Star Trek Hot Wheels Coming In May

The 2009 Star Trek toy news keeps on coming, with yet another venerable line from Mattel getting into the game. This May, Mattel will offer fans and collectors the first ever Hot Wheels brand Star Trek ships, starting with some Star Trek classics. TrekMovie provides the details and preorder information below.

 

Classic Ships Meet A Classic Toy Line
To celebrate the return of Star Trek to the big time in 2009, Mattel’s Hot Wheels line is going retro with four 1:50 scale die-cast model ships. The line will feature four of Trek’s most iconic ships.

  • USS Enterprise NCC-1701 Refit (TMP era)
  • Klingon Bird of Prey (as seen in Star Trek III)
  • USS Reliant NCC-1864 (Star Trek II)
  • USS Enterprise 1701 D (Next Generation)

These die-cast metal ships are 1:50 scale (around 4" long) and according to Mattel, will be "loaded with the kind of detail that will drive Star Trek collectors and Trekkies absolutely wild with excitement." No photos are available yet, but maybe we will see some coming out of Toy Fair in New York next month.

The new Star Trek die-cast Hot Wheels arrive in May. The set of four is available for pre-order at Entertainment Earth for $54.99.

Mattel, Hot Wheels and Trek
Mattel’s Hot Wheels line is almost as venerable as Star Trek itself, starting in 1968 and with a legion of fans of its own, and talk now of a major motion picture based on the toy line. What is interesting, and exciting, is that Mattel has been doing a wonderful job of pairing Star Trek to its most popular lines. Fans are already familiar with Mattel’s "Barbie" branded 12" figures for the 2009 Star Trek feature film. Those figures are winning praise for their detailing and likenesses. Here, the pairing of Hot Wheels and Star Trek is a great idea because like Barbie, there is more than one group of collectors and fans for the item. Hot Wheels has a loyal collecting base and these toys may help to introduce some to the coolness of Trek. Vice versa, Star Trek collectors may find an interest in other Hot Wheel items. It also bodes well that the world’s best selling toy company, Mattel, has such confidence in Star Trek that it is getting this kind of treatment. While many collectors were disappointed with the first reveal of Playmate items, this news is good salve.

Here is a full list (with pre-order links) of the otheritems Mattel has planned for Star Trek in 2009:

Not the first die-cast Trek
Even though these are the first Hot Wheels Star Trek items, Trek has a long history of die-cast metal toys starting with Dinky in the 70s and continuing on with companies such as Corgi, ERTL, and Galoob. The last last licensee for die-cast was Corgi, who haven’t released a Trek die-cast for over two years.


Early die-cast Trek toy from 1976

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Hot Wheels were always my favourite toy as a kid. Plus, my mom worked for Mattel so I had everything.

Looking very retro, cant wait for this movie to come out in May.

Nice, can’t wait.

HEY EVERYONE—LOOK AT THAT DIE CAST ENTERPRISE TOY FROM 1976! I bet thats where JJ got the idea to put the new Enterprise’s registry number at the very front of the saucer module!

It is impossible that any of these will be 1/50 scale

5,
Probably 1/50 the size of the original studio model, is what I’m guessing. These are more like 1/1000 if anything.

I used to have one of those die-cast “Dinky” Enterprise toys when I was a little kid!!!

very cool! I HAVE that die cast Enterprise from 1976. The “bridge” are would turn so it could shoot out these discs. And there is a compartment on the underside that opens up and a small plastic space shuttle is in there. I don’t have the discs or the shuttle anymore.. I was 9 when I had it back in 76! But the Enterprise is still in great shape!

Anyone else think we were getting young Kirk’s Corvette when you saw the headline?

& what of Johnny Lightning?

I actually has the “CORGI TOYS” version back when I was a kid!
Oh yes #9 I also thought we’d be seeing the “Kirk Corvette”.
Thank G-d, we’re not — unless Chevrolet decided to come out with a real “commerotive Kirk Corvette!

7
Me, too. It fired discs out of a slot in the front edge of the saucer.

Ooops. Didn’t see Post #8 when I said that…

A 4″ long 1701A would be 1:3000 scale, a 4″ long 1701D would 1:6200, the BoP would be 1:1080… and a 1:50 scale 1701A would be 20 feet long, and 1701D would be almost 42 feet long! While I’d love to see ones that size, where would I put it?

YOU SNOOZE, YOU LOSE…

I’ve been waiting for Johnny Lightning versions of the Klingon Bird of Prey for, what, YEARS now?

Thank you, Hot Wheels! Can’t wait to put that sucker on my desk at work!

It’ll be hard to top Johnny Lightning’s current line, although it has been getting pretty stagnent; a lot of repaints of the same moulds over & over again. I’m really glad to hear that we’re getting a Bird of Prey, evryone’s favorite Klingon ship.
Here’s hoping they do an extensive line with a lot of variation in ship design, I’d love to see Defiant & some Dominion ships as well as more Starfleet classes respresented.
The Enterprise era Klingon ships are cool, too! A Raptor class would be nice!

Hopefully, Hot Wheels will get these in regular stores with far more efficiency than Johnny Lightning did. Though not die-cast, it’d be great to get better availability of the Furuta Trek models in the States as well. They’re nicely done.

16. Katarian Eggs stated: I’m really glad to hear that we’re getting a Bird of Prey, evryone’s favorite Klingon ship.

—–

I must be in the minority because the D-7/K’tinga battlecruiser is my favorite Klingon ship.

#18—If that’s a minority opinion, then count me in as well.

I hated the Klingon “Bird Of Prey”. Painting ships like “giant birds of prey” was a Romulan practice, as established in “Balance Of Terror”.

Give me the battlecruisers from TOS/TMP anyday!

The Excelsior or the Enterprise-B would be kick-ass! Since I’m on a roll, I’d love to see and Enterprise-C. Oh Hell, they oughtta just make a special set with all the Enterprises (not Trek 0’s though, that’s a special case)

I’d love to see an Excelsior or Enterprise-B.

I loved the Johnny Lightning line, and have most of the set, but goshdarn they’re hard to find!

There was also a pewter series made for FASA’s ST Tactical Combat simulation game of the 80’s, too. Amarillo Design Bureau I believe was the manufacturer’s name.

Wasn’ there like a Micro Machines set of Star Trek ships too? I remember collecting several them years ago.

Now there’s all gone… swallowed by time (and after moving through four different homes).

Ladies & Gentlemen, as per #18 & #20, I stand corrected.
Apparently The Bird of Prey isn’t as popular as she used to be.

#20 – You’re quite right. However it’s clearly noted in “The Enterprise Incident” that Romulans & Klingons were trading ship design technology during this era. It’s likley that one copied the other & as Romulans are notorious for stealing technological advancements from other cultures rather than developing them themselves, I’m forced to hypothesize that the bird-like shape & paint jobs likely originated with the Klingons.

#18 – D-7 is a nice design, but I like the Raptor class best of all.

JOHNNY LIGHTNING:

They started out GREAT, but then fell back on simply reusing the same molds with different paint-jobs or decals. The final straw for me was, rather than finally put out ships like the Klingon Bird of Prey, TMP Klingons cruisers or TMP Vulcan Shuttle, we’d get “cloaked” versions of previous ships or “battle-damaged” ships with little plastic laserbolts attached to them, which made them look BUTT-UGLY.

They got lazy real fast. Time for Hot Wheels to take up the charge and show them how it’s done…

Excellent! My desk will be too crowded for actual work… but, who cares!

#25—” it’s clearly noted in “The Enterprise Incident” that Romulans & Klingons were trading ship design technology during this era.”

Not exactly.

“Intelligence reports Romulans now using Klingon design.”—Spock, “the Enterprise Incident”.

This single line of dialogue seems to be responsible for the notion that there was any ‘mutual exchange’ going on, and quite frankly that “fanon” explanation never really made any sense.

Why would the xenophobic Romulans surrender their most prized technological/tactical advantage (namely, the cloaking device) to a rival empire merely for the rights to utilize a ship design? And even if they had, why would the Klingons paint that ship in a manner which is distinctly Romulan?

In the 1950’s, 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s, the Chinese frequently copied Soviet military designs without permission or blessing. Given the obvious allegories involving the Klingons/Romulans to Cold War-era Russians/Chinese, it seemed far more likely to me that the Romulans would have simply captured and copied a Klingon design.

In the dvd commentary on TSFS, the production designer notes that the BOP was originally supposed to be a Romulan ship which Kruge had commandeered. That was, at one point, part of the film’s storyline. That was fine, except that—instead, the BOP became a staple of the Klingon fleet going forward. It was a long time before we saw Klingons in any other type of ship.

The whole “mutual exchange” explanation never held water for me.

#26 SPB

LOL!!

Couldn’t agree more!! The phaser blasts & photons shooting out of the Johnny lightning ships look so cartoonish & lame!!

I don’t mind the battle damaged variants & I kinda like the little plastic fires on some ships. My favorite of their whole line is actually the SFS destructed Enterprise NCC-1701.

But they need to get some new moulds over there!!!

How many times can we repro the same ship?!

The cloaked versions really suck! They look like Wonder Woman’s invisible jet…if it’s invisible, why can I still see the outline of it?

Hopefully, Hot Wheels won’t fall into the same trap!!

Personally I hate the Bird of Prey. When I first saw it in STIII I thought it was a good design, but more Romulan than Klingon. Since then, it’s been so insanely overused and scale-independent (it’s one size in one film, another in this TNG episode, yet another in that DS9 ep, etc.) that I can’t stand seeing the damn thing anymore.

Give me a D7 any day.

28. Closettrekker

The Romulans would have been willing to trade their cloaking device for the advantage of faster, more energy efficient ships. In “Balance of Terror” it’s clear that their speed is lesser than the Enterprise & their primary plasma weapon is extremely taxing on the ships power.
The two were allies until the Kitomer massacre, so there’s little risk in sharing the cloak, especially as Romulans could probably see through their own cloaking device.

But you’re right, it’s all fannon-

Bottom line, bird shaped ships are cool & used by both!

#19 – 1:50 might be a popular scale for diecast vehicles, but it’s -not- accurate to say that a 4″ long 1:50 replica of a Star Trek spacecraft has the proper proportional relationship to the “real” spacecraft. That would imply that the real thing would only be 200″ long. 1:50 is 1:50, regardless of how some marketing person uses the scale to describe a toy product.

@32

I was wondering if anyone was going to say that. I was reading all the posts before I spoke up, just in case someone else mentioned it. And to have it come from the master is even better.

Yeah, 1/50 is clearly wrong. I wonder what the real scale is. A 1/50 scale Enterprise (1701) would be nearly 19 feet long! Which granted, would be an awesome model, but I think that’s a pipe dream.

…What? A Hot Wheels without the trademarked redstripe wheels? For shame! :-P

#31—“Romulans could probably see through their own cloaking device.”

Not according to the Romulan Commander in “The Enterprise Incident”. She was quite clear that even they did not have the technology to detect a vessel such equipped.

“The Romulans would have been willing to trade their cloaking device for the advantage of faster, more energy efficient ships. In “Balance of Terror” it’s clear that their speed is lesser than the Enterprise & their primary plasma weapon is extremely taxing on the ships power.”

Again, they wouldn’t need a trade to accomplish that, just as the Chionese didn’t to copy the MIG-15/MIG-21, etc..

Furthermore, the reason the “Bird Of Prey” in BOT is much slower is the enormous energy spent by the cloaking device and the plasma weapon. That is the trade off for its destructive power. That doesn’t in itself preclude the Romulans from having the capability of building a more energy-efficient ship.

“The two were allies until the Kitomer massacre, so there’s little risk in sharing the cloak…”

I’ll take your word that they were allies (I’m not a huge TNG fan, so my knowledge of that show is limited) until then, but that doesn’t change the fact that Romulans are xenophobic in nature, and therefore unlikely to see the loss of the cloaking device advantage as something which affords little risk (allies or not).

I think it was simply a poor creative choice, continuity-wise.

In any case, my point was that the fanon notion of a mutual exchange treaty was always built upon shaky ground, and something in which I never saw much merit.

Moreover, I never viewed Klingons as the type to do anything in a cloaked scoutship that accomodated a mere dozen warriors. That in itself seems very Romulan. I always pictured Klingons as appearing in huge, bulky battlecrusiers, and preferring to approach troublesome issues with overwhelming force.

35. Closettrekker

I stand corrected, you’re right about “The Enterprise Incident” line, of course.

This all roots for a limited budget & a poor creative excuse for recycling
models.

But if Klingons only used big bulky cruisers, they’d be wiped out pretty quickly. The BOP serves in the capacity of a fighter plane during fleet conflicts. It’s faster & more manuverable than a larger ship (which makes no sense,cause this is space so mass isn’t a factor).

The Romulan-Klingon allegence is covered in several TNG episodes.

When I read the totle I never thought about the corvette! But that would be cool.. I’d buy the Hotwheels Jimmy Kirk Corvette for sure.. along with the ships they are putting out. Why not?

I just visited the official movie site at http://www.startrekmovie.com

Wow, I haven’t heard anyone around here talking much about it, but it looks cool! Glad I stumbled onto it. I don’t know how I missed it up til now.

Theses should definitely be cool! Looking forward to seeing how they compare to the Johnny Lightning versions from a few years back.

#36 “It’s faster & more manuverable than a larger ship (which makes no sense,cause this is space so mass isn’t a factor).”

Since when is mass NOT a factor in changing the direction of an object in motion?

#32

Rick,

The language of toys is not the same argot as the language of models or the language of special effects. The term “1:50” and the idea of it relating to “4 inches” is proper in the context of talking about this hobby. This is not marketing language, it is a standard in this hobby.

Whoooooooosh! I’m gonna get one of those.

36: It’s as Captain Dunsel says. There may be weightlessness in space, but you’re forgetting inert mass, which is defined as resistance against acceleration.

#33 “A 1/50 scale Enterprise (1701) would be nearly 19 feet long! Which granted, would be an awesome model, but I think that’s a pipe dream.”

Bring it on! I’ll find space for it in my living room…

#40 and #42—Forgive my limited knowledge of physics, but I suppose my immediate assumption would be that overall mass is less of a factor in space, as compared to within the Earth’s atmosphere, but its “inert mass” would still be resistant to acceleration, and thus it remains a factor in maneuvering ability. Is that correct?

I normally do not spend much time thinking of such things, since it is really outside of my interests, but I was curious.

40. Captain Dunsel & 42. Holger

No gravity, no atmospheric resistance. If you apply thrust in any vector, ship moves there. Inert mass not a factor in a vacuum, there is no resistance against acceleration. The ship should theoretically move at an almost constant speed in any direction without need for more than 1 initial thrust, until it hits something.

Can you race them in one of those loop tracks?

If they’re 4″ long, they’d have to be 1/500 or so, not 1/50. 1/50th scale on a 400 foot ship would translate to about 6 feet – cool, but not portable!

Erm, 1/50 would be EIGHT feet, not six feet – and still not portable…

#41 – It only makes sense if you’re talking about toy cars, not toy spaceships. Scaling is math, pure and simple.

And when you’re talking about toy spacehips, even companies making diecast replicas of the Saturn V/Apollo combinations and the Space Shuttle all use the proper scales.