I was originally going to write about how excited I was to track down Captain Scott at a comic book shop in the colder months of 1993, but then I saw his going rate on Amazon and had to pick my jaw off the floor. A dollar? That ain't much. It's kind of hilarious in the context of the episode - since the 1980s, the original crew often featured in stories that had to walk the line of dealing with the ravages of age in a technologically speedy galaxy. Was Scotty still relevant? As a kid in the 1990s, I thought so - this was a guy who could fix anything and make computers and systems work. Truly, a man to be admired - and now we're all a little like him, and now his action figure is mostly forgotten. It's a bit of a shame, because this is one of my favorite older Star Trek figures. Based on the episode "Relics," we saw mention of a Dyson Sphere - the kind of thing the people on the news this year were basically referencing when people jumped the gun and thought they found an alien structure around a distant star. It's a heck of a neat big idea, and the kind of thing that's arguably as big of an idea regarding fictional engineering in space as Mr. Scott himself.
Standing 4 1/2-inches tall, this Scotty from The Next Generation came out in a wave with McCoy, Spock, and others - guess which ones were cherry-picked? His costume is largely based on the engineer vest with the movies, except the insignia pin was replaced by a communicator. It could do double-duty as a movie figure if need be, as it has a lot of the same pins and gizmos. The shirt looks like a movie uniform shirt, and really, what else can you ask for? The likeness on his face is smoothed out a bit, but for the time the deco is really great! The eyes are big and clear, and the hair has some colored highlights - you can really tell that it's graying. His face is a tiny bit lumpy in spots, too, and there's really no denying who this is. He doesn't look as chipper as he often did on camera, but it's still our favorite engineer.
The figure itself was really nice by 1990s standards, and at $5 just the figure and the Starfleet base would be a good deal. Playmates tossed in a series of accessories which I tossed in a bag and rarely look at. A clear purple dilithium crystal is neat, but what do I do with it? The various tools are similarly present. I'm not big in to the technical manuals and workings of a starship, but I like the look of much of the gear and spacecraft from the show. Still, solid orange gizmos don't do a lot for me, and the figure looks better without them. I think the same can be said about most of the figures in the line - Playmates put the money where it mattered in the head sculpts. The rest of the plastic in the set was, largely, inconsequential. A bottle would be nice, given its function in the episode, but I can see why Playmates didn't go that route.
This figure is on my short list of things I went nuts trying to track down in the mid-1990s, along with the Alien vs. Predator 2-pack and the first Jurassic Park Malcolm figure. Toy hunting has, sadly, always been a part of the hobby - pounding the pavement is necessary when people care about toys, and even in the pre-internet, low-magazine days you still had a lot of competition. This figure remains one of my favorites, and at the lower price I assume everybody reading this should buy one by now. It will disgust you how good this figure is over what $5 or even $10 can get you now. Heck, even by 1993 standards this was an exceptionally good figure for collectors to track down - not like today! Kids, man. You missed out.
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