Why? Because Major Kira is the first unambiguously action-oriented figure based on a female character in either of Playmates Star Trek lines. One thing’s for certain though, she’s absolutely one of the most important and groundbreaking action figures Playmates ever produced. I don’t know whether this means Kira was the most popular figure in this wave, or the least. Pretty much any time I went into a department store looking for Playmates Star Trek toys, if they had a display of the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine line it was primarily or exclusively of her. Major Kira was the figure I remember seeing in stores the most. I would still really love a proper place to display them one day, though. The flipside to this is that, along with the fact these are all comparatively recent acquisitions, all of my DS9 friends are in complete and near-immaculate condition. This is because, as I mentioned in the last chapter, Playmates never released any playsets for its Star Trek: Deep Space Nine line, likely due to the aforementioned sales issue (which is more of a topic for next season). Let’s talk about a few of them.Īt the time of writing, my Deep Space 9 population lives in a Matrushka doll of nested plastic bags that is beginning to look increasingly ratty. But now, I can happily say I have the entire main cast of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine in plastic form, plus a few interesting assorted comers-and-goers. It wasn’t fully complete though, and it took me almost another decade to fill out the holes in my collection. Eventually I hit the jackpot and found one guy who was selling almost the complete first wave in one go, and the day I won that auction was one of my most triumphant moments as a collector. It happened in stages-I found a couple assorted open figures at flea markets, then I got one or two from eBay auctions. It wasn’t until the Internet and eBay became available to me (which was later than pretty much everyone else on the planet because of circumstances surrounding where I live) that I was finally able to adopt my own plastic Deep Space 9 team. Namely, the comparatively more niche Deep Space Nine figures, which seemed to disappear as quickly as they had appeared.įor practically an entire *decade*, I languished in regret knowing I had very likely missed my one chance to bring home my second space family, as well as the last remnants from the Star Trek: The Next Generation crew (namely Tasha Yar and Ro Laren). This turned out to be a cripplingly poor decision on my part, however: Within just a few months I was utterly hooked on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and I would have killed for these figures and, of course, that was just when the Playmates Star Trek line in general was starting to retreat from department stores, and the first casualties were the lowest selling toys. So while I definitely saw these on store shelves at the time, I took care to admire them from afar-I was afraid to outright ask for them, and given a choice between spending my action figure money on one of these as opposed to a Wave 2 Star Trek: The Next Generation figure, the choice seemed clear. At first it was due to simple wariness: While the characters looked cool and all and I dug the general design aesthetics, in 1993 I still wasn’t completely 100% sold on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine as an overall thing yet. That will be interesting to go back and examine in a few months, methinks.Įven though I followed this launch fairly closely (well, as closely as I could at the time at least), it took me a *very* long time to actually bring anyone from this line home. What’s also interesting about this promo is what it promised was coming in the Deep Space Nine line: All of the characters you’d expect, as well as vehicle toys of Deep Space 9, the Runabout and a Caradassian Galor Warship. This was the first static image I ever saw of the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine cast together in one place, and it was the first chance I had to get a good look at them. On the back of that checklist was one of the first-ever promotional shots of the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine cast-It’s the one where everyone’s standing around in costume in front of a brown shag curtain haphazardly draped over the walls and floor of a photo studio somewhere. Some of the figures from Star Trek: The Next Generation Wave 2 and the Original Series line (here called “ Classic Star Trek”, which is how I knew that show for ages) even came with a mini checklist of all the Playmates toys released so far, with headshots of the figures and close-ups of the vehicles, playsets and prop replicas. In fact, on the back of my new Sela figure you can still see in bold red lettering the excited announcement that “toys and accessories” from the new show are “coming soon!”. I first learned Playmates were going to be doing a line based on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine on the cardback for one of my Star Trek: The Next Generation figures.
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