Item Name: Star Trek CSF Controlled Space Flight
Manufacturer: Remco Toys
The Rundown: Borrowing heavily from Mattel's early 1970's VertiBird toys, Remco debuted their Controlled Space Flight line back in 1976. Remco applied the concept to some of the major licenses they held at the time- Batman, Spider-Man, and of course Star Trek!
The concept seems to fit the Star Trek brand quite well. Kids get to fly the Enterprise around on circular missions to pick stuff up! Here's how the set breaks down...
First there's the control housing. This puppy is what makes the magic happen! The controller spins the rod holding the enterprise around in a circular motion and keeps it aloft with the adjustable weight attached to it's side. It's powered by 3 D size batteries! When was the last time you used a D size battery?!? They're big, heavy, and feel like they could power a Toyota.
The Enterprise is suspended from the controller by a long rod. Sure, it's not really an accurate representation of the Enterprise, but some liberties had to be taken to accommodate the fan mechanism the sends the ship into orbit. Betcha never knew it was a fan that kept the old girl flying through space, did ya?
A large cardboard play mat is included for you to lay the rig out on. Notice the Klingon Battle Cruisers and Enterprise on there? Yeah, why aren't those bigger? There's a whole bunch of wasted space here...
A little smaller than Sulu's station, this is the helm control that allows you to control the flight of the ship. Push it forward to fly backward, pull it back to fly forward, or leave it in the center to hover. There's also a speed accelerator that allows you to crank up juice. Here's a quick video showing my extremely novice skills at controlling space flight:
Congratulations. I had one of these long ago (in 1976). As a young boy I was infatuated with Star Trek and anything having to do with it. For Christmas 1976-77 I got this toy. I remember being able to pick up the plastic pieces on the mat but was deeply disappointed that the ship looked very little like the actual enterprise model of the TV series (the hollow nature of the fuselage and engine nacelles bothered me). I would find something resembling a globe and imagine the enterprise was in orbit around some distant planet. It was rather fragile: I broke one of the engine nacelles off and had to glue it back on. Thanks for sharing this slice of the past.
ReplyDeleteAnyone notice how the images of the Enterprise and the Klingon ships were swpied from the AMT model kit box art? How did Remco get away with this? There was no cross-licensing art in the 70s--no unifying image of Trek materials, so how did this happen? The same can be said of the AMT Enterprise rendered on one of the Power Records covers, while the title design for Gold Key's Star Trek comics was used for the infamous "Tracer Gun" and the Remco Star Trek Utility Belt! Ahhh...those were the days!
ReplyDeleteI got one of these as a Christmas gift once. The people that gave it to me must have either re-gifted it or just opened it to check the partsunami and ended up leaving the stickers, instruction manual, and the plastic material put because a month later they called to let us know they still had the stickers and I had already broken it. I was 5 years old
ReplyDeleteI got one of these as a Christmas gift once. The people that gave it to me must have either re-gifted it or just opened it to check the partsunami and ended up leaving the stickers, instruction manual, and the plastic material put because a month later they called to let us know they still had the stickers and I had already broken it. I was 5 years old
ReplyDelete