Ask DST #180: Marvel, DC, more

Art Asylum has the latest Q&A up, focusing on Minimates of course, with questions ranging from Marvel to Sailor Moon.

Below are the highlights:

• Currently no planned tie-in sets for the Strange Tales box set, but if the box set sells well…
• No plans for Sailor Moon.
• No plans for more celebrity-based Minimates, though they’re open to the idea of the celebrity were interested.
• No plans for more DC (don’t blame them, DC isn’t interested).
• Race isn’t really part of the discussion when hammering out a line plan. If the universe they’re working on doesn’t feature a lot of minority characters, then naturally there won’t be a lot of minority characters in Minimate form.
• Ideally, DST would prefer 9 months to work on a particular release, but movie licenses and such usually don’t allow that much time to work.
• Chuck would love to speculate on which characters or time lines he’d like to do with DC, but he doesn’t have much reason to suspect he’ll get the chance.
• Revisiting old characters is more a matter of what makes sense for the line plan than what impacts secondary market values.
• No plans for Squadron Supreme.
• Never talked about an all army builder wave.
• No plans for Rocketeer.
• Entirely possible to see Invincible, but no plans in place.
• No plans for Scott Pilgrim.
• More than three box sets were planned for Thundercats.
• Marvel is generally pretty nice about sharing some source material early to give DST a look at what’s coming editorially regarding potential line plans and tie-ins. Sometimes they offer recommendations, othertimes DST just look at the material and go with their gut. Using box sets for the tie-ins allows them to be more experimental than burning one of their waves on a storyline that might not appeal to collectors.
• DST would like to do a motorcycle vehicle.
• No plans for Metal Gear.
• Capcom stuff has pretty much run its course, but if interest is still there, they’d love to do more.
• No plans for Magic the Gathering.
• No plans for Resident Evil, though there have been talks in the past.
• Marvel has a 2.5 inch cap on height, and Chuck intends to enforce a standard size for Minimates, so no plans for anything taller than what we currently see.
• Simpsons was talked about some time ago, but that franchise went another route.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles would be cool.
• DST tried getting Minimates in worldwide Toys R Us stores, but they no longer have worldwide rights, which makes it difficult to achieve now.
• No plans for Avatar: the Last Airbender, or the Legend of Korra.
• Not currently making Star Trek, but if they were, Worf would be on their short list.
• No plans for Supernatural.
• Power Rangers or Dragonball Z would have been awesome 8 years ago. No plans now though.
• Black and white Universal Monsters are currently restricted to Toys R Us, though that could change.
• Chuck jokingly suggests that they made a tiny Antman to go with the Avengers, you just lost it when it fell out of the packaging.