I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of how awesome I am.

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I soaked in Star Trek: The Experience at the Las Vegas Hilton this week. It was phenomenal, but I wrote about that over at the GBEW. I did pick up some souvenirs from this place, however. Instead of tacky combadges with my name on them, I decided to buy a set of these "retro cloth" figures. I got the Kirk/Klingon set, and I think they're awesome.

Mego figures were before my time. Here's a brief history: Mego dominated the toy market in the 1970s, making 7.5", 8", and 12" toys of most (if not all) toyetic properties. Marvel and DC superheroes, Planet of the Apes, and Star Trek are a few. Then along came Star Wars. Mego passed on the license, and it would prove to be their downfall. The SW license went to Kenner, and with their toys, they had enormous success. Mego tried to regain ground with 3.75" toys of their own, for Star Trek: The Motion Picture, the Marvel superheroes, and even unreleased toys for The Greatest American Hero before folding. They had overextended themselves, and closed the doors in the early 1980s.

Diamond Select Toys, holders of the Star Trek license, clearly noticed that the aliens in the Mego Star Trek line are worth a lot of money on the secondary market, and I'm sure DST wanted a piece of that. But, you can't have a Star Trek line without the main characters, so they paired the aliens off with a Enterprise crew member for each series. Kirk and a Klingon were the first series of this line, followed by Spock and an Andorian for series 2 and McCoy and a Romulan (an insanely rare toy) for series 3. IIRC, Scotty and the Keeper make up series 4 and Uhura and the Mugatu are series 5. DST also has plans for all-new figures in this style, the first being Khan from 'Space Seed.'

As I said, these use the original molds, but they added a 2007 copyright to the back of the figure's neck, so you don't buy a modern one at vintage prices. The articulation on these is very similar to a 1960s GI Joe, just shrunk down to 8" instead of 12", and no kung-fu grip. I'm not much of a Mego fan, but these guys are growing on me. These things are pretty pricy, at about $15-20 a piece, but if you're looking for an offbeat collectible from a franchise that's finding a new audience, these are your thing. Besides, the kitsch value alone makes them wonderful. It's the same reason I bought most of those Adventure Team GI Joes I found at Wal-Mart last fall. I have shelves full of ultra-modern toys, but there's always room for the classics.

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