Friday, March 1, 2013

Outside The Dramatic Scale Issues, The Star Trek: Deep Space Nine MicroMachines Set Is Awesome!


The Good: Great balance, Good detailing.
The Bad: Yellowing of stands, Horribly inconsistent scale, Lack of collectible value
The Basics: Galoob’s MicroMachines Star Trek Deep Space Nine set focuses on the essential starships from Star Trek Deep Space Nine, but most of them have been done in bigger scale.


When I was in college, Playmates Toys owned the license for many of the Star Trek toys. I was really excited for the Cardassian Galor-class Warship toy the company was planning to release. It was one of the few vehicle toys that Playmates Toys planned to make, but then pulled. So, there are very few toys of that particular starship for play or display in the world. One of them is in the Galoob Star Trek Deep Space Nine MicroMachines 3-pack.

Fans of Star Trek Deep Space Nine (reviewed here!) will easily recall the three ships featured in the pack. The MicroMachines Star Trek Deep Space Nine Set includes the Cardassian Galor-class Warship, Space Station Deep Space Nine, and a StarFleet Runabout.

Basics

The MicroMachines Star Trek Deep Space Nine includes a Cardassian Galor-class Warship, the standard starship of the Cardassian Union. The 2 7/8” long yellow and brown starship is 1 7/16” wide and 7/16” tall and it looks very much like a remora. It is detailed with tiny blue dots for the running lights and the red Cardassian Union symbols. Things like the gun ports are also accented, though the main deflector area of this ship is an inappropriate brown, instead of the luminous red it is supposed to be. It is molded to have baffle plates that look incredibly accurate on it.

Space Station Deep Space Nine is 2” in diameter and 1 3/4" tall. It is gray and brown and accented as much as a small space station can be. It is accented very mildly with orange and yellow panels as appropriate, though the red gun turrets are pretty sloppy.

With even more detail is the Runabout. The 1 11/16” long shuttle-like starship has fine molding on the baffle plates and the ship is appropriately colored on the warp nacelles and racing stripes, if not for the basic white plastic the ship is molded in. In fact, the gray ship looks a little off, but it is not a bad-looking ship. Galoob might not have been able to make the ship detailed enough to have the ship’s name on it. They did, however, get the ship’s number on it and that looks accurate.

The fact that the Runabout, which fits into a strut on Deep Space Nine, yet is almost as big as the actual station! The Galor-class Warship is longer than Deep Space Nine and that is entirely inaccurate for the ships.

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 Deep Space Nine 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.

Collectibility

The MicroMachines Star Trek Deep Space Nine set was one of the overproduced sets and the ships in it appeared on one card and with the vehicles multiple boxed sets. They have not appreciated in value, largely because they were easily available in this coloring and in several other sets.

Overview

Fans of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine might overlook the fact that the various MicroMachines are normalized to a single size, but they look remarkably good. For fans of the series, this is a relatively inexpensive way to get some very cool Star Trek: Deep Space Nine starships!

For other MicroMachines and smaller-scale Star Trek toys and collectibles, please check out:
MicroMachines Star Generations Set
2001 Deep Space Nine Hallmark Ornament
Playmates Toys Strike Force Klingon Bird Of Prey

6/10

For other toy reviews, please visit my Toy Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2013 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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