Tim-Mee Galaxy Laser Team
In the late 1970s, thanks to the popularity of Star Wars and sci-fi in general, there was a giant resurgence in the popularity of space-related toys. Many were licensed, such as Buck Rogers, Battlestar Galactica and Black Hole toys. There was also a flood of generic, non-licensed toys as well. One popular line of such toys was Tim-Mee’s Galaxy Laser Team.
Tim-Mee is known for releasing small plastic toys of almost everything. From farmers and farm animals to army men, circus animals, policemen, firemen and fantasy monsters…you name it, Tim-Mee cranked ‘em out. If you spent any time at all on the toy aisle like I did as a kid, you probably remember them. Most of them were packaged in clear plastic bags, sealed with a cardboard label at the top. (Click here to see the rest of the article plus pictures.)
First aired in the only broadcast of the two-hour version of Encounter At Farpoint, the Cheerios Star Trek: The Next Generation sweepstakes commercial may be just a little bit on the cheesy side, but for fans of the show and admirers of the Galaxy-class U.S.S. Enterprise, it also offers several unique glimpses of the bridge - possibly in an unfinished state - that would never be seen in footage from the series itself. 
The only figure-scaled vehicle to see the light of day during Galoob’s brief license to produce Star Trek: The Next Generation action figures, this Shuttlecraft Galileo is a faithful reproduction of the impossibly-aerodynamic, futuristically curved Enterprise-D shuttles seen during the show’s first two seasons on the air.
Based on Bryan Hitch’s “organic” design for the new series’ TARDIS, the Character Options Doctor Who TARDIS playset is a colossus made of plastic and, in a few places, cardboard. Neatly replicating a surprising amount of detail from the actual studio set used for the show itself, this TARDIS may be one of the finest translations from practical set to mass-market toy I’ve ever seen. 
Kenner had a bit of a challenge when it came to the vehicles of The Empire Strikes Back. While the Death Star was no more, it seemed that many of the movie’s vehicles still wound up on the “big” end of the scale, from the newly unveiled Super Star Destroyer to its complement of literally monstrous AT-ATs. If you wanted new vehicles more on the scale of fighters, there were new variations on the TIE Fighter, the Snowspeeder, and the even more obscure Twin-Pod Cloud Car seen patrolling the skies of Bespin. 
Introduced in The Empire Strikes Back, Slave I was the strong, silent and mysterious steed of the saga’s strong, silent and mysterious new character, Boba Fett. In either movie or toy terms, it was a really interesting concept - a ship which, if one looked at it from traditional aerodynamic thinking, looked like it should fly one way, but instead seems to heft itself up on its side to fly in a completely different way. For kids like me who hadn’t grown up with the Apollo program and its completely non-aerodynamic lunar landers, this was a wild concept. 
While determining the scale of the Millennium Falcon vehicle may have set in stone the 3 3/4″ scale of Kenner’s Star Wars figures, the Falcon itself didn’t arrive in the toy stores until 1979. The first vehicles to appear were, in fact, Luke’s landspeeder, a TIE fighter and the iconic Rebel X-Wing fighter. 
As has been mentioned before, the size and scale of the Millennium Falcon as a toy vehicle made Kenner reinvent the wheel where character-based action toys for boys were concerned. To keep the price of the Falcon down, both for the company making it and for the people buying it, the figures were scaled down to 3 3/4″, whereas the previous industry standard had been set by foot-tall G.I. Joe figures with more points of articulation, interchangeable costumes and accessories, and so on - basically the boys’ equivalent of Barbie dolls, at roughly the same size (and price point). 
These days, toy manufacturers - including Hasbro, makers of the current line of Star Wars toys - have to pack an exclusive figure or something similarly enticing in with a vehicle in order to lure consumers and collectors in to buy the vehicle. But for the original Kenner Star Wars line, the Millennium Falcon was the first toy designed - even before the figures. 