More Dolls on My Doorstep

For the past few years, Diamond Select Toys has been "remaking" the old Mego Star Trek dolls from the 1970s. My brother and I had most of them when we were kids, and I still have them stored away with my other toy "treasures" (except for the "Neptunian" doll, which mysteriously "disappeared" along with my vintage Star Wars "Landspeeder" ... no doubt during one of my dear dad's housecleaning "raids" over the years [thank goodness I got the Millennium Falcon out in time]).

Anyway, I've been collecting these new "retro cloth figures," as they're called, and yesterday, "Lt. Uhura" and the "Mugato" arrived inside my screen door. I owned the Uhura doll as a kid, but my brother and I never got the much-rarer Mugato doll, which looks nothing like the furry white "monster" from the TV show. This Mugato is just an old Planet of the Apes doll with orange skin and a horn on its head, and dressed in a brightly colored "leisure suit" with frills on the cuffs and ankles. It's pretty zowie-looking.

Any day now, I'm expecting the next two dolls to arrive: "Mr. Chekov" and the "Cheron." I owned the latter as a kid, but Chekov is all-new. There was never a doll made of him in the 1970s, so this is an exciting first, indicating how well these new "old" dolls are being received.

The next two dolls in the series also will be brand-new originals: "Lt. Sulu" and the "Gorn." Like Chekov, there was never a Sulu doll in the 1970s ... but there was a Gorn. Unfortunately, like the Mugato, the original Gorn looked nothing like the TV show version; it was merely a Klingon body/uniform paired with a brown-painted "Lizard" (that is, the Spider-Man villain) head. The weird thing is that Mego could have used the green "Lizard" head for the Gorn, which had green skin on the TV show, but it wouldn't have matched the "brown" Klingon uniform. Bleah!

However, Diamond Select (DS) is pulling yet another first with the new Gorn doll: It's been completely retooled and will look exactly like the alien on the TV show. (Makes you wonder, however, why the Mugato never got the same "re-treatment.")

So, which of the original Star Trek dolls are left to make? Only two from the "Aliens" series:

• Talosian
  
• Neptunian

To go along with these, I hope DS will create two more original Enterprise crew dolls like Chekov and Sulu:

• Nurse Chapel
• Yeoman Rand

It would be pretty simple. For example, the only "new" parts made for Chekov and Sulu were their heads, which were then paired with the "Capt. Kirk" body and uniform (minus some of the gold braid on the cuffs). For the new women dolls, DS could use the "Uhura" body/uniform and just make new heads for Chapel and Rand.

Conveniently, Rand wears the same red uniform as Uhura (minus the gold braid), so that's pretty cost-efficient. Chapel, however, wears a blue female uniform, but I suppose DS could just "dye" the red one (if that's how things are done).

Finally, there was supposed to be an all-new "Khan" doll in the works, but I don't know what's up with that. If it ever happens, then it might be cool to reissue the "original" brown Gorn, just for the sake of completeness.