Ship bits: DST Reliant, Eaglemoss concept Enterprise-C, and Moebius Franklin

I've got a few different starship models updates today, including new images of Eaglemoss' concept art Enterprise-C, and an update on Moebius Models' USS Franklin.

But first, something we've been waiting for a long time... We have our first look at Diamond Select Toys' next Starships Legends release, the USS Reliant.

The Reliant is the next ship in DST's range of models with lights and sounds, and was announced almost two years ago now. Since then we've not had so much as a tease, and we still don't know when it's actually coming! This image is a "resin prototype" (which doesn't fill one with hope at an imminent release!), and was revealed by the Facebook page of The Toys That Made Us, a new Netflix documentary series about toys, which has a Star Trek episode coming up later in the year.

DST's habit of taking their time is perhaps symptomatic of Star Trek's long history of struggling toy lines, as The Toys That Made Us' creator Brian Volk-Weiss described when outlining the upcoming episode to Polygon:

Todd McFarlane is doing Star Trek toys now,” Volk-Weiss said, “But before that, there was Playmates. ... They just went crazy! ... With Star Wars, Kenner had one failure — the Micro Collection — but everything else, to a certain extent, was either a home run or a grand slam. With Star Trek, you literally had failure after failure.

They always made toys for the wrong movie. The original Star Trek movie? Failure. Lots of toys. Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan? Huge hit! No toys. Star Trek 3: The Search For Spock? Barely a hit, lots of toys. Star Trek 4: The Voyage Home? Biggest hit in the original movies. No toys. ... It’s literally just a comedy of errors.

Meanwhile, things are going rather more smoothly for Eaglemoss and their ever expanding Starships Collection. They released their first concept art model (a testament to their ability to dig deep and produce just about any ship going at this point), the USS Enterprise-C this month, and have now belated released some new images of the model on their web-shop:

UPDATE: The US version of the Eaglemoss shop has now also been updated with a listing for the concept Enterprise-C, and they have used a significantly better set of photos which make the model look a lot nicer!

They've also released a new 360 degree video showing off the model:



And a video of the recently released ringship Enterprise special:



UPDATE: The US Eaglemoss shop has now added a bunch of new photos of this model too:

Finally Moebius Models posted an updated on their first Kelvin timeline model kit a little while back. This new look at the USS Franklin kit is looking almost complete, with transparent parts we've not seen previously.

Entertainment Earth are optimistically still listing this for February release, but Moebius themselves expect a slightly longer wait:

Franklin is moving towards production, tooling needs a few minor fixes, but we're looking at February if all works correct! But knowing the way things work, my schedule never matches the factories, so look for it sometime early 2018

To stay up to date on all the latest starship model releases, check my 2018 schedule page. And for lists of many different ranges, including DST's Starships Legends, see my Trek Collective Lists site, and of course my increasingly huge Eaglemoss index page.