The FC figures were a missed opportunity. It was weird that Lilly and Cochrane were basically statues with hardly any articulation. At least Playmates eventually released a Borg Queen and most of the crew (except for Geordi) in the standard 4.5" scale.
So good to have you on the forum and I know I've told you this before, but your blog is a marvel Agreed on the Ops set too - I would give good money to have one of my own! I'm gutted that I never used this site, as so many fans mention it and it seemed for a while the definitive place to find out all about the figures/accessories/ships etc. and find out the value of them. I might have to use the Internet Archive site to look back at old pages. Yes, I would have liked the Cardassian ship and as for the type three phaser, that would have been AWESOME! It would have given me days of enjoyment as a kid. I felt the way they re-released the type two phaser again and again was a bit of a cop-out. The FC phaser is a blueish-grey colour and has a different coloured lights to the original type two phaser, then the Insurrection one was more of a silver/grey with different light up effects and sounds effects too. But essentially it was the same model each time, just slightly re-tooled. I agree with you Kor. I would have been more forgiving if they'd done a brilliant job with the Generations line, but given the lack of articulation with those figures and poor all-round quality control ("Lieutenant Commander Riker", two different heads for Worf in the same line, the lack of a card or space cap, the wrong uniforms, etc.) I wasn't impressed. Playmates tried to remedy it by issuing the main cast in the movie uniforms in 4.5" scale after Insurrection, but again the quality control was poor (Troi and Crusher lacking necks, Crusher's awful head paint, Riker's wrong body shape and the fact that he's shorter than Picard, etc. etc.). They couldn't even stretch to making a new head for Geordi sans-VISOR, so he was left out!
Pft -- that Data IS NOT "Fully functional". In fact, he lacks anything to function with down there! Ken has a bigger bulge than that!
Kind of odd, because First Contact provided a whole new uniform that would've been utilized to promote the latest Star Trek toys. Maybe they were annoyed they couldn't just repackage Generations/TNG figures with Borg-fighting accessories and would have to redo all the body builds. Or maybe they were hoping for a clean slate and to upscale all figures to 6" after 1996.
It's hidden behind that protective cover I imagine he can open some flap down there and it swings out XD
Interesting that the facial damage Data has there is pretty much exactly what he got replaced with real flesh in the finished film. ...I always wondered about that. Did they generate flesh for him, or was there some poor crewman who got face and arm skin torn off to stick on Data?
That episode still haunts me. It's clever that they used the actor who played Durst to play the Vidiian too. Must have been weird for him having his face grafted on top of the prosthetics
Thanks again captainjellico, glad I could be of service! The Newforce site (I think was called the Star Trek reference guide or something like that) was an extension of the regular Newforcecomics.com site. With its distinctive grey layout, it had a great guide to each wave with an image for each picture. I'm pretty sure I've been able to find most of the prototype pics they had up on the site. The annoying thing is that there was also written content, for example: a little section on one of the Playmates representatives addressing the uniform screw up for the TNG transporter figures. Apparently no one caught the incorrect shoulder colours before the figures went into production. Also, in the same section, I remember reading that Michael Dorn asked for a new head sculpt to be made as he wasnt entirely happy with the TNG Wave 1 & 2 "growling" Worf! Might be worth checking the wayback machine to see if some of that site can be salvaged? PS: "Faces" scared the crap outta me when I was a kid!! Great episode!
The story I heard was that LeVar Burton was not happy with the sculpt for the First Contact figure so withheld approval for any more Geordi figures. I've done a custom using AGT Geordi, and it makes for quite a nice Nemesis version of the character.
I guess that sort of tracks, but I'm sure there was a 9" and 12" version of Geordi for Insurrection. Not sure what he didnt like about it, I thought First Contact Geordi looked awesome :-)
Yeah that's why I'm a bit sceptical myself. It probably did come down to having to retool the sculpt, whereas the rest of that line were basically the 1992 heads on retooled Voyager bodies.
My favorite play mates figure is Captain Picard Locutus figure I love it has so much weight and some die-cast parts.
Yeah i have a Data figure from the line and articulation is lacking but TBH like the scrapped uniforms that were supposed to be in the Movie. Like a cross of TNG and TOS movie uniforms
Locutus is indeed one of the great sculpts of the entire playmates Star Trek line. No wonder they re-used it so frequently
I have a Beverly Crusher figure from that line, I picked it up from a collectables store on Long Island about 5 years ago, along with a Reman Viceroy. They must have spent between $10,000 - 30,000 on those costumes for the cast and then never used them. I don't think they were even cannibalized to make diffetent costumes later.
Lucky escape. Those are the costumes Voyager would have been stuck with for seven years. Fun video about them here.
Not in the UK sadly! They're all cheap as chips in the US, but considerably rarer in the UK. They still aren't massively expensive, but the going rate is about £10-20 delivered for a carded figure (around 15-25 USD).
Ah Junkball. Love that dude :-) I agree - the generations uniforms were weird. Glad we didnt get stuck with em for Voyager. Ha! Try living in Australia. Thanks to ebay's "Global Shipping Program", I have routinely paid $39.95 for shipping on a $5.00 figure! Action figure/collectable stores are dying here (and have been for some time), so online is usually the only option.