Product Tested: Star Trek Model Kits.
Available at: Various toy and model shops.
Price: $2.49 each
NOTE: of the models illustrated on this page, only one of them is a genuine store-bought model: the other two were handmade. We were originally to do a simple MONSTER TIMES product test, when we spotted this opportunity to demonstrate what the human eye and hand, sufficiently coordinated, can produce … equal to many a pre-fab model kit.
Not that we’re putting down pre-fab model kits, but seeing what one STAR TREK fan, Richard Van Treuren accomplished with just hunks of balsa wood and plastic on his own initiative, we do lament that as many of us (this reviewer himself included) have the initiative to make models by hand as used to be.
The model of the Klingon ship (see captions to photos for identification) is a professionally tooled model kit, commercially sold by AMT Model Corporation, available in toy shops. everywhere. It is comparatively easy to put together, but a bit hard to get. AMT made a limited pressing of them, but they can be found if you shop around a bit.
AMT also released a dubiously crafted model of the Starship Enterprise-which was recalled after a couple of months, when it was discovered no one could put it together. Parts didn’t fit, and if the ship had been a real starship, it would have leaked crew and fuel supply and whole compartments gushingly in space’s vacuum like a sieve.
However, AMT is an honest corporation, and commendably not only recalled the deficient model from stores, but replaced it with a new version of the craft, far superior to the previous one … every part worked, and what’s more the ship lit up from the inside as does the miniature used on the show.
The version of the starship Enterprise shown here, though, is even more noteworthy; handcrafted painstakingly by Richard Van Treuren and even more surprisingly-he did it strictly from imagination!
Richard Van Treuren had no still photographs from which to work, no charts or instructions-he only had impressed in his memory every curve and nook and cranny of the ship. We feel his version is so true to the actual Enterprise, and so indistinguishable from the AMT model (which he also never saw!), that it’s well worth displaying on this page, in the pre-fab model’s stead. (We still couldn’t put it together!-but this time that’s our fault!)
The shuttle-craft was also made from memory by him, and we reproduce it here, not only for the sake of our readers, who naturally would be curious, but also the sake of AMT, who never released a STAR TREK shuttle-craft… and who should.
There was some talk (especially in Great Britain-where the show is now phenomenally popular) that a shuttle-craft model would be released-speculation was that Corgi Toys would issue it in Great Britain. Nothing ever came of all that talk, and so there’s still no shuttle-craft, folk.
It might be worth a try if all of you loyal fans of STAR TREK out there would bombard the AMT Toy Company.
Encourage them to consider that if they were to re-issue their STAR TREK models, and a shuttle-craft (and other of the show’s space vehicles), that there would be an enormously expansive market for them. We can recommend at least one model-crafter to design the shuttle-craft, if such has not already been done. Heh heh.
Or simply write something like “I am very interested in collecting a whole set of the space vehicles of STAR TREK-how can I go about getting them?”-and mayhaps they’ll get the idea themselves, and expand their TREK-model line.
Only your enthusiasm can bring this about.
But until that grand and glorious day, we heartily advise you to scour ye friendly neighborhood model shops, and locate your own existent STAR TREK model kits. Or get yourself a couple hunks of balsa wood, some styrofoam plastic, a pen-knife and some paint (Richard Von Treuren actually painted his own “decals” on!) and go to it!
But don’t ask US how to do it, fergoshsakes!
Chuck McNaughton