Diamond Select: New Insights

With the hype in the Star Trek world at the moment threatening to fly off the scale (apparently there's some new film out), Diamond Select have chosen now to release some great new additions to the market.

In June, the first series of Star Trek Legacy Minimates will arrive in stores featuring twin packs of some familiar - and Prime Universe - favourites. We've mentioned them briefly before but now there's a more realistic launch window of expectation!

Admiral Kirk & Khaaaaan (Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan)

Captain Picard & Borg Queen (Star Trek First Contact)

Captain Sisko & Jem'Hadar (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine)

Captain Archer & Xindi (Star Trek: Enterprise)

While these are nothing new to Some Kind of Star Trek, it's the Toys "R" Us and toysrus.com, EXCLUSIVE pairings that really get us excited! While there was a captain missing from the original four sets pictured above, Diamond Select have come up trumps with these four additional sets.

Captain Kirk & Khaaaaaaan (gold shirt) (Star Trek: The Original Series)

Captain Picard (captain's jacket) & Hugh Borg (Star Trek: The Next Generation)

Captain Sisko (vest) & Gul Dukat (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine)

Captain Janeway & Seven of Nine (Star Trek: Voyager)

while I'm more of a Deep Space Nine fan I think the Picard/Hugh and Janeway/Seven sets will probably be the key sellers and the crowd-pleasers here. Hugh is not a character I would have gone for as an obvious choice for a Minimate while Janeway and Seven are more than welcome additions given Voyager's conspicuous absence in the first four (top). However, while the Voyager and The Next Generation packs looks stunning, the Khan and Dukat figures just don't look quite right here. Maybe its the gold coat and the blocky Cardassian uniform that might have been unavoidable don't help. Looks like I'll be forking out for a couple of these later sets and the Sisko/Jem'Hadar and Kirk/Khan movie pair too.

Three variants of the Minimates Enterprise, with opening bridge dome and engineering section, a removable command chair with display base and an adjustable display stand will also be available soon as we've featured before in a brief roundup of Diamond Select releases. The standard edition will come with Captain Kirk, a communicator and a phaser rifle. A The Trouble with Tribbles edition will be accompanied by green-shirt Kirk and tribbles and a Mirror, Mirror variant, the I.S.S. Enterprise comes with Mirror Kirk. These latter two will be available exclusively at Entertainment Earth and Action Figure Xpress, respectively.

But the fun just doesn't stop there. Remember there were two action figure sets to be released? Spock and the Horta and Kirk vs Khan. They're a lot closer and we've now been privvy to the box art for both sets. Clearly Khan is flavour of the year let alone month at the moment, getting two new Minimates (above) and now a larger 7" poseable figure. With sculpting by Patrick Piggott, each figure comes with multiple interchangeable parts and a deluxe diorama base, as well as a second, non-poseable figure to interact with.

Mr. Spock's scene is straight from Devil in the Dark. A cave diorama and the Horta. The interchangeable hands mean he can hold a phaser or tricorder or establish a mental link with the Horta. Spock even comes with an alternate grimacing head! You can see all these additional pieces in the pack here, below as well as in the larger image of the assembled scene (above).

Captain Kirk on the other hand is facing a much more dangerous situation in the second diorama. He comes with an engineering room base, second set of hands, broken phaser and a control rod...oh, and Khan! It is of course based on the classic Space Seed from the first year of The Original Series. 

Packaging-wise it's been kept clean and simple although there have been some minor theme changes to go with the new series of figures. Taking a closer look at the script, not only does it tell the collector something about the character background but also about the scene itself - the Horta in the case of Spock and Khan for Kirk.

From the way they have been packaged I would suspect we might be getting a full range of the classic crew as these are distinctly titled Captain Kirk and Mr Spock...when do we get a McCoy in Sickbay perhaps or a Scotty in the Jeffries Tube? Or is it that each crewmember will be featured in a scene from an episode in which they were prominent (Sulu fencing...?) Just a suggestion, Diamond Select...!

You can find out more about the Diamond Select Star Trek range by visiting their rather nice website now!

All pictures courtesy of Diamond Select Toys