Today is one of those days you absolutely have to go to your local comic shop. And not just because it’s New Comic Day — because it’s a big day for Diamond Select Toys! Three new DST products (or six, or ten depending on how you count them) hit stores today, and they’re all worth making the trip to your LCS. Don’t have one in your area? Check comicshoplocator.com to find the nearest one, or look up your favorite online retailer!

Marvel Select: Green Goblin Action Figure
A Diamond Select Release! Designed and Sculpted by Art Asylum! Marvel Select gives their take on one of the Marvel Universe’s most popular villains! Spider-Man’s longtime nemesis, Norman Osborne, has never looked more menacing, wearing a detailed, modernized sculpt of the classic Green Goblin costume. Equipped with 16 points of articulation, this 7-inch figure can perch on top of his included base, a perfectly balanced Goblin Glider wrapped in smoke. The Green Goblin comes in oversized collector packaging, ready for display. Suggested retail price: $21.99

Femme Fatales: Snow White PVC Statue
A Diamond Select Release! Sculpted by Sam Greenwell! Following up on its earlier PVC statues of Little Red and Alice, the “Femme Fatales” figure series continues with a new take on yet another classic fairy tale character: Snow White! Standing 9 inches tall, this Sam Greenwell sculpt envisions the shy girl from the tale of “Snow White and Rose Red” all grown up, with scissors at the ready to snip off the beard of any entangled dwarf. SRP: $45.00

Marvel Minimates: Best of Marvel Minimates
A Diamond Select Release! Designed and Sculpted by Art Asylum! Marvel Minimates have been around for ten years, and DST has made hundreds of different characters, but at the end of the day everybody wants their favorite hero or villain. So for those of you just getting into Marvel Minimates, or simply looking for the best version of a Marvel icon, DST presents a “Best of” wave of two-packs: Wolverine and Sabretooth, Spider-Man and Green Goblin, Captain America and Thor, and Iron Man and Thing. A great jumping-on point for any collector or retailer! Each Minimate stands 2 inches tall with 14 points of articulation and a variety of removable and interchangeable parts and accessories. SRP: $8.99/two-pack

Look for these products online, or find your local comic shop here. And get regular DST updates on Facebook and Twitter!

Today sees a new fleet of Minimate vehicles sailing (and driving) into comic and specialty shops everywhere, as well as a new set of Femme Fatales!

Minimates Vehicles Series 3 (comic and specialty assortment)
- Knight Rider KARR with Garthe Knight
- Pirate Raiders Vendetta with Undercover Anne Bonny
- Knight Rider Super Pursuit Mode KITT with Michael Knight

Femme Fatales Set 2
- Alice
- Little Red
- Anne Bonny
- Medusa

And this spring, be on the lookout for the Toys “R” Us assortment of Minimates Vehicles, featuring KITT with Michael Knight and the HMS Albion ship with a British Marine! Coming in May!

Check out a gallery of the ships and cars in action here!

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By now, you surely have the first Femme Fatales Minimates box set, but we know that just four Femme Fatales is nowhere near enough! Luckily we have the perfect solution to that problem: a brand new set of Femme Fatales Minimates, featuring characters from the world of fairy tales and pirate adventure! This set features Alice, Little Red, Anne Bonny and Medusa, who not only look great with your existing Femme Fatales and Pirate Raiders Minimates, but look great displayed with your Femme Fatales PVC statues as well.

For this new blister card, I made use of design elements that I had created for the statue packaging and ads, including each Femme’s individual logo. Shooting the Minimates for the packaging is actually quite a challenge, in that prototypes are usually in a fairly early stage at that point, and require a lot of Photoshop work to look the way they’re supposed to. Even then, things tend to change once the actual production materials are used. Hope you like it! Look for them at your local comics retailer or specialty store in January!

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Combining science fiction with century-old fashion and technology, steampunk fandom is one of the fastest-growing genres in the world, as conventions spring up around the U.S. and mainstream movies plaster its tenets across every billboard. Inspired by the billowing legions of steampunk cosplayers, Diamond Select Toys decided to add a similarly attired character to their Femme Fatales line of 9-inch PVC statues, and the result was the stunning Lexi, who hits comic shops and specialty stores next spring. We talked to project manager Chris Schaff as well as sculptor and steampunk fan Sam Greenwell about what went into her creation.
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Legend has it that any man who laid his eyes upon Medusa would promptly be turned to stone, but a lesser-known legend says that one man has been in her presence without being subjected to that terrible fate. That man was the pirate Calico Jack (of Pirate Raiders fame, of course), but now you can join him, thanks to Diamond Select Toys! This 9-inch Femme Fatales statue of Medusa is made of PVC vinyl and poses absolutely no threat to your person, so go ahead and stare at her all you want.  We’ve even put a convenient viewing window in the front of her packaging, shown here for the first time. Look for her in a comic shop or specialty store near you in December!

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This Sunday, a new episode of ABC’s Once Upon a Time airs, featuring the modern-day adventures of our favorite fairy tales. Oddly enough, Diamond Select Toys has also thought about what Little Red Riding Hood might look like today — in fact, they sculpted it, and released her earlier this year in their Femme Fatales line of statues! The street-wise and wolf-wary Little Red is available now through Diamond’s Previews catalog, so look her up online or ask for her at your local comic shop. Coming in February 2012 is Snow White, wielding the scissors she used in “Snow White and Rose Red,” and following her in April is a more medieval take on Bo Peep, not so little any more and brandishing an axe to dispatch any wayward wolves. All of the Femme Fatales are 9 inches tall, and made of PVC plastic, and you can check out the full line-up, including Alice, Darkchylde and Medusa, at DiamondSelectToys.com!

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Lady Death, Art Asylum and Diamond Select Toys have a long history, with a decade of collaboration in the rearview and a slew of great collectibles to show for it. With the arrival of the latest piece, a sensual rendering of Lady Death in in DST’s 9-inch Femme Fatales PVC statue line, we thought it was time to call up Lady Death’s creator, Brian Pulido, and the sculptor of the piece, Steve Kiwus, to talk about what went into the sculpt, as well as show off some behind-the-scenes images. Read on!
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The Femme Fatales PVC statue line by Diamond Select Toys has really taken off, and many of the earliest releases (Alice, Dawn, Tarot) have long sold out. But one of the sold-out ladies — Jim Balent’s comic-book creation Tarot, Witch of the Black Rose — is about to get company. Her sister, Raven Hex, has just been offered though Diamond Comics Distributor’s Previews catalog, and it features a great sculpt by veteran toy and statue sculptor Steve Kiwus!

The original plan was to depict Raven as if she were casting a spell, but partway in to the process DST went back to the drawing board and came up with the more intimidating pose seen here. Now, the 9-inch PVC statue is on track for an early 2012 release date, and we checked in with Kiwus to talk about what sorcery goes into creating such a sinister-yet-sultry piece of sculpture.

DST: Is this piece intended to be a companion piece to the Tarot statue, or is it meant to be a stand-alone piece on its own merits?
Kiwus: It’s a stand-alone. I had seen the Tarot figure, but didn’t really take it into consideration. It’s been my experience that unless the bases interlock, statues don’t really interact with each other.

DST: Raven Hex doesn’t have a lot of material in her costume. Does the amount of clothing affect the amount of time it takes to sculpt a figure?
Kiwus: It ends up being about the same amount of time — surface details can hide a lot of sins. Yes, I end up saving time by not having to add them, but I spend a lot more time on the underlying form of the body.

DST: Balent’s women are famously full-figured. Is it difficult to find a balanced pose for a character who is naturally, er, top-heavy?
Kiwus: The large endowments really only shift the center of gravity up a little. It’s not nearly as difficult as balancing a figure with a large gun — which is usually pointed forward — because that makes the figure really want to tip forward.

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October has been a big month for Diamond Select Toys, from the Munsters to the Universal Monsters to X-Men: Curse of the Mutants. Well, we’ve got one more specialty-market ship date left in October, and it’s a doozy! Not only will comic book shops and online retailers get the first box set of Femme Fatales Minimates (with Dawn, Darkchylde, Tarot and Lady Death), they’ll also get the long-awaited specialty assortment of Minimate Vehicles Series 2!

The blue MAX Tech Stealth Jet with Pilot, the glow-in-the-dark Pirate Raiders Ship with Cartographer and the Back to the Future II Hover-Mode TIme Machine (phasing version) with Jennifer will all arrive at stores this Wednesday, so hit up you LCS or your favorite online retailer for your set. Check out the pictures below, and check out the glowing ship’s debut in the first episode of “Calico Jack’s Pirate Raiders”!

See more pictures on Facebook and get more updates on Twitter! And find your closest comic book shop at comicshoplocator.com!

Diamond Select Toys loves the ladies. Specifically, they love the strong women who make up their Femme Fatales statue line, and they’ve had so much fun crafting 9-inch PVC versions of some of comicdom’s all-stars (Dawn, Darkchylde, Tarot) that they’ve gone a step further and created their own! Dark beauties Alice, Little Red, Snow White, Anne Bonny and Medusa have all been at least partially inspired by popular and historical renderings, but whenever a character has needed some more extensive conceptual work, DST has called in their in-house artist, Art Asylum inmate Uriel Caton. Uriel already handles much of DST’s Minimate design work, but he’s also been behind a handful of Femme Fatale designs, including DST’s latest, so we sat down with him to see how he found the concept for Little Bo Peep.
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