>>10484944I recently picked up the Playmates Movie Series Star Trek 2 figures for Kirk, Spock and Khan. Apparently they didn't sell that well because they were all on clearance for $10. I think the sculpts are decent, although the QC for the face paint apps seemed really shoddy. I had to search through a few to find ones that looked decent. Without burying the lead though, I think Star Trek is in trouble. Classic Trek is not selling well and I think it's obvious that it's because all of Paramount's attempts at bringing Star Trek back recently have failed to engage with young people. and the people who are toy collecting age apparently all want TNG, not TOS. The ReAction figures for TOS were great but they likewise seem to have failed to sell particularly well.
Moreover though, I think 5" scale is too niche. The format that sells well right now is 1/12. 1/18 still has a pretty decent market because it's ideal for vehicle play, but 5" lacks the shelf presence of Star Wars Black Series and Marvel Legends, and there's not really any reason to go smaller because Star Trek action figures have basically never focused on vehicle play. These movie series figures could have been Star Trek's answer to Star Wars Black Series but they don't quite do it. Black series is already smaller than Marvel Legends and just barely fits into what I would consider the lower end of 1/12, and 5" Trek figures are even smaller than that. Since this is entirely a line that lives and dies on people wanting physical representations of the characters, and given that 1/12 is already popular, I think Playmates made the wrong call here.
Still, that doesn't really address the fact that Star Trek TOS is not really catching with millennial collector space, and zoomers seemingly have no interest in it at all. That's entirely on Paramount. All of their recent shows seem to just make fun of TOS for being old and lame, and then Paramount wonders why young people don't give a crap about Trek.
