| 10.01.2015 – Star Trek has a rich world of stories, ships, technology and alien worlds. When Hasbro acquired the rights to produce merchandise for the well beloved franchise the fans thought the toy brand would produce action figure but they didn’t.
What they have acquired is the rights to produce building toys based from “Star Trek Into Darkness” in 2012 for the KRE-O brand. They produced ships and mini-figures based from the film. What’s surprising is the blind bags were something worth getting because the wave 2 is based from the TV series that includes the Salt Vampire! |
There are so many species across twelve feature films and five television series Star Trek has a bigger universe that most young generation are not familiar with. Not counting the technology and planets that make up the stories that inhabit this property would be produced in merchandise. The closest toy company that produced most of the action figures is Playmates Toys, the same company that had the rights that made most of the merchandise to the 2009 film.
But Hasbro was a surprise toy company to ever secure the rights for Star Trek, which produced all the Star Wars merchandise since acquiring Kenner in the late 1990s. The Trekkies might have been in jubilation that they can pit their red shirted Starfleet officers with the Imperial’s Stormtrooper, but it never happened what Hasbro got was the rights to produce Star Trek into their ever growing building KRE-O toy brand.
At first some thought the extent of the rights will only produce sets based from Star Trek Into Darkness, which they introduced their blind bags featuring characters mini-figure form from both JJ Abrams films. But when KRE-O got to Series 2 they revealed characters from the TV series a mix bag of interesting alien species that included the original James T. Kirk (William Shatner) and Spock (Leonard Nimoy) that’s far off from the Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto versions.
 |
| The Salt Vampire first appearance in "The Man Trap." Image from Trekcore.com |
The second wave was also introduced with different colored blind bags that also have the codes for you not to have problem getting doubles. The line-up is doubled from the first series of six characters to a full twelve, which was not followed with another wave that made Star Trek didn’t continue and eventually becoming the last series.
But out of the twelve you got interesting alien species not seen in the JJ Abrams films, but are well known to Trekkies and here where the Salt Vampire gets a little bit of spotlight being one of the underrated creatures in the original TV series.
|
|
|
|
The Last Living M-113
A creature who feed on salt must be something of a new thing back in the 1960s when Star Trek the Original Series aired the episode “The Man Trap” introducing The Salt Vampire on American Television. Its considered the last of its species that prey on humans since the planet where it lived had ran out of salt.
The Salt Vampire takes shape and form after killing its victims and was identified as M-113 creature with not specific details which planet it came from. The crew of the USS Enterprise first encountered this creature and killed it in self-defense. But before that it already killed at least four Starfleet crewmen and none of them where red shirted officers in this particular episode.
The second encounter was in the episode “The Squire of Gothos” and this one is already a stuffed creature featured in a display which was also destroyed by a phaser fire. Surely the USS Enterprise crew was trigger happy to literally put the Salt Vampire into extinction.
|
|
Kreon Salt Vampire
The version produced by KRE-O wasn’t as fiendish as the one in the original television series. This one had a little tamed appearance more like in a Halloween costume with an accessory that’s never seen in the TV show.
To a Trekkie they’ll immediately identity this as the The Salt Vampire or some as the “Salt Sucker” which has the sad appearance on its face. The design wasn’t as detailed as the creature in the series but its close enough to identity this alien specie.
This creature had a short stint in the TV series appearing twice, but there have been attempts in bringing this to other shows which never happened. There was event another version of this creature which was cut from JJ Abrams Star Trek film from 2009. But for any classic alien creature from the 1960s this comes as one of the iconic figures that would give you a recall what Kirk encountered in the original series.
“Salt Vampire” is part of the wave 2 characters for Star Trek included in the blind bag for Kre-O produced by Hasbro and OxFord Toys. This was sold on clearance at Toys R' Us store in the Philippines for PhP 100.00 pesos each.
For more stories and other features LIKE Philippine Bricksters on Facebook and follow on Twitter at: @PhilBricksters
No comments:
Post a Comment