016

ME Minimates, SDCC Monster High, Carpatina Diya

August has been a rainy month here, so I haven't been able to take many photos, and that's translated into my not posting very much lately. I wanted to make a quick post to say hello though, and I do have three new arrivals coming soon, and hopefully the weather will give me a chance to share them.  The three in question are the Series 2 Mass Effect Minimates (which were available as a set this time versus the old blind bags), Monster High's SDCC exclusive Hexiciah Steam (I won't be getting Robecca as I'm splitting the set with someone else), and the newest Carpatina doll, Diya.

Hope your summer (or winter for the southerners) has been fabulous, and if you're following the Olympics, I hope your favourites have been doing well!

Happy Canada Day!

It's July already! Where did the first half of the year go?  Regardless of that, I hope that everyone is having a great summer - and if you're in Canada, enjoy your day off!

The Canadian superheros of Alpha Flight are ready to watch some fireworks.

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: Dragon Age MiniMates

Back in May, I posted about planning to unbox by new Dragon Age MiniMates as soon as a moved - I didn't quite get to them as quickly as I'd intended, but this morning I finally got around to it.

The Dragon Age MiniMates: Alistair, Morrigan, Varric & Leliana

As I'm mentioned a time or two before, I'm a fan of the Dragon Age franchise, but haven't always been happy with the tie-in products that they've released, and this set is no different.  I was looking forward to seeing characters from the franchise in block-figure form, and I wasn't disappointed with the details on the figures themselves, but the character choice and packaging were weak.

Coming up after the move...

Moving day is just over a week away, so while I do have a few unboxed items to photograph, I'm going to be spending the next week putting things back into their boxes, so I think I'll wait on opening those up.

Still, before I get into the packing, I thought I'd take a quick photo of the toys that are newly arrived but being packed away immediately:

Coming soon...

It's not a huge backlog: just two Minimates sets (a Dragon Age set of four and a Marvel set of two) and two American Girl mini Dolls (Grace, the 2015 Girl of the Year and the new version of Samantha), but they'll just have to wait! ;)

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: Captain Britain (Series 31 version)

Captain Britain

Being new to the Minimates line, there have been a few releases that I missed which are now either unavailable or which have doubled (or more) in price.  I was worried that the two Captain Britain figures would fall into that category, but I was lucky enough to find a loose one for a reasonable price (I, of course, needed them for my Captain Britain room).

This particular version was part of a general series of 8 Marvel characters, each of which was originally packaged with one other figure (this one came with Shadowcat).  He includes the basic MiniMates head, body, and limbs along with two option pieces - the Captain Britain facemask and a long, flowing mane of blonde hair.

Since finding this figure, I've also found the Excalibur series release on its own as well.  That one hasn't arrived yet, but I'm looking forward to having the pair on display together.  But that's for another day, so on with the photos of this one!

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.