It was January 16, 1995 when the premiere episode of Star Trek Voyager, titled “Caretaker,” premiered with nearly 14 million fans tuned to the UPN network’s very first show. From 1995 to 2001, Voyager produced almost 170 episodes and brought new demographics to Star Trek audiences. It also brought a variety of collectibles. To celebrate the premiere of Voyager 17 years ago, TrekMovie time travels through the years to look at some of the collectibles based on the show and its characters.
COLLECTING VOYAGER
Action Figures and Toys
Playmates Toys was the toy licensee during most of Voyager’s years on television. The toy company offered 4”, 9” and 12” action figures, as well as role playing items and ships such as the U.S.S. Voyager. The Voyager toy ship is one of the rarer ships and often commands hundreds of dollars in mint condition at auction.
4" Voyager figures from Playmates
9" Voyager figures from Playmates
9" Voyager figures from Playmates
Unfortunately for Voyager fans, current toy licensee Art Asylum/Diamond Select Toys has created only 1 Voyager action figure in its line. The “Timeless” Geordi La Forge action figure was a DVD premium item and not available at retail stores. DST did feature Captain Janeway in their line of captain’s busts, however.
Diamond Select’s "Timeless" Geordi figure
Janeway bust from DST
Species 8472 was given the super bendable “bendy” treatment by Headliners in 2000.
Headliners Species 8472 bendy toy
Other companies have produced Voyager ship toys, including Galoob for their Micro Machines line and more recently, Johnny Lightning.
Johnny Lightning Voyager ships
Micro Machines Voyager ships
Plates and glasses
Voyager had many collector plates produced based on specific episodes and characters. One of the most interesting was a rectangle plate from the Franklin Mint featuring Janeway and a Kazon as part of their “Greatest Battles” line. Also Creation Entertainment included Voyager in their collection of shot glasses.
Voyager plate from Franklin Mint
Voyager shot glass from Creation
Games
Star Trek Voyager has been turned into an arcade game, computer games, and has been featured in Star Trek Monopoly, Scene It?, trivia, and collectible card games.
Voyager Trivia Game from Mattel
Paper Collectibles
Voyager has produced many paper based collectibles, from novels to trading cards, from 8×10 photos to Starlog magazines. Voyager actors have been very fan friendly and attend conventions frequently, and a fun hobby for many fans is to collect autographs on some of these paper based products.
Voyager cards from Skybox (came unsigned)
Creation Entertainment Voyager Cast Photo (came unsigned)
Hallmark Ornaments
Hallmark produced some of its very best Star Trek Keepsake Christmas Ornaments sculpts for the Voyager line which included Captain Kathryn Janeway, Seven of Nine, The Doctor, the Voyager, the Delta Flyer, and a Borg cube from 1996 until 2002.
Hallmark USS Voyager Ornament
Hallmark Borg Cube Ornament
Hallmark 7of9 Ornament
Hallmark Janeway Ornament
Hallmark Delta Flyer Ornament
Hallmark Doctor Ornament
VHS/DVDs
One of the interesting things about Star Trek: Voyager is that it is really the first Star Trek television shown born during the era of the Internet becoming an everyday technology. It was there as the world changed technologically into the modern Internet era. As such, there are some Voyager items which are “old school” such as VHS tapes from Columbia House and more modern technologies such as DVDs.
Voyager on VHS…remember VHS?
Happy 17th Birthday, Star Trek: Voyager!
Cool stuff. What about the model kits too? I built the 3-ship set a number of years ago, and they were good little replicas.
its missing the star trek voyager alarm clock
had that for years….good times !
Fun article John!
Voyager was just a pretty ship. I love her!
Some very nice stuff, great collectables!
@4
Voyager was always a really awkward shape to me, but aside from its nacelles it wasn’t a bad little ship to me. It also had a few more good angles than the old Enterprise did (which all the effects photographers complained about.)
The Delta Flyer is a damn nice shuttle, and if we ever get more Trek in the Prime universe I’d love to see Flyer-type shuttles become standard issue on Federation vessels.
I still have the model kit in my basement–it was one of the first ships I put together where I did all of the detail work. I liked the show for the most part–still disapointed in how it ended.
Who’s the action figure in the very first photo standing on the far right in a blue uniform? I don’t see Neelix in the group. Looks like he raided the pajama party.
#8 AJ
That is the Tom Paris “mutated” action figure.
8. I’m guessing it’s a Vidiian (Phage dudes). Or maybe the Tom Paris lizard. What’s up with the 5th guy from the right? Looks like he’s turning into a werewolf or something.
How sad that Diamond Select never released any Voyager figures other than LaForge, which is really more of a TNG tie-in figure.
And that they never completed their DS9 line with the Cardassian & Ferengi characters is even more of a tragedy.
I suppose we might see some retro versions in the mego format, but those are hideous.
Thanks John for the Voyager info. TrekMovie does indeed go beyond the new movie. Interesting Seven Christmas ornament. She’s so va-va-va voom, I wonder if some people might have thought that it wasn’t appropriate. I have a couple Voyager VHS tapes still. “The Cloud.” “Heroes and Demons.”
Although they over played the Borg and they soon became not very scary, I did enjoy how the delved deeper into how the Collective works…. the episode Dark Frontier was a great episode as it showed the assimilation process, the Resistence probablity….. good episodes wrapped in a lackluster series.
6. Gotta agree with you about the nacelles. It seems that stubby engine pods were part of the 24th century design ethic. While it might imply that technology advanced because smaller engines are now doing the job that much larger ones used to do, they just didn’t look as cool.
Otherwise, the Intrepid Class was a pretty nice looking ship.
The Hallmark 7of9 Ornament – it looks like Seven is having some R-rated “alone time”.
Lol @15
^
Diamond got the combadge wrong on the Timeless Jordi figure.
In the episode he’s wearing the traditional alternate timeline combadge.
Love Voyager, great photos!
6/14 – The nacelles on Voyager are shorter because the verterium cortenide in the coils has been densified and subjected to inverse turbo-encabulation. Honest!
its all about QVC’s Star trek Hour :*( miss it so much
17. Sweet!
As long as you don’t make the nacelles the size of walnuts! ;-)
6. I have to agree about the Delta Flyer, it was/is an awesome shuttle. I too think that in the prime universe a Flyer-type shuttle should be a standard compliment to the supply of shuttles for starships. Its design is quite versatile and can be adaptable, it is like a Runabout light vessel.
when they will be the new figures of voyager artasylum or DST???
I have all those Playmates figures mint or near mint condition on cards and will sell to the highest bidder. Full set only. I will not break the set. Ditto for Generations and First Contact. These have been attic-stored in Rubbermaid containers. :-)
Wow, there sure was a lot of junk made in the name of Star Trek. I guess it kept a lot of Chinese factories going for a number of years.
Why wouldn’t we remember VHS?
I still have a 7 of 9 beach towel :)
Lynn Norton, who has occasionally posted here, is an incredibly talented guy who has sculpted most if not all of Hallmark’s Trek ships. In styrene, with little teeny tools. At the same size as the final product. I’ve mentioned before that I got to meet him in Huntsville, Alabama at a Trek celebration, and saw some hulls in progress. His tool box is astounding. I’m still tickled to have had him bring miniature versions of my designs to life.
#25
Congratulations on all the achievements of Star Trek: Voyager’s designs, Rick. Your work inspires people today, 17 years later!
Voyager sucked so I never bought their collectables.
Although not my favourite series, I still enjoyed watching Voyager.
It should have done more with its premise but had some great episodes and some great high concept ideas.
Hard to believe it has been 17 years, I want to go back to the Golden era of Trek.
Voyager was a lost cause…horrible story telling. The ship should have been, dirty, run down, and falling apart by the series end. More conflict between the crews. Blah…horrid.
Loved voyagerdispite it’s star trek by numbers quality that every trek show after 3rd season Next Gen had!
I liked & bought a lot of the merchandise & sadly yes, even the VHS…
Say what you want about Voyager, you can’t deny that Voyager didn’t have some great collectables! I have some of those figures, micro machines and I think I even have the playmates Voyager ship! I’ll have to check my bins to see where it is and what condition it is, maybe I can sell it for some decent $!
I’m sort of indifferent to Voyager because it was the first Trek I was able to really comprehend, understand and remember because I was old enough to understand it. I loved it while it was on yet after it ended, as I got older and discovered other non-Trek Sci-fi I realized the flaws of Voyager. I loved how in Battlestar Galactica as the series progressed the ship got more beat up and damaged. I wish Voyager was like that, but it was probably easier to make Galactica slowly degrade because Galactica was a CGI model vs. Voyager which at least until the later seasons was a computer-generated model.
Also there should have been SGU-like conflict on the ship, conflict between the Maquis and the Federation crew members and even crew members disgruntled with Janeway’s decisions going over to the Maquis side OR even creating their own faction. That would have been interesting. I think they also should have picked up more crew members along the way as they visited planets. Maybe they met explorers who wanted to join the intrepid (pun intended) ship.
A terrible, terrible show. Great concept executed in the worst possible way.
34. That was the big problem with Voyager to me. There was no sense that it was lost and struggling to get home. You would think with tight resources that holodeck might be closed down. One of the best BSG eps was one of the earliest ones, “Water”. It showed that resources were an issue and they didn’t deus ex machina ways to cover it up. Neelix making soup from vegetables from a foreign planet was about as rough as it got as he cooked in a mess that looked like a Hilton. Meanwhile the BSGers were eating processed pond scum. Watching Star Trek is always an exercise in stretching your disbelief, but the Voyager missed a lot of dramatic potential by just being another series about an undifferentiated Federation starship under no apparent stress (I’d make the same comparison with DS9’s space station and Babylon 5’s: B5 looked liked it had some rough edges, whereas O’Brien complaining about the mucked up DS9, which looked like the Mall of America, was embarrasingly stupid).
I guess I don’t quite get the Christmas ornaments. Maybe it is generational, but I can’t see any reason to put the Doctor from Voyager, 7 of 9, or Janeway on the old Christmas tree. I just don’t feel a resonance there. Wonder how they sold. Maybe if you grew up with Voyager as your Trek you would have the same attachment that I have for McCoy, Spock, and Kirk, and the NCC-1701.
I’ve always loved the interior of Voyager the best of all the various ships. I’m especially fond of the color palette the show used with the deep blues and reds. The bridge always lokked amazing during red alert when the lights would dim and the blues and reds would stand out. Gave it much more atmosphere than when the Ent-D would go to red alert.
#35- Well said!!
(Hmmm…cool Delta Flyer though. Missed that one.)
@1: I had that 3-ship set too! And the big Voyager model, but a nacelle snapped off. :( I wish they were still making them, I kind of want to build it again, properly this time.
Voyager could be so frustrating. You’d get a good episode, a clunker, a few “meh” episodes, and a few moments of shining awesome, and up and down it would go… I swear, if it didn’t have such gorgeous opening titles, I would have bailed on Voyager a dozen times over.
Voyager is my favorite series, I have a lot of these figures displayed in the spare room.
For all its faults, everybody forgets the faults of TOS TNG & DS9, but I’m a fan of those too.
Everyone has their favorite series, warts and all.
Right on Paul,,,!
^
To the fans of BSG, concerning the deteriation of Voyager vs the Galactica, lol.
^
First off Voyager was set in the future. The new BSG, is set in the past. (If your a fan you know this to be true).
Voyager had a crew of under 200. It was a ship that had had a functional repair crew.
Galactica was a ship that had no repair crew only a fire dept and Viper countermeasures.
#40 see I agree with you there. That is one aspect that I’m missing in most modern TV shows; Gorgeous opening titles.
Does Elite Force count as a collectible?
I played the game so darn much,especially the “Virtual Voyager” mode, that I feel as if I’ve been on the actual sets.
There was a first person arcade game based on Voyager as well.
I have both a blu-ray player and an old VHS player connected to my TV. There’s nothing wrong with a bit of “old school” now and again! :-)
#44
LOVE Voyager Elite Force! I still go through phases where I play it through and play the holomatches. I’ve never played them against anyone else. If there are still multiplayer connections out there I’m not computer savvy enough to set it up.
I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for Voyager, warts and all.
I’ve recently been re-watching Enterprise too. You know, it’s better than I remembered it!
43, oh come on! LOST had amazing opening titles! LOL.
I miss collecting all that cool stuff. The Micro Machines were my favorite
When was Janeway in an old-style Starfleet uniform???
2. pkRaiden – January 16, 2012
its missing the star trek voyager alarm clock
had that for years….good times !
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Speaking of which….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjBrqS6hitk