When I was a kid I did a lot of wishing, especially around Christmas time. I remember one year I wished for a Kenner-style 3 3/4-inch Doctor Who collection to magically appear under the tree, knowing, to the best of my knowledge, that one didn't actually exist. (A few years later I discovered the Dapol Doctor Who figures and bought a few of those, but they weren't exactly what I was hoping for.) Kenner-style Aliens figures were another big wish I had one year, which of course has recently been realized through Super7's ReAction toy line. If I could make one toy wish today, it would be this: for the 1988 Galoob Star Trek The Next Generation toy line to have continued indefinitely. Now hear me out... I'm almost exclusively a 1:18 scale collector, so everything in my personal collection, and everything that I'm personally interested in, is either the vintage/retro 3 3/4-inch size or the more modern 4-inch size. Back in the 90s I bought almost every single Star Trek figure that Playmates produced. I even had a single-carded Tapestry Picard. But this was before my 1:18 rule came into being. Once I made that decision, I sold all of my old Playmates stuff. I recently pulled out my 3 3/4-inch Galoob figures and realized just how much I had loved those figures. The head sculpts are excellent. The 3 3/4-inch toy feel is perfect. The construction is solid. And the supporting vehicles (the Enterprise shuttlecraft and the Ferengi fighter) are both a ton of fun. I would LOVE to have seen Galoob make the comprehensive range of figures, vehicles and playsets that Playmates released. Naturally some improvements would need to have been made over the course of time though. Namely they would have needed to get away from the closed fists and bent elbows that all of the humans had. And of course they would have needed to have released figures with removable phasers and accessories instead of the phasers that were molded to the hands. And the colors could have been a little more accurate and the articulation could have evolved in much the same way as Hasbro evolved the Star Wars line over the years. But all-in-all it would have been a dream come true for me. I plan to make some customs this year using the Galoob figures that we have, and of course duplicates always come in handy, but an expansive 3 3/4-inch Galoob STTNG collection the size of my original Star Wars and GI Joe collections would have been amazing.
When you wish upon a star...
Posted by Mike Robinson on Mar 27th 2024