The Good: Cool sounds, Good light effects, Stand, Aspects of the basic sculpt.
The Bad: Lack of complete light effect, Decals, Coloring, Presumed collectability
The Basics: The Gold USS Enteprise-D is a terrible recoloring of the classic starship that wastes collector's time, money and space and ought to be avoided at all costs.
Playmates had an initial Star Trek: The Next Generation starship toy line developed shortly after the twenty-fifth anniversary of Star Trek to commemorate the franchise. In the first wave, there were the obvious U.S.S. Enterprise 1701-D (reviewed here!) and formidable and recognizable Klingon Attack Cruiser and Romulan Warbird. The big three starships of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Then they came out with the gold recast of the Enterprise-D. For those who are not fans or collectors of Playmates' Star Trek line of toys, there is a vastly superior and sensible Enterprise-D toy and this one is not it.
Instead, this is a ridiculous parody of a toy and a collectible and while it does appear to have some positive attributes, it is essentially a waste and a mystery as to whom this might appeal to.
Basics
Attempting to milk the popularity of its most popular starship toy to date, Playmates Toys released a special collector's version of the U.S.S. Enterprise, NCC-1701-D, the Federation flagship featured in every episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation (reviewed here!). Like the "Malibu Stacey with a new hat!" on "The Simpsons," this Enterprise toy is an obvious attempt to capitalize on popularity and raise some money without putting in any real effort or expense, just in time for the thirtieth anniversary of the franchise!
This is the exact same U.S.S. Enterprise-D that was released in the first wave of Playmates toy starships . . . only, this time is is recast in gold! Actually, it's more of a brass color and it is otherwise identical to the original release. Sure, this one has a stand, but it doesn't make up for the lame and pointless recoloring of the classic toy.
These toys were designed to appeal to the niche of collectors who liked models, but were not married to the building of models. This particular Enterprise was designed to appeal to collectors who like toys that say "Limited Edition" on them because otherwise there is utterly no point to this ship. The Enterprise was never gold in the series and the commemoration of it in gold deserved something different, not this (a removable saucer Enterprise might have been better, for example). It does, however, retain the scale of the other starships and as a result, the Enterprise-D is just over fifteen inches long, eleven inches wide and just under four inches tall.
The hull of the Enterprise is detailed fairly extensively with all of the windows that the ship had, along with the nooks and crannies for weapons and similar details. What it lacks, just like its predecessor Enterprise toy, are the light effects needed to make the starship work. The Enterprise-D is covered in windows from people's quarters, lit from within in a rather striking and obvious way. The toy does nothing close to that and as a result, the overall effect of the Enterprise is lost.
It is similarly baffling that with such attention to detail for the sculptural lines and indentations, Playmates would resort to multiple decals for such things as Ten Forward's windows and the writing on the aft-top and bottom sections of the starship, as opposed to painting it on or making it part of the actual sculpt. This is nitpicky, to be sure, but it is annoying that Playmates does not do the work of applying the decals. The Enteprise-D is labeled in several places and it's annoying to have to put all the decals on; after all, if I had wanted a model, I would have purchased a model, not the toy. Even more annoying; some of the decals represent bars that could have been light effects.
The light effects are terrible in that they are exclusively contained to the warp nacelles. Despite the deflector dish being made of translucent plastic, it does not light up. Neither does the bridge or any of the other lights. Moreover, the blue of the warp nacelles looks terrible on the gold plastic of the recast ship.
Accessories
The gold Enterprise-D comes with a stand and that is nice. It might be the only improvement made upon the ship from its original incarnation to this one.
The toy is outfitted with four buttons on the top of the neck of the ship which generates sounds from a sound chip. When pressed, the toy emits sounds of: the Enterprise cruising, the Enterprise going to warp, phasers (with an explosion) and photon torpedo. The best sound is the going to warp sound, which is distinct and an accurate recreation of the sound effect from the show. The sound effects are easily more memorable than the light effects and they make for an interesting selling point and conversation piece.
For fans of the starships, there is also a rather unsophisticated blueprint of the U.S.S. Enterprise-D included in the box.
Playability
The Enterprise-D gold toy is a starship toy, so it does not open up (save the battery slot) and does not naturally interact with the 4.5 (or any other) action figure line. It comes out of the box completely assembled and the battery life may easily be extended only by removing the batteries from the toy.
This is a toy created with the intent of selling to adults who are into collectible toys. In fact, the recolored version is designed exclusively for collectors who want a display piece and something different, something that screams collectible. Perhaps, though, it is better for children; in their play they might come up with a good reason for the ship to be gold!
Collectibility
The most severe limitation to the collectibility of the gold Enterprise-D is that it is ugly. There is no other way around it. This is an ugly, pointless toy. It looks stupid and I know that might seem a base description for it, but the brassy, dull-gold finish makes it look like a hunk of plastic and it looks dumb. It looks like it is supposed to be different and special and the idea fell totally flat.
Moreover, it is weakened as a collectible by its selling point as a toy; because the toy comes with batteries and browsers are encouraged by the box to test the sounds, collectors are left with a real dilemma. As most collectors know, almost everything that is collectible is made more valuable by being Mint In Box. The potential consequence of leaving the gold Enterprise truly mint in box is that the batteries, well after they are dead will leak and eat apart the starship and packaging.
As a result, many collectors - even those who do not display the ship because they want to keep it mint in package - opened the package to remove the batteries. It is difficult to assess the effect this has on the collectibility because these near mint in box ships might well be in better condition than a truly mint in box one which might reasonably have suffered serious damage from battery degradation by this point (especially in more humid climes).
That said, Playmates made the gold Enterprise-D more collectible by including a limited edition number on the box to each toy. This one is limited to only 10,000 of these in the world, so it's hard to consider it especially limited. Moreover, many collectors avoided the gold Enterprise-D because it lacked the appeal most collectors want.
Overview
This is easily one of the worst Star Trek toys Playmates ever produced. It looks ridiculous and is nowhere near as special or collectible as fans would want. Now that I've finished reviewing mine, I am looking forward to ditching this as I lose the deadweight in my collection.
It's substandard toy, and anyone who disregards my advice about purchasing this ought to at least take this advice: be exceptionally careful about what you are buying. If the seller has left the toy truly mint in box, be sure to have some form of guarantee that if you open it and discover the batteries have bled, you'll be able to get your money back!
Then again, why waste your money on this waste of plastic when there are truly better Enterprise-D's out there?!
For other Playmates Star Trek vehicle toys, please be sure to check out my reviews of:
Star Trek Generations Battle-damaged U.S.S. Enterprise
U.S.S. Defiant
Runabout Orinoco
2/10
For other toy reviews, please visit my Toy Review Index Page for a complete listing of the toys I have reviewed with links to the actual reviews!
© 2012, 2008 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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