[Morgan]

Here's an awesome figure, one that didn't get as much publicity as some of the others back in the day; the Nausicaan on a 7th season Canadian card. This is one of just a handful of TNG 4th release figures that were sold in Canada on 7th season cards.

These were one of the least easily-found figures from the 4th release, despite the fact that it came out at "peak Trek," and it's a very rare thing to find on a Canadian card. The back, of course, has no mention of the Nausicaan as it's just a second release and partial 7th season yearbook photo, and there is no character bio either.

These were pretty interesting characters on TNG, certainly one of the rarer aliens, and as figures they were rendered as the big "bad guys" with a much scarier (and more cartoonish, like the Ferengi) physique than onscreen. I always thought that in concept this figure is very similar to Esoqq, in that they were a scarcely-seen scary alien that could be easily turned into an antagonist action figure. It's as if they were planned on the same day in the same character brainstorming session.

The difference was that Esoqq was, for one reason or another, a much more avidly collected figure, even though their numbers, from what I know, were nowhere as tiny as some of the other figures like Thomas Riker. Nausicaan on a 7th season Canadian card was, in fact, rarer than Esoqq on a U.S. card, but Esoqq got all the publicity in the action figure magazines back in the day when shops used to brashly advertise them for $40.00 or $60.00, if not more. I'm still not sure to what degree that was warranted by the numbers produced -- their numbers suggest they should have been plentiful.

One thing easy to forget about the Nausicaans is that they made appearances in DS9, Voyager and even Enterprise, even though their most famous scene is in "Tapesty" TNG with Picard. I think they were in at least seven DS9 episodes, usually in very small roles as bodyguards and whatnot.