Lewis Galoob Toys releases its first wave of toys from Star Trek: The Next Generation, consisting of six characters (all members of the Enterprise crew) and a die-cast metal miniature starship Enterprise. While there’s an instant interest from Star Trek collectors, Galoob is perhaps a bit premature: the series upon which its toys are based is in the middle of a very uneven first season, and has demonstrated more appeal to older viewers than to the age group that normally buys action figures. A more successful line, geared more toward adult collectors, will surface in the 1990s. 
Though its success was anything but certain, the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation was, at the time, a marketing bonanza, if not quite up to Star Wars standards. Galoob quickly signed up to produce action figures, accessories, and die-cast metal toys…which never really seemed to catch on.
The initial wave of toys included the six figures seen here. The figures were in roughly the same scale as the 3 3/4″ Star Wars toys. Also released were a season-one style shuttlecraft – very difficult to find – as well as a fantastic die-cast Enterprise-D with a separating saucer section.
A second wave of characters, including a Romulan, Wesley Crusher (in the grey sweater he so often wore in season one), an Antican, a Selay, and Q was to have been released, and a few prototypes seem to have leaked into the open market (or so some collectors claim). No further vehicles of any scale were released. The second wave aliens would have been highly sought after, since Playmates never released Antican or Selay characters (both from the early episode Lonely Among Us).
You probably noticed that each figure’s hands are quite fixed; one is molded with a Type II phaser, and the other is molded into a fist. Each character included an open tricorder, but had no means to hold it; thus, as can be seen above, I glued the tricorders to the characters’ legs in an attempt to keep from losing them.
One story I’ve heard, which may qualify as an urban legend, is that someone within the studio was so upset with the seemingly permanent violent intentions of the toys – they were either going to hit or shoot anything and everything – that Galoob’s license to produce further Next Generation toys was yanked. This seems just a little bit unlikely; as is known now, Galoob had major plans for the line, including elaborate cardboard backdrop playsets not unlike those that graced Kenner’s Star Wars toy line, but a tepid consumer response to the new Star Trek as something that kids would want to emulate shortened the life span of Galoob’s Trek ambitions.
ToyBox review and photography by Earl Green