There’s plenty of Trek merchandise out there, from giant ship replicas, to fancy dolls, to actual meme statuettes. But for honest to God action figures, it feels as though it’s been years since there’s been a line of Starfleet’s finest small enough to command your valuable desk space. That’s finally changing thanks to McFarlane Toys.
Picard and Kirk, reporting for their latest station: Your desk. Photo: McFarlane
It’s been about a year since McFarlane announced it had acquired the rights to make new Star Trek figures, including characters from the then-upcoming series Discovery. After the company showed up to events such as Toy Fair with little more than empty boxes, we finally have our first look at the two figures that will launch the company’s new Trek line of 18cm posable toys: Fan favourite Captains James T. Kirk and Jean-Luc Picard.
Picard’s ready to phaser anything that passes by your desk, including rival toys. Photo: McFarlane
Kirk and Picard both feature a range of articulation and accessories that allow you to pose them boldly going, one stiff plastic step at a time, and feature pretty decent likenesses of William Shatner and Patrick Stewart as they appeared on their respective series (although the Stewart sculpt looks much more like him from the side rather than head-on).
This is a very good Bill Shatner “Am I squinting or acting?” face. Photo: McFarlane
Kirk comes with a classic-style communicator, the type II phaser pistol, as well as the classic, wonderfully goofy-looking phaser rifle.
Meanwhile, Picard gets a little less, thanks to Starfleet’s comms badge solving the problem of handheld communicators between Star Trek and The Next Generation – he simply gets the more modern evolution of the phaser pistol, as well as the Ressikan flute Picard acquired during the events of the beloved episode “The Inner Light”.
As a bonus, the way Picard’s phaser-holding hand is posed makes it double as a good “make it so” ordering hand:
Nothing says ACTION FEATURE like the ability to give orders. Photo: McFarlane
What good’s a Star Trek action figure if it can’t look like it’s giving orders?
The line is expected to continue with a figure based on Discovery‘s Michael Burnham, but first, Picard and Kirk will hit shelves this winter for around $US20 ($27) each.
How long until we get the dream figure we’re all waiting for, though: Captain Sisko with Avery Brooks laugh sound FX? Because I’d buy both a bald and season one-three hair variant of that.
[Toyark]