Less organic intellectuals than morbid symptoms

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L.I. Underhill is a media critic and historian specializing in pop culture, with a focus on science fiction (especially Star Trek) and video games. Their projects include a critical history of Star Trek told through the narrative of a war in time, a “heretical” history of The Legend of Zelda series and a literary postmodern reading of Jim Davis' Garfield.

6 Comments

  1. David Faggiani
    January 22, 2016 @ 1:28 am

    That's it, next time I'm at home, I'm digging out my old Star Trek Micro-Machines.

    I ended up obsessively collecting them (probably between ages 9-11? roughly 1993-1995) but the first set I ever got was the DS9 starter set – DS9 itself, a Carassian Galor Class ship, and a runabout. It almost defined that DS9 would become my favourite.

    I eventually got every Enterprise, too, except for the Enterprise-A, which always bothered me, and the only way to get it back then was buying an expensive set (probably about £20) where I already owned every single other one in the set. My parents would probably have bought it for me, for a birthday or something, but I never could quite ask for it, thinking even at age 10 that my desire for it wasn't quite proportional to the necessary outlay.

    And thus began my long desire/self-abnegation relationship with capitalism….

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  2. Josh Marsfelder
    January 22, 2016 @ 3:34 pm

    I had those Micro Machines too! I had every set up until they started releasing the ones from Voyager and the Dominion War.

    I'd completely forgotten about them. Which is dumb, as I had a lot of fun with them too. I guess they just never stood out to me as much as the Playmates toys did. I should have written an entry on Galoob's Micro Machines for this period-One more thing to keep in mind for the book version I suppose.

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  3. David Faggiani
    January 25, 2016 @ 2:03 am

    Aw no, there it is! The unobtained Enterprise-A (or refit original Enterprise?) taunting me from its little inset top-right window… my Rosebud. Except, you know, Kane at least owned Rosebud. http://www.gasolinealleyantiques.com/celebrity/images/StarTrek/micro-startrek1.JPG

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  4. Josh Marsfelder
    January 25, 2016 @ 2:55 pm

    I feel bad mentioning I have two of those. I know I have at least one copy of that set, plus somehow I have duplicates/triplicates of a lot of ships too, maybe because people got me the three packs as well?

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  5. Dustin
    January 27, 2016 @ 5:59 am

    The quality assurance on the Micro-Machines was quite poor. Some sets had a noticeably sloppy paint job, and sometimes the plastic (I'm not even sure it was plastic) wasn't molded properly. Several ships were noticeably misshapen. Nacelles askew, saucer sections shaped like ruffled potato chips, that sort of thing.

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  6. Josh Marsfelder
    January 27, 2016 @ 2:12 pm

    I remember that-I also seem to recall me attempting to "fix" some of those production errors by manually bending and reshaping said offending nacelles and saucer section. All that did, naturally, was cause them to snap in two.

    That may be another reason I have triplicates of some ships.

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