Star Trek models: No swimsuits required

Back in the 1970’s, every red-blooded American kid hung one or two model posters in their bedroom: Farrah Fawcett and Cheryl Tiegs Of course, if you’re a Star Trek fan, models also took on another meaning.

Let’s face it. If it wasn’t for the Star Trek animated series, life for a Trekkie/Trekker across the 1970’s looked bleaker than Cleveland, Buffalo, Detroit, Pittsburgh and other rust-belt cities. We settled for crumbs such as re-runs, toys/collectibles and the AMT modeling kits to help render the series in a 3-D perspective.

My childhood bedroom featured four walls packed with sports pennants and posters. And, hanging from the ceiling, the Constitution-class Enterprise, Yorktown and Lexington. Suspended by fishing line, they hung and swayed in space, crouched and ready to attack a Klingon D-7 battle cruiser and two Romulan Birds of Prey.

I dreamed of hanging  the K-7 space station in the background as a sort of attack/defense point of interest for all parties, but never got around to purchasing the model.

Overall AMT pumped out some fine models. And the best thing about these plastic ships is that they assembled pretty quickly and looked good without much paint and touch-up. AMT always included outstanding decal sets, making the Romulan Bird of Prey look every bit as awesome as it did on TV.

My favorite part of the AMT models? The decal sheets with the NCC numbers and ship names of every Constitution-class ship in the fleet. I dreamed of one-day assembling the the entire fleet and perhaps mocking up the USS Constellation with battle damage.

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The best buy in the AMT collection? The ship set, which featured the Enterprise with one Klingon and Romulan ship.

AMT also put out some interesting models in: The K-7 space station from “Trouble with Tribbles,” the Enterprise’s command bridge, the “exploration set” consisting of a phaser, communicator and tricorder, the Galileo 7 shuttlecraft and of course, Federation, Klingon and Romulan ships.

I want to meet someone who assembled all of these!