Courtesy of friend Aaron Harvey, we have this bit of 1970s Star Trek merchandising goodness.
I have to admit – and this is something I get to say with decreasing frequency as the years go by – but I’d never even heard of this particular item let alone seen one before yesterday. It’s totally insane and yet has everything I love about that early era of Star Trek merch.
First, there’s the obvious “label slapping,” whereby the toy manufacturer just adds the name of a popular TV show, movie, comic book, or whatever onto something that evokes the tagged property in no meaningful way whatsoever. But then there’s the groovy box art that really makes this worthwhile. I admit I like it way more than the actual “Phaser Rocket Gun.” I’d actually rather collect just the box over the toy itself.
This gem was produced in the UK and likely never made it over here to the States in any signficant numbers, making it a definite rarity and item of curiosity for many a hardcore Star Trek collector. There was one other toy from “Lone Star” that I did know about: their “Inter-Space Communicator” which as you can plainly see bears absolutely no resemblance to anything you might’ve seen Kirk or Spock talking into on the original series.
I didn’t do a particularly deep dive on this, and so only found these two examples of Star Trek merch from Lone Star, which I’ve decided had to be the British successor to our very own and very much beloved Remco from the late 1960s while the original show was still in production. You know what I’m talking about…..
For anyone interested along with any of you who keep insisting I’m hard to shop for, as I write this there’s currently an eBay auction for the “Phaser Rocket Gun,” with an opening bid of $350. So, so you know….bid early and often!
(* = with acknowledgments–and apologies–to The Daily Show)
The Fog of Ward. 