Mego Spotlight- Klingon Cruiser (Star Trek: The Motion Picture)

Item Name: Klingon Cruiser
Manufacturer: Mego Toys Corp.



Mego released this ship to stores back in good ol' 1980. Take a closer look at that box art:



...and here's a look at the back of the box...



...and finally, a quick look at the snippet from the side...



Got all that? Good. Let's continue.



The Rundown: I have a few toy "holy grails" that I have been on the lookout for since I started my Trek collection. The wacky late 60's Remco stuff, prototypes of unproduced items, original Leaf trading cards... rare stuff that hardly ever shows up for sale. Pretty high on my list of wants have always been the 3 ships Mego made for their "Motion Picture" line: The Enterprise, the Vulcan Shuttle, and the Klingon Cruiser. Well, last week I finally crossed one of those off my list. Behold... The Mego TMP Klingon Cruiser!



Released toward the tail end of their "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" line, the Mego TMP ships were a departure from the company's norm. Mego usually stuck to action figures, playsets, and vehicles scaled to figures. Since it would have been impossible to do ships in scale with the figure line, Mego opted to replicate them as small-scale models. They chose the 3 most visible ships from the film to reproduce, which would of course include the Klingon Cruiser seen in the film's opening sequence.



Mego was pretty much the king of producing nice toys at a cheap price. The Mego TMP ships are a great example of their thrifty production methods. Each ship is molded entirely in one color (a greenish-blue in the case of the Klingon Cruiser), with all the color detailing supplied by an included decal sheet (which mine is unfortunately missing). They're basically pre-assembled model kits that you just put stickers on. No bells and whistles here... just enough to get the job done.



Now that's not to say that the ship is light on details. Quite the contrary actually! While the cruiser can't stand up to today's replicas, it's pretty impressive by late 70's standards. Each of the ship's main structures feature a pretty decent amount of sculpted detailing. From the "cooling unit"...



...to the bridge area....



...and all the way to the "propulsion units", this ship has a lot going for it!



Given the time period, that's pretty darned good. The ship isn't all that big either, coming in at only 8" from the tip of the bridge to the end of the propulsion units. Take a look at it next to some other Klingon ships to see what I mean-



The Hallmark and Johnny Lighning ships are both fairly small, so you can see that the Mego stuff isn't large by any means. While the 2 smaller guys have a lot more dteial going on, you have to remember that those are produced by today's manufacturing standards, with a keen eye towards authenticity. Mego's Klingon Cruiser was produced 30 years ago. For kids. By that token, it's great.



Included with each TMP ship is a "landing base". I believe the mold is the same for all three, with each one cast in the same color of plastic used on their respective ship. Even though it was probably a cheap addition for Mego to make, it's a very nice add-in for kids that wanted to display their ships when they weren't playing with them. Kids like me. Weird kids.



Okay, so I think I've made the point pretty clear that this was a nice toy for it's time and would have been a great item to pick up back then... but what about now? That's a really tough one, since the TMP ships are INCREDIBLY rare. At the point when these were shipping, the TMP figure line was winding down and stores were moving on to the next hot thing, leaving theses ships with only a VERY limited release here in the US. While all 3 did see a wider release overseas, it's still very uncommon to find them up for sale nowadays. When they do pop up, you can typically expect to pay anywhere from $200-$400 for each ship (depending on it's condition). Ouch. Yeah, at that price I can't recommend this guy to anyone but the most hardcore of Trek collectors. While the ship is cool and the nostalgia factor is there, you can buy much better version for a fraction of the price. Only a crazy person would plunk down the money for these Mego TMP versions...

So yeah... if you have a Vulcan Shuttle or an Enterprise for sale, let me know. Because I'm an idiot.

Dinky Toys Spotlight- 'Klingon' Battle Cruiser

Item Name: 'Klingon' Battle Cruiser
Manufacturer: Dinky Toys



Dinky Toys released this dastardly devil of a ship as a single piece and in a 2 pack with their Enterprise.



The Rundown: While not quite as cool as Dinky's Enterprise, the Klingon Battle Cruiser is still pretty spiffy. The color choices are a little odd, but the sculpt is nice and the ship is the perfect play partner for the Dinky 1701. Let's take a look at what all the cool Klingons were flying back in the 70's...



Okay, so it's metallic blue and white- A pretty far cry from the muted gray of the ones seen on the show. I'm sure it was the choice of some toy exec who thought that the brighter colors would better grab the attention of some unsuspecting 7 year old walking through the toy aisles. It's a little off-putting, but just try to imagine this ship as belonging to some hot-rodding Klingon b@st@rd who doesn't give a crap how conspicuous his ship looks. He wants the attention. Heck, he's thinking about painting flames on it. And pinstripes.



The overall sculpt is really quite nice, and captures a good amount of detail. If I had a spare, I'd hit it with some gray spray paint just to show how nice of a replica this ship really could be.



Just like Dinky's Enterprise, the Klingon ship can fire little disks, *ahem* I mean "torpedoes". The discs load into the top of the "head" of the ship, and fire out of the front. The feature still works great after all these years!



The ship comes with some decals for you to spruce her up with. She'd look pretty plain without the insanely cool Klingon symbol attached to her. I almost went with a Klingon symbol for my Trek tattoo, but I quickly scratched that idea when I thought most Trek fans would identify it with the more honorable TNG Klingons and not the sneaky conniving Klingons of the original series (my preferred variety).



Accessories: The Battle Cruiser includes a bag of 7 white disks for you to fire at your Enterprise, thereby violating the Organian peace treaty. Stinking peaceful Organians.



I'd call this a "must-buy" only if you happen to own the Dinky Enterprise. The 2 ships really do look cool together (I wish I would have taken a pic of them next to each other). If you don't have the Enterprise, this one is probably only worth hunting down for the big time Klingon fans. The Battle Cruiser gets overlooked a lot when it comes to making toy versions of Klingon ships, with most companies opting to do the movie era Bird-Of-Prey, so it is somewhat unique in that regard.



Oh, and I've decided to go exclusive with Dinky. They gave me a promise ring and everything.

-James

Hallmark Ornament Spotlight- 2009 Klingon Battle Cruiser

Ornament Name: Klingon Battle Cruiser
Manufactured: 2009 (Hallmark)



The Rundown: So this will only be my second Hallmark ornament spotlight; the first was the original Hallmark Star Trek ornament, the 1991 Enterprise. I thought it might be fun to jump all the way forward to present day with my second... so here's the 2009 Klingon Battle Cruiser!



To celebrate the 30th anniversary of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Hallmark decided their next ship to receive the ornament treatment would be the Klingon Battle Cruiser from the film's opening sequence. The ship looks fantastically detailed in the film (especially when you watch it on the newly-released Blu-Ray version of the film), and I'm happy to say that Hallmark did a fantastic job of replicating this.



As you can see in the pics, both the the top and bottom of the ship are just covered in tiny detailing with a really intricate paint job. The symbols are especially vibrant and well painted.



I mean, just take a look at the front end of this thing! This isn't an overly large ornament, so it's amazing that they captured such detail at this scale!



Since this ornament is another in the "Magic" series, it of course has some electronic features. There's no sounds, only lights, but they are really nice. When you press the button, the back end lights up as seen above...



...and there's also lights at the top. All of these stay on once the button is pressed; you'll need to press it again to turn them off. There's also a sequence of firing lights that blink on the front when the button is first pressed, but I couldn't quite capture those in the pics. Jsut to warn you- Hallmark has switched over to batteries instead of having the ornament just plug into your Christmas tree lights. Some folks are disappointed by this, myself included to a small degree. It's sometimes a hassle to have to press that little button every time you want to see it lighted instead of it being always on, but I do like the fact that there's not a cord sticking out of the ship. The lack of cord helps it double as a nice little replica of the ship all year round.

So the ornament is really quite fantastic. It's $32, which is admittedly pretty steep for it's size, but the detail really helps take the bite out of the price. There's a chance that these will hit clearance after the holidays if it sticks around until then, but honestly, I have zero buyer remorse at the current price. The work they put into it makes it worth the current price.

Oh, and here's the back of the box if you want to read it-



-James