Star Trek 4 Reportedly Shelved

Discussion in 'Star Trek Movies: Kelvin Universe' started by PixelMagic, Jan 8, 2019.

  1. captainkirk

    captainkirk Commodore Commodore

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    But how come there's such a vast difference between the two? They don't even look like they're made by the same company, hence my comment about it looking like a Chinese knock-off like this:
    [​IMG]
     
  2. pst

    pst Commodore Commodore

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    they were different companies.

    the TOS license was held by art asylum/DST. the 2009 star trek license was held by playmates... who produced hundreds of really great action figures in the 90s, but dropped the ball pretty bad in 09.
     
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  3. captainkirk

    captainkirk Commodore Commodore

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    I was talking more specifically about the two scales of '09 figures, but you made me think of a good point. Why did they give the license to a company who didn't seem to care about designing quality figures?
    When Hasbro produced a disappointing line of toys for Jurassic World they were replaced with Mattel for the sequel. With Star Trek, they went from the Playmates figures to Hasbro's KRE-O sets and then to just Funko Pops. It's just a downward spiral.
     
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  4. pst

    pst Commodore Commodore

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  5. captainkirk

    captainkirk Commodore Commodore

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    Well, there was the QMX Enterprise model. I'm sure some rich kid had fun playing with that...
     
  6. F. King Daniel

    F. King Daniel Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    The Playmates '09 Enterprise model was amazing. And their phaser and communicator were okay.
     
  7. Khan 2.0

    Khan 2.0 Commodore Commodore

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    back in 09 it was funny going in to local supermarkets, toystores or just wherever and seeing shelves stacked full of Star 'TREK' figures and toys.. maybe the only other time that happened was 1979 (and in 1984/85 i remember you could get the little ertl Trek III figures in toy stores) .. there was all the playmates trek figures in the 90s but there were only available in the SF comic stores (at least in the uk anyway).

    then in around 2012ish found all the 09 figures in the Pound store! so picked up Spock Prime as if you had to get just one that would be it.. but then figured what the hell and went back for Kirk, Spock, Nero,Pike (but not the rest for some reason idk why didn't just get all of them)
     
    Last edited: Apr 10, 2019
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  8. fireproof78

    fireproof78 Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Money, pure and simple. Licensing costs money, production costs money, and Star Trek is highly niche.

    I also strongly suspect the time table was not sufficient for them to produce what they actually wanted. By the time they were audiences had already moved on. So, they stopped spending money on it.
     
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  9. Lance

    Lance Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Had no idea these even existed. Nice to see the Kelvin time line is still being merchandised, though it's too goddamn late to really mean anything at this point when tbh something like this should have been around ten years ago now, lol. The likenesses to Pine and Quinto are excellent. Hope they do the rest. :)
     
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  10. Lance

    Lance Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    100%. The larger scale one you posted later was better, but still far from the mark, and at least in my part of the world a lot harder to come by than the small scale shit-the-bed versions. That all the marketing was being pushed towards the small scale ones too (ie, the so-called 'Bridge playset' debacle) undoubtedly hurt the range beyond repair, and probably the marketability of the Kelvin verse as a whole (it may have been critical in torpedoing them). Alongside this being the frankly IMO bizarre idea to mix and match uniforms, McCoy being in academy cadet uniform instead of duty uniform, it leant the range not only a cheap look but an inconsistent one. Everyone wants their figures to look good on the shelf and those figures didn't look good. It reminds me of the shit fest that was the Indiana Jones action figure range following the release of Crystal Skull. That movie notwithstanding, an Indiana Jones line of action figures should have been a licence to print money, but instead a few bad creative choices killed it dead.
     
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  11. Hey Missy

    Hey Missy Captain Captain

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  12. C.E. Evans

    C.E. Evans Admiral Admiral

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    I first saw these figures a little bit after Into Darkness came out, so they've been around for awhile, but you really had to look around for them at the time. IIRC, they were Japanese imports, so they were also kind of expensive to all but serious collectors.
    It's been almost a decade since I read it, I don't even know where to find it anymore, but there was a report that the big three toy retailers at the time--Wal-Mart, Target, and the now defunct Toys R Us--didn't want everyone to be in "Enterprise uniforms" and Playmates obliged. I recall it saying something that there were so many figures in that initial wave, and that they didn't want a sea of characters in the same kind of outfits on their shelves. That might have been what Trekkers would have wanted, but the Big 3 were the ones placing the orders at the time, so they were calling the shots as far as what got in their stores. Maybe if Playmates had done smaller waves over a longer period of time and just stuck to one figure scale, maybe McCoy and Chekov could have been released in their regular uniforms later as was originally planned.
     
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  13. Noname Given

    Noname Given Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    From a store merchandising perspective, it ,makes sense as they know that people collect these so the more versions - the more sales to said figure collectors.
     
  14. drt

    drt Commodore Commodore

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    That chest joint is pretty standard these days, modern superhero costumes help hide the cut so it isnt as noticeable. I believe the old DST figures also had a similar joint, but hid it under a soft plastic "shirt" - not sure why these figures didn't do the same, maybe a cost-cutting move or the soft plastic didnt work with the arrowhead pattern.
    These are new figures first released this year, the Japanese ones are a little bigger and the scupts are more stylized.
     
  15. C.E. Evans

    C.E. Evans Admiral Admiral

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    Yeah, I looked at the DST ones a bit closer and saw the differences. My bad.
    :o
     
  16. F. King Daniel

    F. King Daniel Fleet Admiral Admiral

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  17. fireproof78

    fireproof78 Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Hence the twenty different variations of Kirk in the original Playmates line ;)
     
  18. Khan 2.0

    Khan 2.0 Commodore Commodore

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  19. Hey Missy

    Hey Missy Captain Captain

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    They could still revisit the George Kirk time travel movie. Just call it... Star Trek The Rise of Kirk (colon intentionally left out)
     
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  20. fireproof78

    fireproof78 Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    [​IMG]