[Morgan]

Here's an oldie but a goodie: Generations Scotty on Canadian card. This one is numbered #34,879. Back in the day when these were new I didn't see my first one till the summer of 1997, quite a while after this whole lineup was released, and for a serious price at a collectibles store. The three original movie uniform figures plus spacesuit Kirk were snapped up by collectors and scalpers upon release, and so the three original cast members from that lineup were often listed for $40 in price guides and in stores. The very first Generations Scotty figure that I saw, as I recall, had a pricetag in that forbidding range.

All the while, the rest of the Generations figures (minus B'Etor) were readily on store shelves for a good couple of years, but I did not see a single original cast figure in regular stores ever! And I was actually looking every week. That's how crazy things were.

Perhaps it was the typical mid-90s hype over original Star Trek characters: This is gonna be the last time they're in a film, so you better get down to Toys R Us and just clear out your wallet for every one you see. Interestingly enough, Canadian-carded figures (aside from Sarek and Troi pogs) were not a thing in the US at the time, so at least there wasn't something even more expensive to hunt for.

Things have calmed down quite a bit since, but it's curious to note that the later Movies lineup did not really revisit these uniforms so we never got a movies uniform Spock, McCoy, Uhura, or Sulu. Playmates busied itself with the unfortunate The Motion Picture pajamas, so very needed movies uniform figures were just never produced. The excellent Saavik figure is the major exception in that lineup, but the whole movies lineup fell a little flat despite some good sculpts here and there. This remains the biggest missed opportunity of the whole lineup: The original characters in Wrath of Khan uniforms. And the lack of a movies-era Enterprise ship model. You would think they produced it, but they didn't. Just let that wash over you for a couple of minutes.