I just won a Defiant AND and an Equinox on eBay, so I'll be very interested in the quality of both when they show.
I had a Hot Wheels refit Enterprise and ended up returning it. It looked nice in the box, but when I took it out the nacelles were severely warped. When looking at the ship head on, one of the nacelles drooped severely while the other one was warped slightly and curved.
Had the same issue here. Gave it to my fiver-year old and he's had a ton of fun with it. I was far more impressed with their 1701-D and was never able to find the original 1701.
Hum! Hot Wheels releasing the Excelsior? As long as the nacelles point the right direction, I'm there. I got their USS Reliant and found it nicely made and really solid. Didn't get any of their 1701 toys though, the nacelle warping really put me off on those... Markcelsior Fan
I wonder why toy lines seem to do the Reliant before the Excelsior. Yes, the Reliant came first, but the Excelsior was in FOUR movies, plus one episode. (It got no love at all from Johnny Lighting). Take the source with a grain of salt, but Memory Alpha says Hot Wheels' line will be re-released in the first quarter of 2013, along with the Excelsior and a couple of new ships from the new movie.
Okay, the Defiant and Equinox I ordered off eBay finally arrived today. (I was rather annoyed that the Equinox's stand was broken, but that's another matter). The Defiant's got some really good detail, but I feel like the overall shape's not quite right. I feel like the Micro Machine one's dimensions are a bit better. I took a picture holding the MM one close enough to see how they'd roughly look at equal size: The lighting's not that great (sorry, not that great a camera), but you should be able to notice some differences. There's two main things: 1) The aft section and the nacelles on the Furuta Defiant are oriented straight forward, rather than being a bit diagonal. 2) The nose section is noticeable longer and narrower. It also doesn't point down as much as the MM one does. These two things make the ship appear a bit longer and slimmer than it should probably be. Apart from the stand, I much happier with the Equinox. I'd forgotten how stubby it looks from certain angles, but I feel like those proportions are right. The only things I don't really care for are these grid lines on the sides of the engineering hull. They look kind of shoddy, compared to the rest of the model. At first, I actually wondered if a former owner had painted them on until I managed to find a picture of the model's underside on Google, showing it was indeed made that way. Well, still worth it, I think.