Inside the Mego Close-Out Star Trek Set

Mego Star Trek Clearance Set

Seeing as Star Trek is 50 today and it was one of Mego‘s biggest and earliest hits, we thought we’d spotlight one of the oddest and rarest pieces to come out of that delicious union, the highly sought after Close-Out Set.

Our own Robyn Adams did a great write up of this piece when one finally surfaced on TV three years ago on the “Toy Hunter” Program and we still stand by this theory as to why it exists:

“There were probably extra playset cases left after the supply of furniture and transporters were used up making proper playsets. Whether it was Mego itself or, more likely, a third party distributor—someone just slapped these sets together–notice in the photos they didn’t even rivet all of the flaps and shipped them off in a discount close-out sale. Note also that the white edge piece at the center of the playset is cardboard, not plastic as is the case on a normal playset.”

This newsprint ad dates the piece as being sold in December, 1980 long after it’s hey day. One thing we know is that after the initial boom, more than one wholesaler were left with unsold Mego Star Trek merchandise, the most infamous being Canada’s Parkdale Novelty which resulted in a masssive “Find” of unsold crew figures in 1984 that inspired ads in StarLog magazine such as this:

the Transporter-free rooftop

So it’s not a surprise to discover that a wholesaler would have unsold Kirk and Spock figures, as well as incomplete bridges, so to bundle them as a discount is rather ingenious. So while we’ve seen this set on the Museum before, we now have a rare opportunity to look inside:

The Interior of the Star Trek Clearance Center.

Unlike the previous set we featured, this one has the Kirk and Spock figures included, these guys aren’t mint but not bad considering they’ve been knocking around inside this case for 30 plus years.

That packing peanut looks like a baby Horta, as you can see the Transporter is missing and there is no evidence this piece ever saw riveting (which was done in the U.S.A back then) so these are definitely unused examples.

While it’s bare bones, many folks have told me they treasured this set as a kid and just used their imagination (remember that?)

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