Back in 1993 after the success of the first couple of waves of TNG action figures released by Playmates the company decided to tackle the original crew. The crew was released as a set featuring a diorama of the Enterprise bridge as seen in the original series.
Print ad for the Classic Star Trek Crew Collector's Set (1993).
When this set first came out I was never able to get a hold of it. It didn't stick around long enough on store shelves. I remember maybe seeing it only once at Toys R Us and it had a price tag close to 50 dollars.
I was finally able to get my hands on this item thanks to the wonderful world of Ebay. The set is pretty impressive. The diorama looks great and you can remove the figures without causing any damage to it since it has two layers. The first layer is where the figure trays are attached, but you can lift it up to find a pristine background. The figures are just as great as all the other offerings we got from Playmates during the 90s.
With all the excitement over the new film and the new look for the Original Crew, I figured this was the perfect time to remind fans of how cool these classic figures are. A search on Ebay will produce a good amount of sets available from various sellers and at pretty decent prices.
For action figures that were produced before the days of Gentle Giant scanning actors for their likenesses these figures look pretty close to their real world counterparts.
If you never got a chance to grab these during their original release I highly recommend you add them to your collection now. I'm pretty sure once the new movie hits theaters a lot of the merchandise available on the secondary market featuring the original crew will probably be in more demand.
Playmates continued releasing more figures from The Original Series after this set hit the market and in the coming weeks I'll post some more images from those as we get closer to the release of the new film when we will be turning our attention to the new line of toys featuring the crew of the enterprise during their days fresh from Starfleet Academy.
I think i like these more than the new ones! new ones have over-sized outfits and crappy likeness. and kirks hairs looks reddish. No!! whats wrong with playmates nowadays.they screwd up tmnt with the back to the sewers toys, and now their gonna lazily do trek. hopefully they will look beter when i have them in my hand. and the role playing stuff will be fun. Onward to burger king!!
ReplyDeleteI got my boxed set for Christmas that year. I still have it, though I confess to having sold off 95% of my Playmates Trek collection over the years. Yeah, that's a purge I regret. I do still have my TMNT Trek figures, though!
ReplyDeleteYeah, I like the newer ones a lot better, but these were okay for their time. Not something I could afford back then, but cool nonetheless.
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