Star Trek Dolls

I have expounded on the demographics of various Star Trek crew but here I will do something frivolous and re-imagine an old toy line. A company called Mego made a range of Star Trek dolls in 1974-1976. If this is nostalgia then it is vicarious - at the time I was playing with plush toys and wooden blocks. I never even knew of Star Trek till I was obsessed with Star Wars action figures from 1978 on. But the messy history of toys can be fun. Mego made five original Enterprise crew and nine aliens for them to encounter. My concept is to change that to seven crew and seven aliens (even if the aliens may stand in for entire species rather than individual characters). But which ones?

The 80s Star Trek movies fixed in our imaginations the seven key characters as Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scott, Uhura, Sulu and Chekov. But in the 70s things were somewhat different. The Filmation cartoon, for instance, dropped Chekov in favour of Nurse Chapel. I choose this small step forward for gender equality even if it is a small step backwards for Détente. But what of the aliens?

Mego made some odd and arbitrary choices for the alien dolls. A few are recurring antagonists. Others are chosen seemingly at whim from stand-alone episodes. And others were wholly invented by the toy-makers. Sometimes I like to use more objective selection criteria and for these imaginings I suggest that an alien must have featured in more than one episode. It transpires that very few fit that restriction. The 60s were a time of stand-alone episodic story-telling. Yes the Klingons were in several episodes, but the Romulans, Andorians, Tellaraites and Orions are in only a few each. The Talosians get in on a technicality by featuring in the only two-part story. And the Salt Vampire creeps in only by having its costume re-used as a taxidermy display item. Nonetheless, I think this is a fun selection.

Here are the resulting toy lists...

The Crew: Kirk, Spock, McCoy,
Scott, Uhura, Sulu, Chapel

The Aliens: Klingon, Romulan, Orion,
Andorian, Tellarite, Talosian, Salt Vampire

The Tellarite could have been a modification of the Mugato they did make. The Orion dancer could have been adapted from the existing Mego Batgirl, since Yvonne Craig played both. And apparently stuntwoman Sandra Gimpel played both a Talosian and the Salt Vampire, so they could have shared a body sculpt.

The range could be completed with the Enterprise Bridge And Transporter they made along with a playset inspired by the Rigel Seven Fortress (possibly by just adapting some medieval playset). I would never have gotten into the line however - the action figure scale pioneered by Kenner Star Wars toys was that much more convenient and fun.