I am not looking for expensive stuff and don't need the exotic monsters (no orcs, dragons, or other non standard RL critteres needed). Unfortunately most of the sets I see are for a high fantasy setting with the usual exotic monsters not used in a RL campaign. Anyone know a set or where I can find skeletons, zombies, vampires, lycanthropes and other things that go bump in the night? An online order store or names of miniature assortment packs greatly appreciated (again, just looking for RL type critters).
Your local game store should have a list of miniatures you can buy individually (so you avoid the silly random pack).
1) you can buy "lead" miniature. They work well with a grid table mat.
They are usually sold individually. If you need more choice then what your game store has, try the Reaper miniature site - a great web site to browse. If you call your game store and ask them for a specific mini you saw on the Reaper site, they should be able to get it for you within days. I do it often.
Or you can try ebay, but in the long term, for regular stuff, your local game store might be less costly (unless you want to buy specific, older material, like the Ravenloft miniatures).
2) you can buy the new plastic ones from WotC. Most game stores did open the random packs and sell them individually, priced according to the rarity of the figure. So you can buy only those you need.
For your info: soon on the FoS site (in the wine cellar area), the mini page will be updated. It is now presenting the Ravenloft miniatures and, at the bottom, a selection of WotC mini useful for the Ravenloft setting. The future updated page is expanded 100th times and will have a much wider range of possibilities and a picture for most of the minis suggested.
Joël
To be honest when I thought about using miniatures and started looking around I got confused. Now I been playing D&D for a loong time and when I started playing minatures were made outta lead, ya had to paint em yourself, and came in boxes where you got 9-20 of em for like $4-$6. When I started looking around recently I found rulebooks, expensive box sets and all of em made now from plastic (plastic makes em cheaper but the price went way up... 
)I have seen some nice miniatures that looked good for a RL campaign like dire creatures, various undead and lycanthropes but they're in random box sets where I will probably get orcs with laser guns instead... I am limited in that there is no hobby shops around where I live.. so gonna have to find em online. It's good to know I can maybe buy these individually rather then have to fish through box sets.
anyways.. thanks again because I been really confused stepping into the miniatures market again
Also if you want more RL themed plastics, the Deathknell set focuses on undead creatures.
They can be sometimes expensive, but you can find individual figures sold online. One site that I get figures from is:
http://www.iconusa.com/online/Collectables.htm
Personnally in AD&D we were using hexagonal paper made in autocad with small paper on it and now i rediscovered and use my old hero quest board game and i think that both solution do the job fine enough.
The WOTC miniatures are here if you have the budget and really want to add a more cinematical aspects to the combat movements.
But that said, there is something very satifying about finding just the right minature for a particular character, especially a PC or recurring NPC. Reaper seems to be making the best ones nowadays, expecially their dark heaven line.