Star Trek Toys of the 1970s

[plynch]

Nice to see the "parachutist" got Kirk's shirt color right.

[CorporalCaptain]

Mego Uhura was the closest I came to owning a Barbie doll.

[Silvercrest]

Redfern wrote:

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He apparently loves the Remco "electronic" phaser, stating it existed during an era when kids didn't care that much about screen accuracy. Uh, maybe he didn't, but I, just a brat of 12 years when it was released did care. Ugh, I found the thing horrendous! It was based upon the awkward proportions of the AMT kit, except, "inflated". I could have forgiven that if, IF the audio circuit had produced something, anything akin to the famous cicada-like shriek originally created for George Pal's "War of the Worlds". Instead...it "chirped"! I honestly think the company used a circuit originally meant for a kind of "robotic" birdcage display because it sounded NOTHING like a phaser! The circuit would have better served the flip-lid of a communicator toy. Except, the circuit board of the time could barely have fit within a tricorder housing, let alone a pocket shaver sized comm' casing.

I was not thrilled with that purchase.

I was thrilled with it, but I was just a brat of 7 or 8 and really didn't care about screen accuracy.

And that chirping circuit board? The rest of the toy has gone by the way, but I kept that. Ironically, I repurposed it for a different genre prop... the "Ghostbusters" proton pack that I built in 1992.

I'm sure the sound is no more accurate there, but I wanted the thing to make SOME kind of noise when I fired it. Besides, it's a pretty high-speed wavery chirp-- you can still hear it as "generic space gun" far more than any kind of bird. (It may also be that some of the components have degraded since the 1970s. I'd swear it didn't always sound like that.)

[BillJ]

My god, I had this toy!

[Redfern]

SilverCrest, if it's any consolation, I absolutely LOVED the AMT "Exploration Set" model kit even though the phaser, communicator and tricorder were small and having inaccurate proportions that reflected more of the simplified designs depicted in the 1973 Filmation animated series. That was actually a darn clever idea for a assembly kit/role playing prop collection!

Those items were certainly a parsec level jump from the "spent" makeup compacts that served as communicators, TV remotes as type 1 pocket phasers, and empty binocular cases as tricorders. Before AMT released that kit, I was rather reluctant to "hail" the Enterprise lest someone wonder if I was about to apply rouge to my cheeks!

I guess I just held the kit to a standard different from the Remco toy. Yeah, irrational, I know. Well, maybe because I paid more for that single phaser than I did for the "Exploration Set" which supplied three props.

Sincerely,

Bill

[Silvercrest]

I had the Exploration Set as well, although I didn't use them as toys because they were so breakable. As I recall, the phaser grip didn't stay on at all.

Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say I didn't use them as toys after I broke them.

My dad did most of the model assembly and as I recall, he had a lot of trouble with the decals. I believe some of them went on wrinkled. My mom got in on the act and painted some of the communicator buttons with red nail polish to add some variety. Probably not very screen-accurate, but I thought it was cool.

I remember really, badly wanting the "Star Trek Communicator" (presumably the Mego one), which was very obviously a working device and therefore head and shoulders above everything else. Unfortunately I never got it. I did get some generic walkie-talkies within the next couple of years, but it just... wasn't the same.

The generics were good enough to annoy the hell out of all the CBers in the neighborhood, though.

[Garrovick]

BillJ wrote:

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My god, I had this toy!

Were you ever able to get it to work? I never could get mine to fly right.

[BillJ]

Garrovick wrote:

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Were you ever able to get it to work? I never could get mine to fly right.

I was six or seven at the time, all I remember is it flying around in circles.

[Sir Rhosis]

I had a couple of the Exploration Kits (they did break easily), a brown (why brown, I have no idea) Klingon ship, the working communicator walkie talkies, and something called a Trekulator -- a calculator shaped like one of the large pads. IIRC, it "chirped" whenever you hit the = key.

Sir Rhosis

[ZapBrannigan]

Warped9 wrote:

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p
Funny how they threw around the word "official" so easily.

Yeah! I thought I'd seen every episode of TOS, but I must be in for a treat because I still have to see the one where Spock wears that helmet.

[Metryq]

ZapBrannigan wrote:

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Yeah! I thought I'd seen every episode of TOS, but I must be in for a treat because I still have to see the one where Spock wears that helmet.

Deleted scenes from "Spock's Brain" where McCoy discovers that he forgot to reconnect Spock's dignity nerve. The first officer wore it while riding a tricycle around the corridors before security snagged him with a butterfly net.

In HD, the helmet can be seen in the background of FIREFLY episodes along with the Han Solo in carbonite model...

[Redfern]

And a variant of this helmet gained fame (or notoriety) in the fan film parody "Hardware Wars".

Seen here at the 11 minute, 2 second mark...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ymFxkFfIhU

Sincerely,

Bill

[TREK_GOD_1]

ZapBrannigan wrote:

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There's a bunch of vintage ST toys here

http://www.plaidstallions.com/

that some of us are old enough to remember. Most of it is junk, but that's part of the charm.

Great thread, Zap!

Fond memories of 70s ST, as I had about half of the Mego line, inlcuding the Bridge playset. Other than Mego, I had the infamous Tracer gun, the Remco Phasers, and a viewer which turned a few panels of one of the Gold Key comic into a black and white film strip, among other items.

Anyone ever notice how licensing art for ST was not as enforced as it would be by 1980? On some 70s products, the Gold Key logo would be used on toys having nothing to do with Western Publishing, the box photo from the AMT Enterprise was adapted as line art for Power Records and other toy packaging. If i'm not mistaken, AMT's box photo for the Klingon Battle Crusier was used as one of the targets for Mego's Phaser game.

One of the 70s puzzles clearly lifted art from Gold Key.

By the time of TMP, I believe the licensing of ST images and art was hardline, so one company's unique creation would not find its way on the products from another.

[TREK_GOD_1]

ZapBrannigan wrote:

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Yeah! I thought I'd seen every episode of TOS, but I must be in for a treat because I still have to see the one where Spock wears that helmet.

That helmet kinda makes the use of a colander as head gear in "Spock's Brain" seem innovative and cool! Imagine if this kiddie helmet was the design??!!

[Dantheman]

TREK_GOD_1 wrote:

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Great thread, Zap!

Fond memories of 70s ST, as I had about half of the Mego line, inlcuding the Bridge playset. Other than Mego, I had the infamous Tracer gun, the Remco Phasers, and a viewer which turned a few panels of one of the Gold Key comic into a black and white film strip, among other items.

Anyone ever notice how licensing art for ST was not as enforced as it would be by 1980? On some 70s products, the Gold Key logo would be used on toys having nothing to do with Western Publishing, the box photo from the AMT Enterprise was adapted as line art for Power Records and other toy packaging. If i'm not mistaken, AMT's box photo for the Klingon Battle Crusier was used as one of the targets for Mego's Phaser game.

One of the 70s puzzles clearly lifted art from Gold Key.

By the time of TMP, I believe the licensing of ST images and art was hardline, so one company's unique creation would not find its way on the products from another.

It probably wasn't until the success of Star Wars that companies made a concerted effort to keep a unified look for licensed merchandise like today, where you'll have the same package design as the action figures on bedsheets, coloring books, and toothbrushes.