I must have been a busy boy back in 2009. I have so many folders of unpublished material from that year that it makes me wonder what the hell I was doing instead of writing. Come on in and check out these design sheets and prototype photos for Diamond Select Toys/Art Asylum’s then upcoming line of Ghostbusters Minimates!
It’s interesting to see that these photos were taken before the proton packs and neutrona wands were connected. I picked up a couple of these figures after they were released, but I’ve got no pics to show how the final connections look. I can’t find them anywhere.
It seems to me I own an Egon Spengler Minimate, but in the dark blue Ghostbusters II jumpsuit. That may just be faulty memory, however. As I said, I can’t find any of my Ghostbusters Minimates for verification.
The one thing these diagrams do not show is a detailed view of the feet. Normally this would be of little interest, but back in 2004 Art Asylum released Minimate construction sets under the line name C3 (“Create Construct Customize”). These were Lego compatible sets with Minimate compatible components. Minimates already had an established hand size which is not compatible with Lego, but there was one place that Minimates could be easily altered to incorporate a hole compatible with Lego studs: the feet. C3 Minimates feet could accept a Lego stud, allowing them to be attached to C3 sets. Despite their excellent quality (I own a C3 set myself), C3 was never a financial success, and the line was shut down. However, for years afterward, Minimates continued to be released with the old C3 Lego compatible feet. Since I can’t find my figures, I can’t confirm that the Ghostbusters Minimates are Lego compatible, but they are almost certainly a better scale fit for the Lego Ecto-1 sets than the Lego minifigs those sets contain. Drop us a comment if you have a Ghostbusters Minimate handy and can shed some light on this.
I’m far from an industry expert, but seems to me these sheets were created with the intention of releasing them as advertising. I would think actual design sheets would have measurements and detailed exploded diagrams, and would probably be a lot less interesting. That said, these are a far cooler glimpse into toy design specs than we normally see. Serious collectors pay well for toy prototypes, and, in the case where the prototypes have been destroyed to protect manufacturers’ copyrights, those collectors will also pay well for photos and diagrams of prototypes. Releasing these design sheets and prototype photos allowed even the most casual toy enthusiast a peek behind the curtain, even if that peek wasn’t entirely genuine. Please understand this is not a complaint; they were cool enough to catch my eye back in 2009, and they’re still cool enough to be worthy of posting today.
