Where the first wave of Playmates’ newly-launched Deep Space Nine range of Star Trek action figures was a resounding success hailed by collectors, the second wave had many people – ranging from serious Trek collectors to casual fans – scratching their heads in confusion. The second wave was the wave of Stupid Uniform Tricks, a cheap practice made possible by the fact that Next Generation and Deep Space Nine occasionally shared uniforms.
First off, there were some significant gaps addressed in the lineup of guest and recurring characters. The very cool Tosk and Hunter Of Tosk figures from the early first season episode Captive Pursuit captured those characters’ costumes and makeup in striking detail, and still stand out as highlights of Playmates’ Star Trek toy line. Similarly, in the taking-the-bad-with-the-good department, there’s the Rom/Nog pack. Rom was a fully-detailed (and beautifully scuplted) likeness of Max Grodenchik’s Ferengi character. The letdown? It was accompanied by a tiny Nog figure which was in a fixed position – really more of a statuette than anything. Considering the prominence to which Nog would rise in later seasons, it’s startling that the character wasn’t revisited.
But that wasn’t the most shocking, nor bizarre, addition to the second wave of Deep Space Nine toys.
O’Brien and Bashir had appeared in Next Generation-style Starfleet duty uniforms in the series pilot, Emissary, and in this case figures of these characters in those short-lived uniforms were created by putting the existing Bashir or O’Brien head sculpts atop existing Next Generation character bodies – in O’Brien’s case, the figure was an O’Brien head atop a Geordi La Forge body.
And if DS9 characters can be garbed in Next Generation gear, why not do the reverse? This is exactly what Playmates did, putting Picard and Riker heads on existing copies of the Bashir DS9 uniform body. Since that body was sculpted with only two rank pips, Picard’s two extra pips were clumsily painted on (see detail at right). But when did these characters appear in these uniforms with the original Next Generation-style combadges?
They didn’t.
At least not on film.
In a bizarre move that presaged later oddities in the Star Wars toy pantheon, Playmates created an Alternate Universe adventure out of nowhere, with evil twins of Picard and Lt. Thomas Riker taking over the station from Sisko and company, at least according to the cut-out character file cards on the back of the blister cards.
It was a slightly intelligence-insulting move on Playmates’ part. And it wouldn’t be their last.
After the second wave, the Deep Space Nine toy range was absorbed into Playmates no-series-specified toy range with the simple title of “Star Trek.”