Star Trek original bridge and action figures reissue

The Star Trek Bridge playset was, hands down, the best toy I owned as a child. I played with it for approximately 10,000 hours. Especially the whirly-twirly transporter cubicle. I loved the psychedelic cardboard viewscreens, the tippy chairs and furniture, the stick-on UI for same that was as inscrutable and ridiculous as the authentic show computers. This toy had the magic, a vinyl-covered, detailed, configurable kind of magic that made you want to play with it for hours and hours on end.

I kept my Bridge playset for all these years. It sat in my Toronto storage locker for a decade, and then got shipped to London, where it now resides, along with my action-figures, in my office. And it still has the magic.

And now: the toy has been reissued, along with all the original action figures, including the two-tone aliens and the lizard dudes. The crew have the tiny blue phasers and the same dead eyes and the miniatures plastic Blundstones from the future. And I just saw the set, in person, in a comics shop, and it still has the magic.

Star Trek: Retro Bridge Playset

Star Trek Retro Action Figures

• [Bonnie]

  oooh set phasers to fun!

• [dhalgren]

  Thank you Cory!!!!

  I had absolutely forgotten about this lost amazing part of my childhood. I spent hundreds, thousands of hours playing with mine as well. The dolls were awesome. Of course I eventually got to the point where I would cut up the uniforms and paint wounds on my crew. I’m pretty sure my Evel Kaneval (can never remember how to spell his name) action figure would fight it out with my Star Trek guys and my old G.I. Joe ones in a big grand melee. Talk about Alternate Universes colliding.

  I still remember the smell of my bridge. Part of remembering those days is the smell of certain toys, foods, etc.

  Thanks again Cory. I can’t believe I had totally forgotten about this hunk of Star Trek memories…

  Now who remembers the Space:1999 – was that the name of the show – action figures and the space craft and all that…

  I miss all those toys but I am afraid if I reacquired them again, I would end up playing with them for hours and hours again. On second thought, that wouldn’t be so bad.

• [Anonymous]

  Interesting. I had an old Doctor Who Tardis toy that worked on the same principle as the Transporter in this play set, down to the coloured buttons. You put the 12″ Tom Baker Doctor model in, closed the doors, span the rather large lamp on top and then pressed the red or green button to stop it spinning. When you opened the doors again, the Doctor had either vanished or reappeared, depending on which button you pressed.

• [IWood]

  #28 posted by Jay Acker:

  I also want a Tribble damnit. I want about 50 lifesize Tribbles that I can stuff into a cabinet so they fall on whoever opens it.

  One morning in 1996 I boarded the PATH train at Journal Square in Jersey City, and discovered that the train car was infested with tribbles. On the seats, hanging from the poles, everywhere.

  They were all dead, though…they didn’t move or trill.

  Actually, it was a promo stunt for the Deep Space Nine episode, “Trials and Tribble-ations.”

  Each tribble had a little card attached to it advertising the crossover. Brilliant! I grabbed three. Gave two away (orange and white), but I still have the gray one.

• [Spikeles]

  It’s star trek related, so I think this is a good time to bring up this.

• [mixolydian]

  OMG! Thank you Cory I’d completely forgotten! The figurines with the little tunics, the little rotating teleporter sections, the screen you’d put the little projections on…

  right atcha dhalgren – my eval kneival windup motorcycle would regularly gatecrash the star trek party :-)

• [Phikus]

  I had this and the whole set of figures (all of the mego figures, in fact.) I saved all of my allowance for them and put them on layaway etc. and finally managed to get them all. Some of them I replaced several times when the elastic holding them together would break.

  They had several sets of compatible figures, which I collected: A bunch of Marvel & DC heroes, Planet of the Apes figures (and the playset for that) Knights of the Round Table, and heroes of the West. I used to create new characters by intermixing their wardrobes (-most notably Captain Tynon whose power was that he made God. My friends couldn’t top that.)

  With the “transporter” You could also change one figure into another. Put Kirk in and press the other button and he came out Spock (who had been pre-loaded into the other chamber.) Endless fun for a kid with too active an imagination.

  When the Star Wars figures came out, I could not buy into them as they were not as fully pose-able as the Mego ones.

  Eventually I gave the whole set to a neighboring kid when I felt I had outgrown them. A shame, really.

• [Nelson.C]

  “Lizard dudes” = Gorn

  I’m shocked, Cory. We may have to take back your geek credentials.

• [MrJM]

  Canadian Trotskyite kids had Star Trek playsets, but I — the child of hard working American capitalists — had to play with a repurposed cardboard box?

  I knew we shouldda been Reds!

  – MrJM

• [KidDork]

  Must…have.

  Although, to be honest, I think I spent more hours playing with the first Fisher Price castle. But I geekily digress….

• [josholalia]

  Hands down. That was one of my most favorite toys. Ever. Not even the 12″ Johnny West, Big Jim or G.I. Joe could compete with The Bridge! True magic.

  Great find!

• [bjepson]

  My favorite toys as well. Wish I’d taken better care of them; none of them made it past age 12. I was thrilled when the retro cloth action figures appeared on G4′s ads for Star Trek 2.0: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBXal1GAA4A

• [Anonymous]

  I used to have a Spock, no idea what happened to him. I remeber being given him by a ‘father christmas’ after a panto in Sheffield. Amazing what you remember isn’t it.

• [adamnvillani]

  Dang, I’m a couple years younger than Cory and I never had this. Still, have you seen the prices on these figures? 35 bucks? 50 bucks? Yeah, I know the market now is collectors and not kids, but still.

• [Anonymous]

  Um, credentials revoked. The Sulu is new, they never made him back in the day, and the Gorn is a complete rescultp true to the show. The ’70s figure is just the Spider-Man villain the Lizard cast in brown with a Klingon costume. sts

• [Jack]

  @#5 POSTED BY BJEPSON:
  These figures aren’t those Star Trek figures advertised on G4. These are very, very accurate repros of the original 8″ Mego action figures. Notable is the fact that there was no Sulu figure in the original line. This repro line corrects that mistake. And I’m no expert on the aliens but I think one or two of them were never released into the U.S. market. So even better!

  My only complaint is that while the prices are less than buying a vintage figure off of eBay, they are still steeper than one would expect on those Amazon listings. Maybe a limited run?

  Still all good.

• [Bender]

  I had this set too, but it is mainly a dark memory for me. I was playing with my Star Trek figures, when another kid tricked me into leaving them alone for a minute. That was the last time I ever saw Captain Kirk and his crew… 35 years later or so, I’m still mad at myself for being tricked.

  Rosebud!

• [cowboy_k]

  Amazon sides with the oppressors again, with the so-called “Cheron” action figure clearly depicting a member of the ruling class (black on the right side). Where is representation of the other Cheron citizens, who are colored black on the left side? Blatant discrimination at it’s ugliest – no doubt they’ll blame the French again for this one.

  Boycott! Boycott, I say again!

• [Keeper of the Lantern]

  Hum. They made Sulu look, shall we say, kinda happy, if you catch my drift…

• [planettom]

  The only thing cooler than than the bridge playset was this MISSION TO GAMMA VI playset.

  http://www.megomuseum.com/startrek/missiongammaVI.html

• [yurei]

  @cowboy_k: I always did enjoy Star Trek’s sense of social commentary. I always thought it did better as a TV series than as a cinema piece ^__^

• [Antiqueight]

  I had to make do with making my bridge out of an old Kellogg’s cornflakes box.

• [eclectro]

  Yup his name is Gorn. Gorn was around before “dudes” entered the modern popular vernacular.

  Not only did Star Trek show you how to win the space babes, but it also showed you how to make explosives out of found elements. The babe thing was hard for me though.

• [Hanglyman]

  I find it kind of odd how the playset costs the same as either one or two action figures, depending on which you get.

• [eclectro]

  QYurei;

  There are times that Trek’s social commentary fails in the TOS. For an instance, I never understood why these colonists had to be rescued from the spore plant that gave them perfect health. Honestly though, for the age group that appreciates Trek the most it never was about the social commentary.

  It was about the phasers, communicators and space tech, which they are also reissuing from TOS (and can be found at Blockbuster).

• [TTrumble]

  Happy memories of playing with Tommy Delaney and his brothers who had all the action figures, sets and GI Joes to serve as hapless red shirts.

  Where’s the Space 1999 reissue?

• [Anonymous]

  I’m sorry, but I had a Fireball XL5 set that blew this out of the water. I eagerly await your Kahnish wrath…

• [Bobdotcom]

  I had Mr. Spock and the Klingon. My friend Frank had Kirk and McCoy, and another friend had Scotty. It was hours of geeky fun when we all got together.

  I still have the figures in a box somewhere. Unfortunately they’re not worth much as collectibles because (a) no boxes, and (b) the Klingon’s weapons are long gone — lost in the sandpile, probably.

• [O_M]

  …The big question is whether it has that classic toy vinyl smell that all those plastic-coated cardboard carry-cases had in those days.

• [worldfamousdesignjunkies]

  I feel this same way about my Micro Machines, which I just found recently also.

• [Anonymous]

  I had a little girls version… a yellow carrying case that opened up into a spaceship command deck, staffed by three cute space-chick dolls. I still have no idea was they were called.

• [mjfgates]

  Wake me when they reissue the Space:1999 Eagle playset. The one that was a *complete* Eagle, over a yard long, that opened up to reveal figures of all the main characters and enough equipment to run a minor war.

• [starcadia]

  My brother and I got this a Christmas present, 1975-ish. Yes, definitely a cool toy. The transporter was lots of fun. A nice surprise to see it in detail again after all these years.

• [O_M]

  “Wake me when they reissue the Space:1999 Eagle playset. The one that was a *complete* Eagle, over a yard long, that opened up to reveal figures of all the main characters and enough equipment to run a minor war.”

  …I had one of these when they first came out, and it was possibly the neatest toy I had next to my Major Matt Mason stuff eight years earlier. What made mine extra-special was that someone at Mattel fracked up and put not one but *three* sets of the figures in the box!

  …On an ironical side note, Mattel also released a “Moonbase Alpha” playset to go with their line of 6″ figures. However, the playset was a retooling of parts of the “Space Station” from Major Matt Mason, which in turn resulted in the molds being ruined. This is one of the reasons the original line of toys has never been reissued despite the fact that there’s a good sized demand for them, one almost as big if not as big as the one for the 12″ classic GI Joe figures.

• [mackenzi]

  I want that!

• [devophill]

  I can’t frickin’ believe they’ve reissued the goddamn Mugatu! Most off-model toy EVAR!

• [Anonymous]

  By Malcolm Gladwell’s definition, you are now an genius at playing with Star Trek figures – an outlier.

• [Anonymous]

  The Star Trek Bridge playset was, hands down, the best toy I owned as a child. I played with it for approximately 10,000 hours.

  Of course Cory can gives us almost correct estimates because he kept the captain’s log complete with stardates and mission briefs.

• [Jay Acker]

  Where is the little Clint Howard alien old man/baby?

• [Jay Acker]

  I also want Klingons where they were simply guys with goatees.

  Speaking of goatees, can we have the evil Star Trek crew?

  I also want a Tribble damnit. I want about 50 lifesize Tribbles that I can stuff into a cabinet so they fall on whoever opens it.