Sunday, 10 February 2013

A closer look at Star Trek Fighter Pods

Announced along-side the Star Trek Kre-O range Hasbro have also been showing off what seems to be their only other Star Trek Into Darkness toy range at the Toy Fair, the Star Trek Fighter Pods game. The Fighter Pods will be available exclusively at Toys'r'us, and are based on the same game already available in a Star Wars variety, featuring miniature stylised figurines, and "pods" which the figures can be put inside of, on top of, or just be knocked over with. The pods also connect, and can be launched from model ships. Like the Star Wars range, the new Star Trek line will offer lots of different characters, and variants, in sets of a variety of sizes ranging from a a handful of figurines and pods, up to large vehicle sets - This format gives the game an inherent collectability, and also allows you to play it at any scale, with just a few figurines, or with massive armies.

The new Star Trek range appears to be based on characters from the new timeline (although if it's successful I'm sure they'll expand it to the prime reality, as they already plan to with the Kreon range). The first wave includes a wide variety of characters, offering the first ever representations of many characters and species. Here's a look at the full range on display:


Continue reading after the jump to have a look at some of the individual releases, and for a game of spot-the-obscure-character:


The largest product in the range is a USS Enterprise playset. The starship comes with six figures, among those appear to be Kirk in a yellow shirt, Spock in his volcano suit, Uhura in red, and a Klingon. There is also a dark-haired character in a yellow uniform I expect is Sulu, and a brown haired character in a grey uniform that looks a bit like McCoy to me. With remarkable similarity to the Minimates USS Enterprise caricature ship, this Fighter Pods version has a opening saucer section, revealing a bridge for your figurines to hang around in, while the deflector dish also opens, allowing you to fire an "attack pod" from the engineering hull. Here is the box, and the ship:


The next sets down are a collection of four different "attack pods", similar to the one included with the Enterprise set. Each comes with four figurines, are used to launch individual characters "explosively". These have to be the biggest missed opportunity in the range; where the Star Wars series gets caricatured versions of fighters and other small ships to launch pods, the Star Trek range has this collection of generic devices with equally generic names, which don't really relate to Star Trek at all.

Each of the four pods were displayed with different figures to those shown packed with each pod - I'm assuming the packed versions are the actual assortment you get. The four attack pods are:

Star Surger - A bright yellow thing with "blast-off armor", revealing a red sled which a figurine can be propelled on. Comes with Spock and Uhura in a silver edged uniforms (possibly the wet suit variant from Into Darkness), Ayel (Nero's first officer), and Quocch (the many-faced alien from deleted scenes/the Nero comic).

 

Ninja Star - Black and red design which launches its figurine in a little canister with a "snap-out" mechanism. Comes with Scotty, McCoy, and Uhura, plus the alien with the long face (from the bar scene in the 2009 film), all in standard uniform.

 

Blade Blaster - A brownish design, comes with a Klingon, a blue alien (possibly the new Sprog character which is also coming as a Kreon), and two unknown others:


Phantom Striker - A black and silver design. The packaging is obscured in all the images I can find so far, so the figures are a mystery!


Moving to smaller sets, there will also be "Fighter Pod Starter Sets", each with four figurines and two pods, and smaller blind-bag sets with two figurines and a pod in each bag. Series 1 will apparently include 36 different figures. Two different starter sets were on display:

This one has an Orion (Gaila?), possibly Kirk, in a grey uniform, and two characters in helmeted suits; maybe volcano Spock, and a space jump suit:


The other has the bearded alien seen in the 2009 movie, what look like the same grey uniformed Kirk (maybe Chekov?), Sulu in another grey uniform, and a blue alien (maybe Sprog)


The blind bags look like this:


Other characters in the range include Nero, Keenser, the golden alien, Gorn, Klingons, and of course all the main crew, in several different uniforms. Here are some of the figures on display at the booth:

 
 
 

Image sources: Elkkthunder's Toy Room, Idle Hands Blog, Toy News International.

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