Prototypes
#21
Posted 31 May 2019 - 12:38 PM
#22
Posted 02 June 2019 - 12:07 AM
Morgan, dude, I just wanna say a massive thank you for sharing this with the community. No idea where you dug these photos up from, but I'm a huge advocate of sharing Playmates Star Trek pre-internet history. To see photos that I have never seen before is WILD! Thanks!!
PS: Why the red uniform on Data I wonder??
#23
Posted 02 June 2019 - 02:39 PM
Jpatrik, thanks man, glad you guys are enjoying these. Yeah, there's fair bit out there that was just straight up did not make it on to the internets at the time.
I think the red uniform is just a hasty mockup, and tbh it's weird that they painted a Calhoun body from a FC uniform back to a DS9 type thing. Even stranger since this is almost a year after FC came out.
#24
Posted 24 June 2019 - 04:04 PM
At Toy Fair 1997 Playmates exhibited this 4.5-inch Locutus figure alongside the Borg Queen figure of the same size, and the battle-damaged Data figure from "First Contact." The Locutus figure is actually not a repaint of the 1993 figure, with much more realistic paint on the head, on the hand, with pale skin with various detail tones, eyes looking to the right, bluer lips, ghostly skin and much more detail on the various hoses and the chestplate.
This figure, along with the Borg Queen and battle-damaged Data, was scheduled for the "Ultra Trek assortment" that would have shipped in October 1997. So this was indeed something that was very much planned to be produced(!)
The figure collector market certainly seemed ready for anything Locutus-themed -- the previous two figures were some of the most eagerly purchased ones of their two series, which is why they were hard to find even though they were made in good numbers. Locutus also appeared in a flashback scene in "First Contact," which is something that people forget, but he did not look like this per se. The Locutus character seen in "First Contact" was different from the one in BoBW, mostly when it came to the upper body suit -- he was closer to the other Borg in the film when it came to detail. So if they wanted to do a "First Contact" Locutus they may have needed to redo the body, even though it was not seen in FC in entirety. By that time the prior two Locutus figures were nowhere to be seen on retail shelves for quite some time. As a reminder, this was at Toy Fair 1997, so even the metallized Locutus figure was long gone by then.
I think even a repaint of a 1993 Locutus figure, offered on the Warp Factor packaging in 1997-1998 (or as a part of this announced Ultra Trek assortment), would have been a pretty solid bet -- it was hard to lose money selling Borg stuff, even a couple of years after "First Contact" came out. Playmates could have easily sold retailers (or just Target) on the addition of a Locutus repaint in the Warp Factor lineup, or a similar figure that would have been a little more screen-correct, in addition to the Borg Queen and Data.
#25
Posted 25 June 2019 - 08:30 PM
I could be wrong, but it looks like it has those "Thigh cuts" that the Voyager figures had for improved articulation and better sitting!
Man would have loved to have had this instead of some of the weird choices in the Warp Factor range!
#26
Posted 30 June 2019 - 08:34 AM
Yeah, this one is pretty different from the 1993 version now that I've had a good look at the two, everything is different except perhaps for the head. It's very subtle and it looks like they used the 1993 figure (as opposed to the screen appearance) as a visual starting point, but all the details are a little different from the 1993 sculpt.
#27
Posted 28 July 2019 - 08:24 AM
Here's a resin test shot of a Mugato figure, this one sold on eBay in July 2019 for $123.50. All the limbs are not attached and the right arm is MIA, they're simply popped into place.
#28
Posted 07 September 2019 - 11:38 AM
At Toy Fair 1995, Playmates had these test shots of a Space Talk Borg and Picard in jacket on display.
The Picard test shot is pretty cool to see here just because of the wacky plastic colors.
#29
Posted 07 September 2019 - 10:01 PM
#30
Posted 07 September 2019 - 11:45 PM
The blue Enterprise on the left is the Innerspace Enterprise-D playset. The Picard & Borg figures are the Space Talk versions.
#31
Posted 20 October 2019 - 12:44 PM
Curiously enough, the Borgified Data figure made appearances in the manufacturer's promotional materials as a part of the lineup, pointing to the fact that it was dropped relatively late in the process.
As to how it looks the way it does, I can only guess that the figure production process was so long at the time (about 6-9 months for the whole lineup), that Playmates only got some very early concept sketches from Paramount and was like, "uhh, I guess this is what he's gonna look like in the film." In the same manner, Playmates either never received sketches of the Borg Queen, or decided not to produce her for other reasons. The Borg Queen was in the film trailer, so it's not like it would have been a "spoiler" to produce a figure and have it hit shelves right before the film. In fact, the trailer pretty much gave away the whole plot.
But, I wonder just how many prototypes of this figure were made and who owns them now. I'm betting there was more than one, and I'm betting that tooling may have been produced for this figure, and that it was dropped at the last minute, because it looks a little ridiculous and isn't screen-accurate.
#32
Posted 23 October 2019 - 05:13 AM
Man, Ive seen that First Contact photo a bunch of times and never seen the "original" version of it!! Thanks for posting dude. If you check out the official photos released, you can definitely see that they have surgically removed the Data figure, leaving a noticeable gap:
http://upcloseandpla...ntact-1996.html
As for the actual Data figure - he's pretty scary looking - and I'm pretty sure he was on ebay a few years back. Or at least that's where I found these photos for the site. My guess is that at least one is in the hands of a lucky private collector:
http://upcloseandpla...eased-data.html
#33
Posted 08 November 2019 - 01:14 PM
Here's a color version I found in some literature of the time, from summer 1996.
#34
Posted 08 November 2019 - 01:21 PM
#35
Posted 10 November 2019 - 05:51 AM
Man! This picard/Borg diorama is breaking my brain!! Thanks for posting it! I take it youre going through some old Tomarts magazines? They're getting hard to come by these days.
Is it just me or is Picard's phaser beam slightly translucent - check out the tip of the beam.
Immense thanks for supplying a colour version of the FC figures. I hope you dont mind that I used it to update my site.
#36
Posted 10 November 2019 - 01:27 PM
Glad you're liking these. Yeah, I noticed the beam on the phaser, that's kinda cool, looks like plexiglass or something. I guess they thought the regular orange beam would look lame in the diorama cause they're all bendy. This one is not bendy at all.
I figured this was a playset concept they built earlier and just donated to the auction, that's what it smells like, but the production two-packs weren't greenlit till much later. The background Borg wall looks way too detailed to have been kitbashed -- it looks purpose-made if you look at various set design photos from TNG.
Lovely site, by the way, and one of the few places to read about this stuff. Keep updating it!
#37
Posted 16 November 2019 - 07:42 PM
#38
Posted 16 November 2019 - 08:16 PM
#39
Posted 21 November 2019 - 01:29 AM
Wow thanks again for digging into the archives - I'm really sketchy on the details of the so called Ultra Trek figures. I have a vague memory of seeing the kind of packaging you describe. They sounded amazing, but its also weird to think that the Warp Factor series was on shelves with things like Movie Maniacs.
When you out the last few waves of Playmates figures into context, they really were rather old fashioned.
Looking at that Data figure above - he's really nice - but still essentially a scaled up Voyager figure with that "one size fits all" body. Having said that, I would have definitely bought him!!! The head sculpt is pretty impressive!
#40
Posted 27 November 2019 - 03:50 PM
Bridge set test shots from the January 2019 auction.
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