Sacrosanct
Legend
I disagree. They were just "extra" 3rd party stuff you could use in your games. It was just Ral Partha using the AD&D & TSR logos under license to make another buck. They definitely fall into the Misc. category.
Yeah, they seemed much more like optional toys than anything else. I've always had a ton of minis, but we hardly ever actually used them in play. Back then, the map scales were different so you couldn't use minis with the maps anyway. We didn't get 5ft squares until much later on. Dice and character sheets (even if written on notebooks) were pretty much mandatory. Minis? Not so much. Definitely had more of a "toy" feel to me than a part of the game itself.
That said, I can also totally see the other side of it since 5ft scale maps became the default as well, and thus can see why someone would consider minis part of the core D&D game. I don't think I've physically ever seen a game of 4e without minis. not saying it hasn't ever been done, but I've never actually ever seen it.