Mego's "Star Trek" line was "officially" based on the live-action series in syndication in 1974, but the Mego designers appear to have referred repeatedly to The Animated Series for inspiration. It's not difficult to imagine why frugal, economical Mego would choose a property like "Star Trek" to exploit as part of the company's eight-inch action figure line. Since most of the crew wore the same basic uniform--and used the same weapons and equipment--Mego anticipated minimum design cost combined with maximum utilization potential--a win-win situation if ever one existed. In fact, so high was Mego's confidence in the line that they took the unprecedented step of creating specific lower-leg tooling for the male crew members. The Starfleet-issued boots were incorporated into the figure itself, saving countless lost pairs of Mego footwear at the hands of careless children--as well as eliminating one more step in the assembly process.
Additionally, Mego had impeccable timing when it came to picking up the "Star Trek" license. With a pittance of an investment, they bought into a virtually dead property that was in the throes of rebirth and rediscovery by a whole new legion of fans--fans clamoring for anything with the words "Star Trek" on it.
The
original five "Star Trek" figures were released
in 1974, and included Capt.
Kirk, Mr.
Spock, Dr.
McCoy (Bones), Mr.
Scott (Scottie), and the Klingon.
It is notable that these were the first 8" Mego
figures to be available exclusively on blister cards, having
never been available in boxes throughout the entirety of their
run.
The initial card art featured profile paintings of all five
characters, the "Star Trek" logo in white, and each
figure's name depicted in white text above the bubble.
The package back also featured these same five profiles
on a blue field. These cards were later amended to include Lt.
Uhura as the late, feminist-conscious addition to the
first series. Her profile was added to the line-up, and the "Star Trek"
logo was changed to a more colorful light blue.
Additionally, the back was replaced with advertisements
for the U.S.S. Enterprise
Playset and Communicator
walkie-talkies over a field of purple.
A later amendment to the first series cards consisted
of changing the text of the figure's name from white to the
color of the respective character's profile circle.
The first series was originally released on Type 1
bodies with several running changes in the facial paint schemes.
These were soon transitioned to Type 2 bodies, where
the manufacturing settled down to a more uniform process.
As a rule-of-thumb, Type 1 bodies are found on "5-face"
cards, while Type 2 bodies are found on "6-face"
cards. There have been "transitional" specimens found which
do not conform to this distribution pattern, but they are
quite uncommon.
All six figures were available individually through popular
mail-order venues of the day (Sears, Montgomery Ward's, etc.).
These mail-order figures each came in a clear plastic
bag, which in turn was shipped in a small, non-descript brown
carton. Although not especially attractive or collectible, mailer boxes
were far less prevalent than standard retail packaging, and,
due in no small part to their underwhelming appearance, were
most often discarded upon receipt.
Assembling a set of these figures in catalog packaging
can be a daunting task; luckily, few collectors care enough
to accept the challenge.
Additionally, the original five figures (sans
Uhura) were included in an exceptionally-rare
U.S.S.
Enterprise Gift
Set. These
figures came individually-packaged in baggies identical to
their catalog brethren.
Type 1 figures were definitely included in the gift set; however, it cannot be confirmed whether the Enterprise
saw a long-enough production lifespan which would have allowed
the possibility of Type 2 inclusion.
Kirk, Spock,
McCoy, and the Klingon
were re-released in 1979 for Sears, presumably to provide
supplemental product for Star
Trek: The Motion Picture, as well as to clear out
excess stock in Mego's warehouse. These reissues differ from the originals in three fundamental
respects: first, they were assigned new assortment and item
numbers; second (and most famously), in an excessive demonstration
of economy, they were released without printing on the package
back (earning them the nickname of "Blank-Backs");
and third, the majority of the reissues were given (once the
backstock of traditional, two-part "stick-on" foil
insignias had been depleted) what appear to be heat-sealed
foil insignias, easily differentiated by their white edges.
As popular and collectible as the "Star Trek" crew
figures are/were, a sizable warehouse discovery of these gems
was unearthed in Canada in the mid-1980s, leading to a drop-off
in value that the collecting community is only now beginning
to recover from, some twenty years later.
This reduction in perceived value is both a blessing
and a curse, however.
While the drop in monetary value has hurt many a speculator
and investor in the short-term, the overall affordability
and availability of these figures has made them a perennial
favorite of collectors--both Star Trek and Mego alike--and
a staple of even the most basic Mego collection.
The
outstanding success of the "Star Trek" line naturally
led to new releases over the next two years.
Mego's first priority was to give the Enterprise crew
more adversaries to fight.
In 1975, four new figures were released: a Neptunian,
the Keeper, a Gorn,
and a Cheron.
These characters were released under the new general
heading of "Aliens."
It is probably more accurate to describe these Aliens
as "inspired by" rather than "from" the
"Star Trek" series.
Mego was a pioneer in the field of licensing popular
intellectual property for toy manufacture, and the problem
with being a trailblazer is that there is no one ahead of
you to set the standard.
Mego was making it up as they went, and Paramount,
being just as inexperienced in licensing (and still not fully
grasping the cultural phenomenon that "Star Trek"
was becoming), wasn't very concerned with cracking the whip
of consistency. As
a result of this relaxed attitude to canonical adherence,
the majority of the figures in the Aliens series can best
be described as having merely a passing resemblance to their
namesakes. In several instances, the Alien figures bear
more of a resemblance to The Animated Series designs than
the The Original Series; this is presumably due to the fact
that The Animated Series was currently broadcasting at the
time Mego's "Star Trek" line was in development.
These first Aliens are several orders of magnitude
rarer than any of the crew or the Klingon,
but common enough to carry fairly reasonable price tags, allowing
even the most casual Mego collector to obtain them.
These figures stayed in production throughout the final
series, which helps to explain the relative ease in acquiring
them.
The figures released from this point on were all Type 2 bodies. Due to the exotic nature of alien characters, most of the bodies
used for the figures were of strange and unique colors, were
of an abnormal size, or had unique, character-specific body
components created for them.
These were all nice touches, to be sure, but they do
not make the task of repairing figures any easier for the
loose Mego collector.
Mego also created new card art for the Aliens series, a striking
planetary vista with steep mountains rising to the left, and
a red planet and blue moon hung against a black, starry night.
The back of the package featured new profile paintings
of the ten figures available at that point, as well as ads
for the Enterprise Playset,
Tricorder, Tribble (whose existence is still debated to this
day), Mission to Gamma VI Playset,
Phaser Battle Game, Phaser Gun Game, Command Communications
Console, and Communicators.
The card art for the UK Palitoy releases was even more
impressive and bold, with profiles of the Aliens on the front,
and a card back design very reminiscent of the original "5-face"
card back.
In spite of many glaring inaccuracies and inconsistencies with the established "Star Trek" canon, these four Aliens sold well-enough to warrant a third (and, as it would turn out, final) series of "Trek" figures, consisting of four more Aliens: a Romulan, a Talosian, an Andorian, and a Mugato. These four figures are counted among the rarest of Mego's produced figures, due in no small part to a fire at a Mego facility which, as the legend maintains, consumed a large portion of the third series' stock. The fact that the word "legend" is used in this instance is a testament to the stature of these four figures and the fascination that surrounds their manufacture and relative scarcity; when you talk about series three, you're not so much relating history as you are delving into action figure folklore. These final Aliens rank up there with Alter Egos, Teen Titans, and Space: 1999, a fact borne out by the prices they consistently command. Regardless of any warehouse disasters, this series of figures would still have been in high demand today if only for two reasons: the Romulan and the Andorian, two Aliens whose canonical accuracy and innate style almost make up for the glaring deficiencies present in the other six. Mego, for reasons unknown, created new card art for these figures as well. Actually, "recreated" is probably a more apt term, since they closely patterned the new design on the previous one, making only slight changes. The new card art still depicted essentially the same planetary landscape, but it differed in several important respects: firstly, the "sky" was changed from black to blue; secondly, the stars were all-but-removed; thirdly, the card maintained the width of the previous card design, but was now noticeably taller; and fourthly, the card back now featured all fourteen of the "Star Trek" figures, while simultaneously eliminating half of the accessories advertised on the previous package to make room for the profile expansion. In addition to releasing the final four Aliens on these new cards, Mego took the trouble to re-release the previous series of Aliens on the new card art as well. This fact could be attributed to a desire for uniformity on Mego's part, if it were not so painfully obvious from almost all other evidence that uniformity was pretty low on Mego's list of priorities. The eight-inch line of "Star Trek" figures effectively died with these last four Aliens; so, too, did every Trekkie's dreams of a Harry Mudd or a Khan, a Sulu or a Chekov, a Nurse Chapel or a Yeoman Rand. It would be left to the Mego customizers, a generation later, to pick up the ball that Mego dropped in 1976.
Mego
had experienced tremendous success in the marketing of same-scaled
vehicles and environments for their World'
Greatest Super-Heroes line and their Planet
of the Apes series. Almost immediately, "Trek"
proved itself a runaway hit on the toy aisle. In quick
order, Mego decided to provide ancillary products for the
"Star Trek" figures, in much the same vein as those
afforded to the WGSH and Apes. "Trek"
proved a unique challenge, however. Mego was used to
designing cars, helicopters, motorcycles, vinyl playsets and
the like in the eight-inch scale which they pioneered.
The first question the designers inevitably asked was this:
"How do you make a Starship in the eight-inch
scale?"
Mego's solution to this issue was inspired, and, in many ways,
simply couldn't be done today, with the current generation
brought up on the prerequisite of ultra-realism in their toys.
Forgoing accuracy and instead focusing on play-value and bright,
eye-catching colors, Mego unveiled the U.S.S.
Enterprise Playset in 1975. It was a tremendous
success, as evidenced by the vast number of Enterprise
Playsets that still turn up today; it seems that every
boy in the mid-'Seventies had one of these playsets.
This playcase is laughable by today's toy craftsmanship standards,
but its charm and innocence are hard to ignore. Mego
focused on the bridge of the Enterprise
for its layout, but included a wing on each side of the playset
devoted to two more key areas of the Enterprise.
On the right was a small room that was, at least ostensibly,
the Engine Room (really nothing but a non-descript corner
in which to stick your Scottie figure),
and on the left was the real star of the toy, the Transporter
Room.
The Transporter mechanism was an engineering feat even Scottie
would be proud of. To simulate the effect of "beaming,"
you would put a figure in one side of a vertical tumbler,
and spin the knob. Brightly-colored labels would flash
by as the cylinder spun, giving a rather art-deco interpretation
to the act of Transporting. By pressing one of two buttons
on the top of the playset, you could stop the mechanism--on
a dime!--in either the "beamed in" or "beamed
out" position. A secret door, not unlike those
found on the cabinets of shifty illusionists, was present
at the rear of the mechanism, allowing the child to remove
the figure without the rest of the crew noticing! Sneaky...
The Enterprise
Playset, and its Transporter component, proved so popular
that both the United Kingdom and the United States received
one additional derivative playset each. The UK "Trek"
fans were treated to a stand-alone Transporter
Room toy, released by Mego's British associate, Palitoy-Bradgate,
in lieu of an actual Enterpise
Playet. Alternatively, Mego buyers in America got,
judging by the few specimens that exist, an extremely-limited
Enterprise
Gift Set which included the original five figures (Uhura
being the odd woman out) on Type 1 bodies. Little is
known for certain about this Gift
Set, aside from the fact that it exists. Rumours
abound that it was a Canadian exclusive, but this is unlikely,
as Canada, along with France, got a smaller Enterprise
Playset (about 10% smaller) for distribution, along with
a smaller, bi-lingual box. It is doubtful that two Enterprises
of conflicting sizes were released in the same country.
Now that kids had the Enterprise,
they needed somewhere to take it for an outer-space adventure.
Enter the Mission to Gamma VI
Playset, a toy very loosely based on the "Trek"
episode, "The Apple." The Gamma
VI Playset came with a terribly fragile plant-trap, four
tiny aliens that were way out of scale with the eight-inch
"Trek" figures and which were easily lost, a plastic
alien throne and idol facade which drew attention away from
the cardboard-construction comprising the rest of the set,
and a glove monster prone to rips and tears. This playset
was not widely-released to begin with; when you couple this
fact with its extreme fragility and ease of piece-loss, you
begin to understand the sky-high prices that this playset
regularly demands.
A final eight-inch accessory was released, the Telescreen
Console. This toy is notable for being the only
eight-inch accessory to require batteries. The Telescreen
Console was Mego's answer to home video games in a pre-home-video-game
world. A screen, sitting in front of a captain's chair,
was used to display enemy targets which could be fired upon
electronically. This accessory is pretty unremarkable
and primitive, and has limited long-term play value.
It's the kind of toy that a six-year old will beg his mother
for, only to tire of it after ten minutes of play. Really,
the only thing that qualifies this toy as an eight-inch accessory
is the presence of the captain's chair; other than that detail,
this toy could easily be lumped into the role-playing category
of Mego's "Trek" offerings. The Telescreen
is rare, but it is also a rather underwhelming accessory--certainly
the weakest of the five--so there are few collectors out there
actively hunting one.
Mego made quite a few other accessories such as the
tricorder, but these are all of a role-playing nature,
and can be found here.
So, there you have it. Mego was also responsible for
the toys for Star Trek: The Motion
Picture in 1979. Mego abandoned the eight-inch
scale for these releases, opting instead for two different
scales: three-and-three-quarters inches and twelve inches.
These toys were, regrettably, not the Star Wars-killer
that Mego had hoped for, but Mego really only had themselves
to blame. But that is another story for another time,
and can be found at the Mego Movie Trek
section for those interested.
Thanks to a wide accessibility and a huge pre-established
collector base, the popularity of Mego's "Star Trek"
line is second only to the World's
Greatest Super Heroes. For those just getting their
feet wet, you can hardly do better than "Star Trek"
to get initiated into the wonderful world of Mego!
The "Star Trek" Gallery would not have been possible without the contributions and assistance of Jeff Riemersma, Rob Chatlin, Mike "type1kirk" Farance, Kevin "MirrorSpock" Kaup, Jon and Phil.