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Lord of the Rings - Sauron

June 25, 2009

Touted as the tallest Minimate to date, Sauron was the first Minimate available in The Lord of the Rings line. It was a Tower Records exclusive that you could buy at one price or combine with a LOTR DVD and buy at a reduced price.

These started out at around seven dollars a piece. Then went to five, then to three. Prior to Tower declaring bankruptcy they got as low as one dollar a piece. Each time the price dropped I bought a few more. I had a feeling it was the last three-incher that was going to be made.
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ADV Films Extraction

June 22, 2009

For me, the most frustrating thing about promotional Minimates is that they aren't always formally announced. Companies would contract with AA (or now DST) to produce a special Minimate just for them. AA/DST would do the manufacturing, but the company would then distribute however they saw fit. Sometimes promoting it, sometimes not. In some cases it takes a random Minimate fan to discover them and share their existance with the community.

That was the case with the last three-inch promotional Minimate, from ADV Films. There was a post on the old AA message boards that basically read, "Does this look like a Minimate to you guys?" Sure enough it was, and it came packaged like no other Minimate before or since. Oooh, a teaser.
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Minimates vs. the Sentinel

June 18, 2009

By early 2004 I had a lot of Minimates. More than 180 of the little guys littered my shelves, even though there were less than 70 distinct figures. Yes, I was (and am) an army builder. It wasn't a choice, I think I was just born this way.

What good are armies if they have no one to fight? This post basically contains detail shots of my top display shelf at the time. It's all my three inchers fighting against the McFarlane Sentinel from The Matrix.
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Figuretoon Toy Review

June 15, 2009

When a person develops a hobby of taking 'amusing' pictures of toys, eventually that person will hit a block. They'll run out of funny or interesting ideas. When that happens they tend to fall back on the old standby, toy reviews... done by toys themselves.

I fell into this trap early on. I didn't realize at the time how prevalent it was. When I shot this I thought it was new and interesting, now it's old hat. Oh well, the past is the past. Now I'm on to exploiting all new old cliches.
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First Custom

June 8, 2009

I'm dropping the "Distant Past" descriptor from here on out. All this stuff is still six years old but typing all that useless text is getting tiring. Besides, this post is different from its predecessors so it's a good cut off point. So, what makes this entry so different?

It's a custom. (Although you might have gathered that from the title.) Yep my first Minimate custom, one of the security guards from the movie Spaceballs to be precise. I wasn't one for permanently altering my 'mates so read on to find out the recipe.
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Distant Past Vol. 2 - More Trek & Spacemegs

May 25, 2009

The posts continue with more questionable humor and photography. As a side note, all of these early photos were taken with film. I did have a digital camera at the time, but I wasn't able to do what I wanted with it. There were some interesting conversations when I would pick up the prints.

Check out the full post for a rambling discourse on publishing my first website on 'spacemegs'.
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Distant Past Vol. 1 - First Encounters

May 24, 2009

I hate to lead with such C-Grade material but I have this compulsion (some call it a sickness) to do things in a chronological order. So we start with how I got into Minimates and some attempts at humor using the original Star Trek three-inchers.

Be sure to click on the Read More link for the full post.
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