My first attempt on designing Ghostbusting equipment was fairly crude. The wand and proton pack consisted of a paper tube attached by string to an old backpack while the ghost trap was a cotton swab box attached to another length of string.

Of course, this was in 1986, and I was 5 years old.

Over twenty years later, I had a chance to try designing the equipment again when the next Minimate project was designing the upcoming Ghostbusters Minimates. While Uriel tackled the likenesses and clothing, I set to work on creating all of the trademark gear that I had attempted to design all those years ago.

We wanted to get all of the iconic gear into Minimate form, and taking a page from the Punisher War Zone Minimate, we made sure that each Ghostbuster could carry all of their respective equipment at once. Ray would have his goggles, Egon his PKE meter, and Peter a radio to report a Slimer sighting.

One of the decisions made to allow for playability was to not sculpt hoses from the wand to the backpack. Maybe it was a subconscious influence from my first design, but using cord instead allowed for unrestricted poses. It also allowed for the wand to be stowed on the backpack easily.

In assembling the design sheets and colouring, I went over certain scenes on the DVD in fine detail. One of these details picked out is that Peter Venkman doesn’t tuck his pants into his boots while the other Ghostbusters do. It may seem like an omission of paint and tampo on the Venkman Minimate at first, but it’s just one of those little details that we try to put into the Minimates to make them true to the source material.

Other than the equipment, I had the task of creating the ghosts as well. We wanted to make sure that Slimer maintained that Minimate feel, so he is based around the standard figure… from the waist up that is. The Stay Puft Marshmallow Man was a challenge to see just how large we could get a figure without breaking the size barrier. He’s got extra height in his boots and waist, and is probably the largest figure I’ve designed from front to back as well. Poor Louis Tully as a Dog, which I thought would be the most difficult to design, ended up being quite easy. Patterned after the dog-format of the Classic BSG Daggit, the only revision I had to make on Gozer’s pet was to make his body less wrinkled in texture.

Seeing images of the sculpts and prototypes, I’m very excited for the release of these figures. I think I can finally retire my old 1986 equipment in favour of the Minimate version.