The Good: Great balance, Good detailing
The Bad: Yellowing of stands, Inconsistent scale, The Vulcan shuttle Surak is dramatically out of scale, Coloring on StarFleet ships, No collectible value
The Basics: Galoob’s MicroMachines Star Trek The Movies set 1 focuses on the supporting vessels from the Star Trek films and falls dramatically short because of the coloring and scale issues.
When it comes to Galoob’s Star Trek MicroMachine toy line, the biggest detraction to Galoob’s amazingly-sculpted toys are the coloring and scale. It’s good sometimes to get the big problems right out in the open. Those issues come to the forefront with the Star Trek The Movies MicroMachines Collection 1. The reason the Star Trek The Movies Collection 1 epitomizes the problems of the entire line is that the three starship set includes a shuttle that carries one room is larger than the science vessel that carried hundreds of people and almost as large as the ship that had a crew of almost a thousand! And the coloring on two of the three ships is way, way off.
Fans of Star Trek: The Motion Picture (reviewed here!) and Star Trek III: The Search For Spock (reviewed here!) will easily recall the three ships featured in the pack. The MicroMachines Star Trek The Movies Set includes the U.S.S. Excelsior, Vulcan Shuttle Surak, and the U.S.S. Grissom.
Basics
The MicroMachines Star Trek The Movies includes a U.S.S. Excelsior, Vulcan Shuttle Surak, and U.S.S. Grissom. The U.S.S. Excelsior NX-2000 is a 3 5/16” long, 1 3/16” wide recreation of the starship seen very briefly at the beginning of Star Trek III: The Search For Spock and throughout Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. The U.S.S. Excelsior is a Make 1 model of the Excelsior Class, with the curved lower engineering hull. It is cast in a ridiculous blue plastic, which is utterly unfathomable. Even so, the U.S.S. Excelsior is sculpted immaculately and has proper highlights and red and yellow detailing lines and running lights. The name and/or ship number of the ship is printed in exceptionally small type on the top and bottom of the saucer section and Galoob even got the insignia and running lines on the sides of the engineering hull rendered perfectly!
The detailing on the Vulcan Shuttle Surak is ridiculously unimpressive. In fact, there are few coloring accents to the dark gray ship that is essentially a block with two forward-facing nacelles. The 2” long gray block balances perfectly on its stand and has the molded fins near the top of the engineering hull, just like the briefly-seen ship that delivered Spock to the Enterprise in Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
The U.S.S. Grissom is a 2 7/16” long by 1 1/8” wide and 3/4" tall starship that is also ridiculously cast in blue plastic, like the Excelsior (the actual ships on screen were bright white!). Regardless of the initial coloring, the sculpt is fairly impressive with the saucer section and venting section attached to the warp nacelles and main engineering hull. The starship is solid-looking and has decent coloring accents. Despite the awkward base coloring, the U.S.S. Reliant is accented with proper red racing stripes, silver deflector area, and gray engineering panels.
Accessories
The MicroMachines vehicles come only with stands. The stands are identical ovaloid clear plastic stands that are 1 5/8” long, 3/4” wide and 7/8” tall. Each features a small peg which fits into the vehicles. The stands are universal and fit a standardized hole in the bottom of each ship. The stands work nicely to display each of the ships, though the clear plastic has yellowed over the last decade to look disturbingly unclear.
Playability
The MicroMachines Star Trek The Movies vehicle toys have pretty limited playability, as they are entirely unposeable and are only really balanced on their stands. These vehicles have exceptionally limited play potential, largely because their subjects have limited playability; the Vulcan Shuttle Surak could have had a detachable crew quarters section, like in the movie.
Collectibility
The MicroMachines Star Trek The Movies set was one of the vastly overproduced sets and the ships in it appeared on one card and with the vehicles in a several of the boxed sets. They did not appreciate in value and are unlikely ever to given how many are in circulation.
Overview
Fans of the Star Trek movies and Star Trek franchise starships are likely to be unimpressed by the Surak and the coloring on the main starships, but otherwise will be pleased that they have obscure ships for their collections.
For other Star Trek MicroMachines toys, please check out:
MicroMachines Star Trek The Movies Set 2
MicroMachines Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Set 1
Star Trek: Generations Set 1
4/10
For other toy reviews, please visit my Toy Review Index Page for an organized listing!
© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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