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02-01-2019, 01:45 PM | #26 |
Join Date: Nov 2018
Posts: 60
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One of my all-time favorite TNG figures: Tom Riker, here on a Canadian card because that's so much cooler. This figure was out of reach for me back when these were new, but I have seen these in collectibles shops, at least once, for $80. That seems like a crazy number now (especially adjusted for 20 years of inflation), and perhaps a little undeserved given the production number for this figure which was 10,000. This one, for example, is numbered 7051. I think what happened early on in the pre-internets days, in those Trek-crazed years, was that some kind of artificial bubble developed for this figure and Esoqq that was quite separate with what happened to Data from Redemption, the other of the top three rares in this wave. Red Data was genuinely rare because it was a JC Penney catalog item that was limited to 5,000 pieces. Curiously enough, it is this figure that is blamed by some for the start of the decline of the whole Star Trek line. Believe it or not, I still haven't seen the actual episode in which this character appears -- for every one time "Second Chances" is aired on TV "Code of Honor" is aired 30 times. This character was brought back in one of the single best DS9 episodes, but at the same time that episode is infamous for an unresolved plotline (along with "Conspiracy" TNG). The crazy thing is that scripts where Thomas Riker would get rescued from Cardassia were actually pitched, but none of them made it to the filming stage. I think the producers may have been afraid that Thomas Riker would once again steal the thunder away from the DS9 cast and the whole concept could become a little silly. I believe the books revisited the character, if I'm not mistaken. But it is a shame that we never saw him after DS9. Thomas Riker as a Maquis falls into one other category of TNG characters that never made it to DS9, Ro Laren as a Maquis never reappeared. I'm sure the writers talked about bringing her back, not in the role of Kira which was originally talked about, but in the various Maquis episodes. And that, once again, never materialized. |
02-10-2019, 08:59 AM | #27 |
Join Date: Nov 2018
Posts: 60
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Here's a rare Canadian-market Lwaxana Troi with card, a figure that is easier to find now with a card than with a pog. The pog-optioned figures were chase figures from day one, so a lot of them were preserved, but the Canadian-carded SkyBox figures were not as rare back in the day. So at this point, an unopened Canadian-carded Troi is not as easy find with a card or pog, even though values still differ greatly. Interestingly enough, this figure is labeled as Ambassador Lwaxana, as opposed to Lwaxana Troi or Ambassador Troi. She really was a Federation ambassador, but the US-market figures didn't really bill this title. Until a couple of years ago I had no idea that this variant with the SkyBox card existed, but it is one of the 1994 figures that Canada received on 7th season cards, whether the characters were from the 7th season or not. (Lwaxana Troi was not; her last appearance was actually in the 4th season, which is rather early). Troi appeared on TNG 6 times and on DS9 3 times, though it feels like there were many many more episodes with her. In DS9 she appeared only very early on. Majel Barrett passed away in 2008. I remember back in the day the comic book shops advertising this figure along with Sarek were asking just stupid money for the pog-optioned figures, $180 in one case. Whether people were paying that is another matter, but in the Trek figure bubble days values like that were thought of as normal. |
02-10-2019, 09:02 AM | #28 |
Join Date: Nov 2018
Posts: 60
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Here's a rare Vorgon with pog on a Canadian card, doubly rare because of the 7th season card. Very excited to have gotten this one, as this is genuinely one of the rarest variations out there, even compared to Red Data. This is one of four variants of Vorgon (yes, four). And they are: 1. SkyBox card on 2nd release US card 2. pog on 2nd release US card 3. pog on 7th season Canadian card 4. Australian on 2nd release card with no Skybox card or pog & different equipment tray There were a few other Canadian-market figures from the 2nd release that were sold on 7th season cards. Out of all of these, Guinan appears to be the easiest to come by, but that's all relative. When it comes to Canadian-only pog-equipped figures, there were of course also Sarek and Lwaxana -- they're the two best known ones -- and they also came on 7th season boards with SkyBox cards in Canada. But Dathon was not released with a pog in Canada on 7th season board, nor on a 7th season board with a SkyBox card. All photos of Dathon with pog that I've seen show him on the usual 2nd release boards. There are a few more mysteries out there when it comes to rare packaging, true "unicorns" that make Tapestry Picard & company look common. There are still unexplored and unnoticed items out there. As for the figure itselt, Vorgon was a classic, classic weird alien that was made in pretty solid numbers, but was named generically, like the Nausicaan. Esoqq also played this role (though he was given a name) and there were other figures like that starting with the generic Romulan, generic Borg, generic Ferengi, generic Mugato. I'm kinda surprised there was never a generic Klingon. The Vorgons themselves -- there were two of them -- appear only briefly on TNG, and the release of the Vorgon was a lot like the old Galoob figures of Selay and Antican. So people went: what the hell are these about? I have to confess I've never even seen the episode with Selay and Antican, they just don't show it. The weird alien figure subtype was great -- Esoqq and Nausicaan are some of my favorites -- and the Vorgon itself was a bit of a rare figure back when these were new. But speaking of the Vorgon with a pog, I remember these were advertised for like $200 in the mid-1990s. That's a lot of dough, about $250 today adjusted for inflation, and there weren't a lot of them in the states because there was no eBay and the internets were still a newfangled thing. So it was hard to get a real sense for just how many were out here, and trading/selling figures was a slow-moving exercise. Think Homestead and Tripod pages that barely got updated. ::shudders:: Even though figures like that were advertised for those prices, I'm not sure that a lot of them actually traded hands for that much. I mean, I'm sure there were instances of obscene gouging and speculation, but it's hard to wrap one's head around some of those numbers. It was a different time, what can I say. |
02-12-2019, 10:36 PM | #29 |
Join Date: Jul 2016
Location: Gateway Station Barracks
Posts: 816
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Cool thread. I love the trivia on all the variants; really takes you back to the glory days of collecting...
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The Borg figures were always a little off in terms of screen accuracy, but the details always made up for that, and that's true of this figure as well. This one has some cool accessories that are, for once, in a plausible color -- this almost never happens, but it happened with this figure.
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For being a cool villain associated with TNG, the Borg were actually seen in a remarkably small number of episodes. I was recently reading about the plans that writer Maurice Hurley had for the Borg in the first season, early on, and they were quite impressive. Of course, the writers strike happened and Hurley moved on from the series, but the plans for the Borg would have been pretty epic if they had materialized: Romulus was supposed to be destroyed and the Romulan civilization wiped out, but before the Borg would have been able to accomplish this they could have destroyed one of the Borg cubes. And Picard was supposed to figure out how they did that, it was supposed to be a mystery.
Needless to say, those were pretty breathtaking plans for the series which did not, at the time, have multi-episode plot arcs, or really any kind of accumulation of consequences (aside from Tasha's death). And from the beginning Q was envisioned as playing a role in the Borg's introduction -- the episode "Q Who" was sketched out early on, and it ended up being scripted as planned, with Q playing an "unreliable god" and Picard being forced to seek his help when he couldn't deal with encountering the Borg. |
02-15-2019, 01:37 PM | #30 |
Join Date: Nov 2018
Posts: 60
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Thanks! We're still discovering new things in this line, surprisingly enough.
Yeah, it's interesting that after the first Q episode the writers never revisited it again. DS9 had Ferengi episodes for comic relief instead -- gawd knows there were plenty of those. In hindsight it makes sense. But then Voyager went really heavy on Q episodes. DS9 never had a Borg episodes even though a bunch were pitched by the writing staff, and it had a very minimal amount of space-science episodes (unfortunately mostly as a mechanism for time travel stories). But it did indulge itself in holodeck episodes towards the end of the series, which was a bit controversial -- the whole shtick with Vic and Las Vegas was a little too much of 20th century U.S. culture, as if Star Trek was not Americentric enough. I think DS9 could have pulled off a token Borg episode -- it didn't have to be too fancy. If Enterprise could do it, DS9 could do it. DS9 is also the source of the most obvious recurring characters that were never made, as Playmates kind of gave up on the series halfway through. So we never got Martok, Weyoun, Damar, Eddington, Admiral Ross, the Dominion leader, Breen, etc. |
02-15-2019, 01:41 PM | #31 |
Join Date: Nov 2018
Posts: 60
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Here are a couple of very cool figures that remained enigmas for a lot of collectors for a long time: Vorgon with pog. I remember the asking prices for these being in the $150 range if not more, with the "companion" Dathon/pog figure being valued slightly higher. Back in the day it was really hard to get any kind of intel on these, as all we had were price lists in action figure mags that just listed arbitrary prices, so it was difficult to get a sense for why these were so rare to begin with. The one of the left is numbered #097,622 and the one on the right is #000,736 I kind of wish that the manufacturer had more of these unintentionally-rare figures with weird cards and options, but let me just say that there are still unexplored varieties out therethat have not not been noticed by collectors. ::dramatic musical cue:: |
02-26-2019, 03:08 PM | #32 |
Join Date: Nov 2018
Posts: 60
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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. |
03-09-2019, 12:41 PM | #33 |
Join Date: Nov 2018
Posts: 60
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Here's a very rare figure that commanded a lot of money back in the day and is still hard to find: Ambassador Sarek with pog on a Canadian card. About 1,100 copies of this figure are believed to have been produced with pogs, along with Troi with pog and only for Canada, making this one of the true rarities of the day. This one is numbered 001451. The U.S. got these only on the 1995 cards and only with SkyBox cards. While Troi was also offered in Canada on a 7th season pack with a SkyBox card, there was also a Sarek in Canada with a SkyBox card on a 7th season package (but this figure is rarely seen for sale -- there are barely any photos of it out there). It's not as valuable as the pog version per se, but it's still tough to find. There were a large number of these quirks in Canada, including a slew of 2nd release TNG figures on 7th season cards like Vorgon with pog, Lore with pog, Guinan with pog, and a few others. Back in the day Sarek and Troi were advertised for about $200 -- that's what the price guides said in the mid-90s and they were often sold as a pair with the Troi figure for $400. Right now Sarek with pog is between $50 and $80 at the door, if you can find one for sale, and that's a big if. Most collector just have one of these, so it takes some wholesale eBay seller to buy a whole collection and start parting it out to shake one of these loose. So it's not like there is a dozen of these sitting on eBay month after month -- they tend to be snapped up pretty fast. If you think about it, the initial batch of TNG figures contained quite a lot of TOS characters: Ambassador Spock, Sarek, Scotty, Admiral McCoy. Out of all of these, Scotty and McCoy somehow ended up being underpurchased by consumers or overproduced, and ended up being on shelves for a very long time, all the way through like 1996. Ambassador Spock was far tougher to find, especially with a pog, and Sarek went pretty quickly too when he was released in the U.S. with a SkyBox card on the 1995 packages. |
03-16-2019, 03:06 PM | #34 |
Join Date: Nov 2018
Posts: 60
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Here's a Lore figure on the rarer Canadian 7th season card, with pog. This is one of a handful of 2nd release TNG figures with pogs that were also produced just for the Canadian market on TNG 7th season cards. Now, for the U.S. this figure along with Scotty and Admiral McCoy was either overproduced or underpurchased -- it was one of those that could still be reliably found in just about any store that stocked Trek figures, even quite a while after the 1993 lineup's release. I was still seeing figures from that 1993 release on store shelves in 1997. In all, Lore was released as: 1. US card with SkyBox card 2. US card with pog 3. Canadian 7th season card with pog 4. Australian 2nd release card with no card or pog & a different equipment tray Lore was a bit of a controversial character as viewed the later years, embodying the sci-fi trope of an evil twin. There was also a view out there that Brent Spiner overplayed Lore, who in his first appearance on the series was a bit of an unsubtle, comic book-style, cackling and smirking villain, rubbing his hands together. If you think about it the film "Star Trek: Nemesis" was essentially a replay of the first Lore episode "Datalore" -- another evil android who this time feigns being dumb, but is then more or less turned by the crew, with Data impersonating him to gain an advantage over the Reman villains. |
04-19-2019, 05:46 PM | #35 |
Join Date: Nov 2018
Posts: 60
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Here's a very cool figure, Thomas Riker autographed by Jonathan Frakes. The Thomas Riker figure itself was always pretty rare -- some shops wanted as much as $200 or $250 back in the day -- and even though I have a few of these now this is the only autographed one. The figure itself is one of my top 10 faves from the whole line, so it was a big deal to find an autographed one. If you haven't seen the episode here's the plot in a nutshell: The Enterprise visits a planet that Will Riker visited years ago on a mission on his prior ship, and they discover that a transporter duplicate had been accidentally created through a transporter snafu. So one Riker remained down on the planet, unbeknownst to the crew of the ship, while another Riker beamed up and didn't know that that had happened. The Riker that stayed down on the planet takes on the name Thomas and joins another ship. Tom Riker later came back in one of the highest-rated DS9 episodes ever, after he had joined the Maquis, and hijacks the Defiant to whup some Cardassians. Frakes is from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and has an MA from Harvard. Even though he is best known for TNG in the pop culture universe, he happens to be mostly a director now, having directed several Star Trek Discovery episodes in recent months, but in the last years of TNG he was already directing episodes of several series. He directed First Contact, which is considered to be the best TNG feature film by a long stretch, and he also directed the follow-up Insurrection, which was fine really but certainly not a massive Borg battle. It was a smaller, visually quieter story, let's put it that way. I would have loved to see more TNG films, but I understand why more didn't happen at the time as Insurrection and Nemesis didn't make that much money. Sci-fi itself kind of died off after the peak of the late 1990s. Frakes' TV directing credits are pretty massive, spanning numerous series, and not all of them sci-fi at all. He has directed TV series that I haven't even heard of. But his filmography following the TNG films is a little sparse -- TV directing and film directing are two different things, and very few directors make the crossover really. |
04-26-2019, 05:01 AM | #36 |
Join Date: Jun 2015
Location: Pasadena, TX
Posts: 3,099
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Frakes' TV directing credits are pretty massive, spanning numerous series, and not all of them sci-fi at all. He has directed TV series that I haven't even heard of. But his filmography following the TNG films is a little sparse -- TV directing and film directing are two different things, and very few directors make the crossover really.
CCC. |
05-16-2019, 02:31 PM | #37 |
Join Date: Jul 2016
Location: Gateway Station Barracks
Posts: 816
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Thanks for posting these, Morgan. Always great to see another entry in this thread.
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07-07-2019, 02:25 PM | #38 |
Join Date: Nov 2018
Posts: 60
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Here's a Chekov figure signed by Walter Koenig. Back in the day the original cast was really hard to find in stores -- I didn't see a single Kirk, Scotty, or Chekov in supermarkets -- only later and only in 1996 in comic book stores. That's how bad the scalping situation was in those days: the original cast just did not sit on shelves at all, despite the reduced articulation of the figures. And in hindsight it really spoke to how much more collectors valued the original cast, given the fact that Playmates was making the figures of the cast in these uniforms for the first time really. Walter Koenig is a friend of a friend, and still lives in LA. Few fans remember this now, but the inclusion of parts of the original cast in "Generations" was kind of a controversial thing internally: Leonard Nimoy didn't want to do the movie because he said he just had one or two lines and the were incidental. George Takei and Nichelle Nichols passed for similar reasons. Then there was the whole Kirk skydiving scene, which gave us a figure that didn't make it into the final cut, but that, in hindsight, echoed the feelings of the original crew about not wanting to attend the launch of the Enterprise-B. Viewing that scene now, it feels like Shatner is talking about not wanting to be in the film itself. As it turned out, "Generations" gave Koenig one last moment to shine after pretty two-dimensional turns in "The Final Frontier" and "The Undiscovered Country," where his lines felt sort of interchangeable, and in some cases they actually were. In "Generations" Chekov was given the task of meeting Guinan, and finally visibly taking charge of something by forming a team of medics from scratch. Unlike with McCoy, Scotty and Kirk, we don't really know what happened to the character later in the canon trek universe -- we saw McCoy and Scotty and Spock in TNG and that's pretty much it. But, it's not a bad thing that they left the original cast alone after that. On this figure the Chekov head sculpt came out really well, and they also gave him a unique body not shared with any of the other movies-uniform figures. In fact, there were only four unique body sculpts produced in these uniforms, including Saavik, and this remains the single biggest missed opportunity of the entire Playmates license: very few movies figures in movies uniforms. The company wasted the resources that it had on "The Motion Picture" pajama uniforms, and when it came time to rectify this it was too late. So nobody ever got such a basic crowdpleaser as Spock in movies uniform, but thankfully this is something one can now piece together via a Kirk "Generations" head-swap. But this sort of decisionmaking seems like a major, major blunder 25 years later, given the popularity of the Trek figure line. A whole lineup of the original cast in movies uniforms was the greatest fish-in-a-barrel financial bet for Playmates, but the company busied itself with unpopular items like the TMP pajamas. Last edited by Morgan; 07-07-2019 at 05:53 PM.. |
07-20-2019, 04:35 PM | #39 |
Join Date: Nov 2018
Posts: 60
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Here's a Rom (and Nog) figure signed by actor Max Grodenchik. Rom had one helluva character arc through the series, and even though this figure came out reasonably close to his likeness I'm struggling to remember seeing him in this exact suit in the series. People forget this, but Grodenchik appeared as a Ferengi a bunch of times on TNG: he was the Ferengi in "Captain's Holiday," he also played another Ferengi named Par Lenor in the episode "The Perfect Mate," and yet another Ferengi named Gint on DS9. What's interesting about this figure is that Nog is completely hidden behind the pog, even though I think I've seen one error figure where Nog is positioned in front of the pog. It's cool that Playmates did Nog in this fashion at all, even though, to be honest, it could have redone him later in Starfleet uniform, but we didn't really get any figures past season four or five, Worf DS9 and Capt Sisko. The second wave of figures featured a lot of the crew in TNG uniforms, and in hindsight this seems like a massive, massive waste of figures because the cast didn't really wear them beyond one episode where, by the way, the science uniforms looked really really blue but the figures went for the green hue. But we got pretty much the whole Starfleet side of the DS9 crew in TNG uniforms as part of the second wave, minus Sisko, cause he was a mail-away. Unfortunately, this is not one of the figures that was released in Canada or Australia on first release DS9 cards, so I'm not aware of any packaging varieties of Rom. I also think this figure was a little underproduced in terms of volume: this one has foot number 004790, and I just don't remember seeing any super high numbers that I remember. So it may have been short-packed. I remember when this wave of figures was first announced along with Sisko from Crossover, Dax from Blood Oath, Odo from Necessary Evil, along with Grand Nagus Zek, Vedek Bareil, Jake Sisko, etc, and I was very excited just as these were hitting stores. I think I bought my first example of this figure in TRU in Renton, WA, along with Sisko, Dax, and Odo, and thankfully this third wave of figures was largely immune to scalping, with the exception of Vedek Bareil, which seemed to be the chase figure. I got Grand Nagus Zek in Chehalis, WA, and the others locally in the Seattle area, including Tosk, Hunter of Tosk, and Jake Sisko. Odo from that wave was an all-time fave for me for a looong time, I still pick up examples of this figure whenever I can. |
08-22-2019, 09:43 PM | #40 |
Join Date: Aug 2019
Location: Chicago Area
Posts: 93
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I passed on this line completely as a kid, but seriously just got into it a few months back after they announced the Picard show. In that time I've acquired a pretty hefty amount of figures, but the thing I think was the most fun was putting together a MOC, unpunched set of Wave 1, first-run-shipped figures.
Given the population of these things, I thought the first run set was a bit more discerning than just buying anything that was on the market. Sort of like buying soft-head TMNT. Thanks for this thread and your cool collection. This line doesn't get enough love nowadays. But if Picard garners an audience, then...... |
08-24-2019, 03:42 PM | #41 |
Join Date: Nov 2018
Posts: 60
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Welcome to the forum, first of all. The Picard series is certainly waking up the demand -- I'm already seeing Locutus figures bringing more than they did 6 months ago. The supply of the Trek line can look oversaturated at first on eBay, but the rare stuff is still bringing solid dough -- it just moves quickly, sitting on eBay for half a day till someone snipes it. So 95% of the trek figures are very cheap, but the rare foreign-carded stuff can spark quite a few bidding battles.
The debut lineup from 1992 had a few interesting variants in the US market: removable-visor Georgi, Ferengi with black boot trim, Gowron with gold trim, and reverse-photo Borg. But, if you want to make it really interesting, collect the 1992 run on UK-market Bandai cards, or in the German-market boxes. (Those are worth checking out if you haven't seen them, and I doubt anyone in the US has a complete run of the German-boxed 1992 lineup). Or collect the 1992 lineup on US cards, but seek out autographed examples. I have only a few of the UK Bandai cards (shipping costs are eye-wateringly expensive), and zero German ones, which is even more embarrassing. The Playmates Trek line can still surprise. For example, just this year I picked up a second release 1993 Crusher w/pog figure on a 7th season Canadian card. Up until that time, there wasn't even a good photo of that figure existing. And we're still finding photos of unproduced prototypes of figures, accessories, ships and playsets. So even the people who have been collecting this line since 1990s can still learn or find unknown or unseen stuff in 2019. |
08-24-2019, 04:25 PM | #42 |
Join Date: Nov 2018
Posts: 60
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Here's a fairly recent find, and my first from the Picard/Tasha/Barclay trio that was infamous during the '90s. Number 870 out of 3000. Prices for this one, at their peak, were listed at $500 by the big shops in action figure magazines, just below Picard and Tasha which were dealing with somewhat lower production numbers. This is also a figure that I just never heard of anyone finding in a store, even though I'm sure some people bought them "unwittingly" and just opened them up. The scalper situation at the time was intense with networks of informants rivaling the Stasi, so even though I was looking in stores when these were new I never really expected to find one at the back of some peg, behind a dozen copies of The Traveler. I had no illusions about just happening upon this figure in Target just as the stores were opening at like 5am. There was a big brouhaha about Picard/Tasha/Barclay and people were ripping their hair out, swearing off the hobby, slipping $50s to back room clerks for tips when stuff came in, sitting in their cars at -20 degrees just as stores were opening at the butt crack of dawn, and writing Very Strongly Worded letters to toy magazines -- this was the 1990s equivalent of being Mad Online. And doing all sorts of nonsense. And of course, these were the completists who were already like $2K into the hobby and gawd knows how many hundreds of hours of browsing stores. I always thought that the hair-pulling was a little too much, especially since it was mostly the Very Serious collectors who were blowing a fuse about not being able to get one of these at a retail price, as if the manufacturer had a gun to their head or something. About the complainers I always thought that, "well, collectively, Barclay at $500 was like buying five Bridge Playsets at the time for $100 each, so just suck it up and buy it if you're losing that much sleep over it and going on America On Line Dot Com and writing emails to the CEO of the toymaker with a lot of exclamation points." The toymaker has stated on multiple occasions that 80% of their Trek figures were going to adult collectors anyway, so if you can't swing $500 for your hobby, you need a cheaper hobby. I saved up $300 to buy Redemption Data at the age of 13, and that took like 8 months I recall. 25 years later I'm surprised there wasn't more of this sort of thing from this toymaker -- if I were in charge I would have totally embraced this sort of very limited figure approach and would have gone crazy with different card designs and variations (it would have been a goddamn nightmare) -- the sort of thing Hasbro was doing with a wink to the "serious" collectors but somehow never got the bad press for it. Playmates, on the other hand, got the bad press for the Picard/Tasha/Barclay trio (and then released the 3-pack to atone for it), but other toymakers also cranked out fairly limited stuff (granted, to a smaller audience) and never rereleased some convention exclusives. If some convention exclusive was gone, it stayed gone, and nobody was ripping their hair out. Part of this -- and this is sort of taken for granted now -- was the non-existence of eBay. If you didn't find any of the Picard/Tasha/Barclay in stores, your choices at the time were pretty limited. You had to find Lee's or Tomart's and figure out what was going on, call up a shop, and fork over some dough. So there were some steps involved if you were committed, and you had to keep up with the market, obviously. And a huge part of the problem was that these "evil" scalpers couldn't advertise their stuff very well: All they had were some lame Tripod websites and the magazines, so purchases of these things from shops/scalpers typically took months -- you couldn't just go on eBay and click But It Now while you were drunk on half a bottle of pinot grigio. At least not until 1998. So you had to rely on monthly magazines to find one of these things for sale. Contrast that with 25 years later, when my phone chirps at me at 3am and tells me someone in Germany has something I might to want to press But It Now for. Honestly, just eBay and more widespread internet would have solved this 1701 shortage, because shops and scalpers were reasonably loaded with these, but couldn't find buyers fast enough or advertise well enough. The scalpers did not want to hang on to these for a quarter of a century till they lost 90% of their value -- they wanted to flip them then and there so they could keep scalping. |
10-22-2019, 04:36 PM | #43 |
Join Date: Nov 2018
Posts: 60
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This was the find of 2019 for me, a figure that until this year the Trek collector community didn't even have a clear photo of. This is Crusher with pog on a 7th season Canadian card, which is how some of the 1993 release figures with pogs were sold in Canada. In addition to Crusher, there were also Lore, Guinan, Ambassador Spock and Vorgon on 7th season cards released in Canada -- all of these were released in Canada toward the end of the second wave of 1993 run. Out of these the Lore and Guinan are the easiest to find, Vorgon is a little more difficult, and Ambassador Spock is tougher still. Crusher is the most difficult to find out of this group of five, and up until I bought this figure I hadn't even seen it in real life or in a quality photo -- all we had was some grainy photo from eBay back from ages ago. Some estimate that less than 5,000 figures each out of the Lore, Guinan, Spock, Vorgon and Crusher group were produced for the Canadian market on 7th season cards, and given their sparse presence on the collector market at the moment that seems like a very high estimate. And it was probably very uneven among those five figures too, as Lore and Guinan can be found with a few months' work, while others take a couple of years to be spotted on eBay or Kijiji. In 2019, the number of Crusher figures still in the box is probably below 50 -- just because otherwise we'd have seen more photos or something. And it's clearly just a fraction of that whole Tapestry Picard/Yesterday's Yar/Barclay trio, because those were stockpiled by scalpers back in the day and never opened. The Crusher figure itself was not a chase figure, and this packaging variation was virtually unknown in the U.S. back in the day. The big action figure stores had no clue about Canada beyond the Sarek/Troi on pog figures, so there was no reason for anyone to stockpile Crushers on 7th series cards. So they were all just bought and opened up. Curiously enough, Canada also received a bunch of DS9 figures on these 7th season cards, and also a bunch of 1995 release figures with Data and Geordi from Generations, along with a couple of others. All of their numbers were also pretty limited, and they also appear to have been unevenly distributed. |
10-27-2019, 04:30 PM | #44 |
Join Date: Nov 2018
Posts: 60
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Here's something cool, and something I never had back when these were new. At least not till 1997 anyway. Here's a Geordi second release figure signed by LeVar Burton. By the time I started collecting in 1994 these were out of stores, so I didn't see one until I saw it for sale in a collectibles shop a couple of years later. It's nice the Pmates went back and did the first season uniforms, and Geordi actually got a lot of figures in the first few years: 1992 release, 1993 here in a diamond red uniform, then in dress uniform, and then as the Tarchannen alien figure that for some reason made it past a lot of rounds of review. Then, as with Data, Pmates went back and did the "Generations" Geordi right, and they also made a future figure from "All Good Things," unless I'm hallucinating that, as well as Geordi with a firing phaser rifle. Geordi's character development throughout the run of TNG was on the modest side: the only thing the writers could come up with is that he had no luck with women. I've wondered if any DS9 stories attempted to write La Forge into a script somehow, since so many TNG characters have popped in over the years, but I guess it never came together. It was pretty neat to see him on Voyager though, of all places, as the captain of the USS Challenger. One of LeVar Burton's greatest strengths in this character was the ability to "sell" technobabble like nobody else. He made it sound believable, and in a way that you could hear it and picture it being plausible. Very few other actors had this ability, but Burton sold technical jargon really well. |
12-27-2019, 04:12 PM | #45 |
Join Date: Nov 2018
Posts: 60
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I got Red Data in the year 2019 in the most ridiculous and authentic way possible: by buying him and two other figures, 7th season Picard and Troi which were part of the original J.C. Penney pack, for about $30 for all three of them. That's about as close to the original price of the figure offer by J.C. Penney back in the day, even if not adjusted for inflation. So that's pretty crazy, but also hilarious at the same time -- I never thought I would get a Red Data this way, with two other J.C. Penney pack figures, for close to the original price. I didn't have a US-carded Red Data until this year, but I didn't think I would get one in this manner. This is also the first US-carded Red Data that I've owned. I currently have two other Canadian ones, and had paid $300 for another Canadian one back in the '90s which took the better part of the year to save up for. This is probably my all-time favorite figure, just because of the mystique and exclusivity that it had back in the day. J.C. Penney had offered it with three other figures back in 1994 (Picard, Troi and Crusher) but didn't tell Trek collectors about it, publishing it in the Xmas catalog, so by the time scalpers found out about it a big chunk of them had already been sold. Pmates caught some flack for this, because this was the first truly limited figure that completists and those pretending to be completists lost their minds, but Thomas Riker, Esoqq, and Q in Judges Robes were also pretty pricey on the secondary market at the time. (Just Esoqq was at least $80, and Riker could be priced for as much as $200. So they weren't far behind). They say that 5,500 examples of red Data had been produced, and another 2,000 for Canada, but this is dated information that has been passed down through the ages, so I don't know how much trust I would put into numbers this round. Pmates has been tough to get specific info out of, and some of their numbers are a bit wonky. And the foot numbers on these figures, by the way, are all over the place: this one is 70,157 for example, so they didn't have their own specific run from 000,001 to 005,500 like the 1701 figures did. So are these just foot numbers from the regular run of Data figures, or? This figure was also something of a test run for the much more exclusive 1701 figures, but it seemed to have pretty stable pricing on the collector market, at least back in the 1990s. Everywhere I've seen these advertised they ranged from $280 to $330 back in the 1990s, so that's a pretty narrow range, at least when it comes to dozens of adverts from big action figure stores that advertised in Tomart's and Lee's. But how much they actually changed hands for between collectors is another matter. And those values were not really related to the production run, per se, because Sarek and Troi with pogs were not advertised for that much, while being rarer when it comes to production numbers. |
08-16-2020, 09:39 AM | #46 |
Join Date: Nov 2018
Posts: 60
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Here's a recent purchase: Canadian Dathon. This adds to the Australian version that I have, which has neither a pog nor a SkyBox card. This was a figure that I never saw in stores back when it was new, so I didn't encounter one (American or Canadian) on the secondary market until like 1997 or something, with the SkyBox card of course. I think I saw one with a pog around 1997 or so, in a collectibles store in the American south, back when they were going for around $200. I like price tags on figures, especially from obscure stores, so this one has 4 and the remains of a 5th one underneath that was torn off. Not a Zellers sticker anywhere in sight though! Obviously the $7.99 price is in Canadian dollars, but I have seen 1993 figures sell for $7.99 in the U.S. back in the day: I saw an Adm McCoy figure in an FAO Schwartz for that amount in 1996 or something, which was a deeply, deeply crazy price at the time. Him and Scotty were the wildly overproduced and underpurchased figures of the 1993 lineup, but FAO Schwartz was easily the most expensive toy store around and I've only been there like three times back in the day because its selection was also awful. |
08-16-2020, 09:40 AM | #47 |
Join Date: Nov 2018
Posts: 60
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Here's a figure that took me a few years to track down, and one that's very rarely seen for sale. This is the duty uniform Bashir on a TNG 7th season card for the Canadian market, and is one of a handful DS9 second release figures that made it on to these cards. They included Picard DS9, Thomas Riker, Q, O'Brien in duty uniform, Dax in duty uniform, Bashir in duty uniform, but not Vash, who was never even released on DS9-specific cards. In total, this Bashir figure was released on 4 different cards: 1. US 2nd release DS9 card with pog 2. Australian 1st release card without a pog 3. Canadian 7th season TNG card with a blue sticker and pog 4. Canadian DS9 1st release card with blue sticker and without pog This Canadian 7th season one is perhaps the hardest to find out of the three, because I've had two Australian ones for a few years now that I actually had to get from Australia. But really, only the U.S. one is plentiful, while the numbers of the Canadian and Australian versions are not. The phenomenon of DS9 figures on TNG 1994 7th season cards is one of the most peculiar ones, and it's believed that it stemmed from a backer card shortage caused by some subcontractor snafu. |
10-11-2020, 08:10 AM | #48 |
Join Date: Nov 2018
Posts: 60
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Here's the 4th Bashir variant, and I got this one just months after picking up the one above. This one has foot number 000444, so it appears that this batch of Canadian-market DS9 second wave figures on first wave cards went first, and then the other three card versions were produced. It's hard to say which Canadian Bashir version is rarer, but I'm leaning toward the TNG seventh season card above all the same. I think this one is just barely more findable, relatively speaking. Note that you didn't get a pog on this version, just on the TNG 7th season version, but the accessories were identical & identically colored. What's interesting is that I haven't seen a Canadian version on the 2nd wave card, like in the U.S., but with a blue sticker. So it seems that Canada only got this figure on the 1st release card, or the TNG seventh season card, and that's it. In total, this Bashir figure was released on 4 different cards: 1. US 2nd release DS9 card with pog 2. Australian 1st release card without a pog 3. Canadian 7th season TNG card with a blue sticker and pog 4. Canadian DS9 1st release card with blue sticker and without pog |
10-12-2020, 10:07 AM | #49 |
Join Date: Nov 2018
Posts: 60
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Here's a Canadian-market Guinan on 7th season card, which is one of several figures that were released in Canada on these later 1994 cards with pogs. This figure has a really good likeness, which is another illustration of how the big stars on TNG were clearly given more attention than some aliens-of-the-week when it came to sculpting, or someone like Vedek Bareil who looks more like Chakotay but without the tattoo. This figure also has really cool accessories, including a 3D chess set and a tray with cups, so the toy designers spent some time thinking about appropriate accessories for this figure. Guinan was a bit fo a mystery on the series, and one of the coolest episodes with her was undoubtedly in "Q Who," where it was revealed that she and Q had some previous dealings, and he actually seemed scared of her. It would have been neat if that was explored a little further, but I don't think Q and Guinan had any other exchanges after that. That episode showed a lot of potential of her character in dealings with the Borg, and she had a role in "Best of Both Worlds" as well. In terms of rarity this figure is about equal with Lore as one of the two that are easiest to find on Canadian cards. At the other end of this spectrum we have Crusher and Ambassador Spock as two of the most difficult. |
07-04-2021, 10:50 AM | #50 |
Join Date: Nov 2018
Posts: 60
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Here's a recent purchase: Ro Laren on 1994 Canadian card. This one I just hadn't seen for sale for years, and it came up quite abruptly. Among the 1994 Canadian carded figures this one is not stupendously rare per se, certainly not compared to other US or Canadian-carded figures on these card backs as there are plenty of rarities among them, but it is a little tough to find today. The Ro Laren figure itself remains a small miracle, since it was such a rarely seen character on TNG, and I think part of the reason it was made was that it was recurring character from the later seasons like Barclay or Troi in duty uniform, both of which are also part of this 1994 release. Since Season 7 was on the air at the time, you can kind of sense that the manufacturer was getting a little desperate for figure ideas, so we got Worf in rescue outfit from the Birthright two-parter, Hugh from I, Borg (another small miracle), and Ro Laren. One missed opportunity with this figure is that the body could have easily doubled for Commander Shelby, and a Shelby figure had been discussed in an interview with Chris Overley at one point as something the fans wanted in ToyFare magazine. And Overley acknowledged the demand, but was also a little dismissive of it. Obviously, in hindsight, a Shelby figure should have been a modest hit, because female figures tended to be underproduced by the manufacturer, and Laren was as well. But I could see Shelby being a fan favorite to be honest among figure buyers, perhaps to a higher degree than Laren was. The fact that Shelby (and Laren too) did not return in TNG or DS9 seems like a massive missed opportunity too. Curiously enough, Ro Laren is a figure that I never saw on store shelves when it was new. Like, at all. I only got one in 1997 or thereabouts from a collectibles shop in the Nashville area, if I recall correctly, after some of the craze had begun to die down about the 1994 figures. In 1995 or thereabouts I remember calling up a figure collector/scalper in the Seattle area whose number I saw in the back of Star Trek magazine in a classifieds ad about figures, and sent $1 to him to get a list of figures he had for sale. In a phone convo he blew my mind with tales of some of the figures that he had for sale at one point, including a Ro Laren figure from 1994. But even at that point, these figures were listed for like $40 in classifieds in action figure magazines, and being small and impressionable I thought that they would stay like that indefinitely, and that it would be years till I would be able to get one. In reality, it took until 1997 and I paid over $20 for a US-carded one, which was a lot of dough for me at the time. Canadian-carded figures in the US were a rarity at the time, so the one I bought this year remains the only live one I've seen on a Canadian card. |
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