Wednesday, January 30, 2008

BILL’S: TFB (The Future Begins) Part VI: Action Figures

So the rumors going round at the moment are that Playmates has picked up the license to the upcoming JJ Abrams Star Trek movie. But what's the truth?...

Well I can say without a shadow of a doubt that Playmates does indeed have the license.

"You sound pretty confident about that," I hear you say, "how can you be so sure?" The simple reason is because I got to see the actual figure lines today.

And yes, I did say lines because, there is more than one. The figures themselves were early protoypes, so keep this in mind.

Whilst I'm not entirely sure of the scale of the figures (surprisingly, scale isn't a question distributors get asked about) but personally I put the main series at 6" (and I'm usually pretty good at scales). The majority of figures had not yet had articulation put into them, but I'd be guessing that you should be looking at something similar to the old Playmates Star Trek line.

As for the line up, I saw most of the crew: Kirk, Spock, Scotty, and I think Uhuru, Bones. Most of them were dressed in their Starfleet outfits, which seemed very similar to the designs from the original series. There also seemed to be a few other outfits for characters, as well as someone who looked like Sarek, who seemed to feature in all the Star Trek lines I saw today.

As well as what I'm calling the 6" line, there was a larger line with real cloth outfits. Again I have to guess at scale and this is the one I'm least sure on, thinking it between 9" and 12".

The final line looked to me to be a 4" line. Now the figures I saw weren't articulated and I have no idea whether the final pieces will or not, but what was on show with them was a couple of playsets.

One was the bridge of the Enterprise, with the second one being the transporter room. Both seemed like they would come with some form of electronic effects, but these were early, early prototypes with the electronics still hanging out the back of them. What makes me think the 4" line will be articulated was the fact that the bridge had a Kirk figure, sat at his chair, and it seems stupid to me to have a playset with a non-articulated kirk figure in a sitting pose. But then I could be wrong.

The movie isn't out until Christmas 2008, so we have a LONG wait ahead of us, but I've seen plenty of protoypes in my time at Action-Figure and my takeaway impression was that if you're a fan of the old Playmates Star Trek line, then you're going to love these lines


Playmates: So Who's Got The New Star Trek Movie?
Posted by adrian on Wednesday, January 30, 2008

No comments: