Posted 09 October 2015 - 06:44 PM
Maybe it's just an opinion through the eyes of a staunch Star Trek nerd but I find Diamond so frustrating and lacklustre sometimes!!! In what I'm guessing as nearly 12 plus years, DST have given us a huge amount of Star Trek product with what has come out more recently as being some of the best product they have ever given us in terms of quality and bang for our Buck. The Klingon Bird of Prey, the Enterprise D, A and E, the four Star Trek select figures! It's all been great stuff but yet I am still so bloody annoyed with their weird fear that by saying or showing anything new or different or incomplete or not yet released is going to somehow blow up in their faces? Because showing nothing or the same stuff show in show out is not going to invite the same wrath of the fans? The mind boggles at just how backward DST seem compared to other companies of similar ilk.
When compared to Eaglemoss and just this past few days, Mega Bloks, Diamond just seem so tired and uninspired when it comes to Star Trek. I'm not sure why I feel this way because I am sure that all the people designing for Star Trek are passionate about their work if not Star Trek itself.
My feeling is this though, Even though Rick Berman, Branon Braga and Co. Were as much in love with Star Trek as they were when they began and still doing a damn good professional job with Enterprise and Nemesis, I think they all knew it needed some new blood for better or worse to be injected into it.
I think maybe the same is true for the guys at Art Asylum. Maybe it's time for DST to get another group of designers to design for Star Trek? Star over with a new design house and bring to a close this 12 year era of Star Trek product done by Art Asylum. With the passing of Thomas Sasser, which is probably why we've yet to see the next Star Trek ship, maybe it's time to close this chapter and do something familiar yet totally new with their Star Trek licence?
Just a thought but I dunno with the 50th round the corner, I'd have expected a bit more this year from diamond because anything they show at toy fair and SDCC next year won't be available until 2017 at the earliest which completely misses the biggest year for Star Trek and an opportunity for DST to do something awesome and actually really special to ignite our collecting passions again.
It also really annoys me that whilst Eaglemoss can attend Star Trek events and showcase new product to get fans excited, diamond select can't? To me they have an opportunity to double their sales or at lest generate some buzz surrounding a new line by attending these conventions (Las Vegas, Destination London and Germany etc...) it just seems as though diamond have kind of run out of new ideas.
Well, here are a few:
- similar to hot toys, hasbro' black series. Why not number your action figures? Make them highly collectable.
- promotional material in printed publications and at conventions advertising the next Star Trek ship. Why it's taken so damn long for you guys to say that the next Federation Ship is the Reliant I do not know!
- tie the action figures into specific on screen scenarios rather than generic action poses. Include as much articulation and character specific accessories as other select lines such as Ghostbusters and Gotham...
- team up with Gentle Giant or Jean St Pierre or some new up and coming designers to do sculpting for a new line!
- the ships are awesome! Focus on those and keep that fleet yard going by not allowing your fan base to loose interest. Clearly it takes a long time to get these ships developed but choosing the next ship should be easy right? So why not announce it and commit to the order on the list of ships you want to do and then as one ship is shown for the first time at a con, the other two are shown as in early development and displayed as a nice graphic poster at the same con! Why not do what Eaglemoss have done and reach out to the likes of Mike Ocuda and Dan Curry to help do something that will excite and intrigue fans! Ocudagrams are awesome! Fans love an Ocudagram!
It's too easy to pass fans off with lame excuses when other companies are capturing the excitement with their own product.
The only excuse dst often use that I think holds any water is that DST are just not set up for anything other than what they are doing now which is pretty sad when other companies are continually improving and exciting their fans with new ways of getting product out to them.
There's so much they could do with Star Trek but man what really blows is that I don't think we're going to get anything more than what we've been getting for the past 12 years... Hold on tight it's going to be a turbulent, disappointing ride with hints of pure awesome highs only to be crushed by long periods of crippling lows.