A Fond Look Back At Mego’s 1974 Star Trek Action Figures – YouTube
hi this is Jim from Trek world and over the years there has been no better example of brand Association than what existed between the Migo toy Corporation and Star Trek in the 1970s now although Migo had only produced Star Trek toys in the mid to late 70s they are still some of the most desirable toys ever to appear in Star Trek’s fandom so join me after the break as we take a look at the single most iconic line of Star Trek merchandise ever produced after watching this video please remember to check out our channel for these other great videos also please be sure to like this video so that YouTube will offer it more people lastly please consider becoming a VIP supporter via our patreon site using the link below in the description okay we need to begin this video the right way of all of the research that I have ever done for Star Trek video material I have never encountered so
many keepers of the lore as I have when researching Migo toys and I mean that as a great compliment that is not sarcasm the fandom around me go is one of the most curated repositories that I have ever seen there are so many websites forums channels groups photos and videos that the challenge is not in finding material the challenge is in figuring out how to pick and choose what material can be used to tell my story but before we continue I want to thank these sites for being the standard bearers for all things me go without them this video would have been a much more different and probably boring video by the early 1970s the Migo toy Corporation established itself as part of the elite Vanguard of toy companies here in the United States their superheroes line of eight inch action figures quickly set the standard for
what the average action figure would look like pretty much for the next decade now with the success of their original lines they sought to augment their offerings to include more than just superheroes and to do so they looked at Movies and TV they were the first ones to do this for Action Figure marketing Migo presents the Star Trek action figures featuring the crew of the Enterprise Captain James T Kirk their fearless leader Dr Bones McCoy caring for the health of the Enterprise crew Scotty the chief engineer in charge of the transporter role Mr Spock the Vulcan second in command and the Klingon say Klingon enemy of the Star Trek crew Star Trek action figures complete with accessories show each sold separately from ego very quickly they picked up properties
like Planet of the Apes and not too long after that they approached Paramount for the rights to license Star Trek toys now when they did they were caught a little off guard because the deal they got from Paramount actually surprised them Paramount wanted a five percent royalty on the MSRP of every item they sold and that’s actually fairly standard it’s pretty much the exact same terms that desilu had offered AMT what really surprised me go was though that normally when you enter into these kind of agreements you go into these agreements by paying an advance against royalties which means okay Paramount I know I’m going to give you five percent of everything that we sell but what I’m going to do right now is I’m going to give you an advance against that five percent and you know what if we sell a lot of them then I’ll be writing you more check the folks at Amigo were absolutely amazed that Paramount only wanted a five thousand dollar advance
this really seemed like a deal that was too good to be true and maybe compared to all of the other licensing they paid like who knows what they paid Fox for Planet of the Apes however it worked out they thought they got a steal with Star Trek and their timing was impeccable despite the fact that the television series had been canceled over five years before Star Trek was beginning to gain popularity more than it ever had before through reruns and the release of the cartoon Saturday morning TV series Migo capitalized on the success with the historical release of the first Five Star Trek figures in late 1974. now by the time they would be done they would release a total of three different waves of action figures and about 14 different figures they would also do two play sets and a whole bunch of electronic accessories that we’re going to take a look at all in future videos this video ladies and gentlemen is specific to what I will call wave one late 1974 the
original five are out the door now an interesting point that a lot of people have noticed here is although the Figures were made to match the Visage from a live action series it is obvious in most of their marketing drawings that they also looked at Star Trek the animated series for inspiration in all honesty it sort of makes sense remember dolls were bought by kids and kids buy what they see on TV and the most recent thing that they saw in Star Trek were cartoons so the box I very heavily figured characters that were not photographed but the models themselves pretty darn good now as would be the case with a lot of Star Trek Collectibles these things were in very high demand now as a result they pretty much disappeared by the middle to late 1970s and the prices had begun to already Skyrocket at conventions fortunately for the world they discovered a cache of these in Canada in