I have been a Star Trek fan my entire life. While I don't have a specific memory of the first time that I saw an episode or movie, I know that I was watching re-runs of the original series with my dad as soon as I could sit up on my own. I know that I have seen old pictures from a Christmas in the early '80s with Star Trek coloring books that have art from Star Trek the Animated Series on them, and I vaguely remember watching animated epsisodes on Nickelodeon or some other cable network. But it was when Star Trek: The Next Generation premiered in 1987 that I truly became a Star Trek fan (Trekkie, Trekker, whatever) in my own right.
In 1987 my toy world was changing. G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero was at its height, but other mainstays of my toy box were on their way out. The retail presence of Star Wars and The Power of the Force had all but faded away as was Masters of the Universe, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were still a few years away from their dominance. But luckily for me, about halfway through the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation a line of action figures came out from Galoob toys.
I got all of the Enterprise crew, and these figures became the center of my play time. I built a bridge playset for them out of Construx (another great 80s toy line) and used various GI Joe and Star Wars figures in place of missing characters like Counselor Troi and Doctor Crusher. By the summer of 1988, with the break until season 2 on TV and lack of retailer support for the Galoob line meaning that a planned second series of toys never got made, my childhood attention span had moved on to whatever the next big thing was on TV and in the toy aisles.
Fast forward to 1992. On a trip to Toys R Us in the late summer or early fall I came across a lone figure surrounded by empty pegs...
It seems almost impossible to believe in our modern world of tweeting and live blogging from Toy Fair and SDCC, websites showcasing every stage of development from licensing agreements to painted prototypes, and figures making their way on to eBay before scheduled releases, that there was a time when one could walk in to a toy store and be surprised by something. But there I was in the action figure section of Toys R us with a lone Lieutenant Commander Geordi LaForge figure that represented a brand new line of Star Trek toys that, before that day, I had no idea were coming out.
Whereas Galoob had never done an action figure line before it got the license for Star Trek toys, this new line of toys was made by Playmates Toys. The same Playmayes toys that dominated the action figure aisles of the late '80s and early '90s with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. That shared parentage was most apparent in this first wave of Star Trek: The Next Generation figures with the ripped uniform of Commander Riker, the opening access panels of Lieutenant Commander Data, and the beefed up musculature of Worf, Gowron, and the Ferengi.
Nevertheless, that first purchase of Geordi LaForge would be the beginning of what would define my toy collecting until Playmates lost the Star Trek license in 1999.
A lot has happened in both the world of Star Trek and in the toy world since 1999. The rise and fall of Art Asylum and Diamond Select Toys, as well as the failure of Playmates toys to relaunch a Star Trek line with the 2009 reboot, could fill their own blog posts.
One day they may.
But for now I just wanted to give you a bit of a glimpse in to my history with Star Trek and its associated toys to put the posts that will follow in to some context.
