With the success of the first wave of Playmates’ Star Trek: The Next Generation action figures, the question became: what next?
For the most part, the answer was repetition. Just do what you did before, and everything will be fine.
The same Enterprise crew members released in the first wave once again formed the backbone of the new selection of characters, only this time in the season one and two spandex uniforms. Worf was issued in yet a third variation as well, in Klingon warrior garb, and a revised Borg (though essentially the same body mold with a different “cybernetic arm”) hit the shelves. Geordi was also released in a third version, this time in dress uniform. But wave two also had some interesting new characters too.
Beverly Crusher, Guinan and Wesley were just three of the many Enterprise crew members demanded by fans, along with popular guest characters K’ehleyr (Worf’s would-be wife from The Emissary and Reunion) and Mordock (from season one’s Coming Of Age), although the latter figure was marketed simply as “Benzite.” Picard-as-Locutus was an extremely cool addition to the series, and would be reissued a few years later with chrome-plated detailing.
The new characters introduced in wave two were a vast improvement over the characters introduced in wave one. The sculpting seemed to be taken more seriously. The likenesses of Dr. Crusher, Guinan and Locutus were huge leaps ahead of the original figures in quality – and thus, the way was paved for the first batch of Classic Trek figures, released in time for Christmas 1993.
