Item Name: 'Klingon' Battle Cruiser
Manufacturer: Dinky Toys
Dinky Toys released this dastardly devil of a ship as a single piece and in a 2 pack with their Enterprise.
The Rundown: While not quite as cool as Dinky's Enterprise, the Klingon Battle Cruiser is still pretty spiffy. The color choices are a little odd, but the sculpt is nice and the ship is the perfect play partner for the Dinky 1701. Let's take a look at what all the cool Klingons were flying back in the 70's...
Okay, so it's metallic blue and white- A pretty far cry from the muted gray of the ones seen on the show. I'm sure it was the choice of some toy exec who thought that the brighter colors would better grab the attention of some unsuspecting 7 year old walking through the toy aisles. It's a little off-putting, but just try to imagine this ship as belonging to some hot-rodding Klingon b@st@rd who doesn't give a crap how conspicuous his ship looks. He wants the attention. Heck, he's thinking about painting flames on it. And pinstripes.
The overall sculpt is really quite nice, and captures a good amount of detail. If I had a spare, I'd hit it with some gray spray paint just to show how nice of a replica this ship really could be.
Just like Dinky's Enterprise, the Klingon ship can fire little disks, *ahem* I mean "torpedoes". The discs load into the top of the "head" of the ship, and fire out of the front. The feature still works great after all these years!
The ship comes with some decals for you to spruce her up with. She'd look pretty plain without the insanely cool Klingon symbol attached to her. I almost went with a Klingon symbol for my Trek tattoo, but I quickly scratched that idea when I thought most Trek fans would identify it with the more honorable TNG Klingons and not the sneaky conniving Klingons of the original series (my preferred variety).
Accessories: The Battle Cruiser includes a bag of 7 white disks for you to fire at your Enterprise, thereby violating the Organian peace treaty. Stinking peaceful Organians.
I'd call this a "must-buy" only if you happen to own the Dinky Enterprise. The 2 ships really do look cool together (I wish I would have taken a pic of them next to each other). If you don't have the Enterprise, this one is probably only worth hunting down for the big time Klingon fans. The Battle Cruiser gets overlooked a lot when it comes to making toy versions of Klingon ships, with most companies opting to do the movie era Bird-Of-Prey, so it is somewhat unique in that regard.
Oh, and I've decided to go exclusive with Dinky. They gave me a promise ring and everything.
-James
Thopse little toys look nice to me.
ReplyDeleteI love the packages.
whoa! new blog logo.
thanks for sharing your passion.
I think these Dinkys were some of the best, I really like the D-7 too bad it doesn't get more toy love, a Diamond Select / AA one would be awesome.
ReplyDeleteI remember seeing these on the shelf as a teen, but didn't buy either since I wanted a more accurate version, not liking the changes made to accomodate the shooting discs. Wish I had been less particular and got them anyway!
ReplyDeleteActually James, the blue coloring isn't that hard to understand. If you look at the cover of the AMT model kit, the model is pictured as blue. Also, watching the old 16 MM prints in syndication in the '70s ( before digital color correction ) the Klingon ship often appeared blue in the FX shots ( it also appeared blue in stills published in various magazines, poster books, and 8X10 stills sold at conventions. The odder choice was the white plastic parts. But then again, this WAS made by Dinky, who decided that the all-white Eagles from "Space:1999" would look great in metallic green ( and also the same blue as the Klingon ship ). The same went for the all-white Interceptor from "UFO" also which ended up metallic green, with orange landing gear. Even more egregious to many fans of the series "Thunderbirds" was the fact that for many years Dinky had produced their popular toy of the Thunderbird 2 craft in the correct pea-green, then, around the same time as this Klingon toy came out, suddenly started making it two toned; Blue metallic for the top, and black plastic for the bottom. I think we're just lucky that Dinky didn't go with metallic green for the Enterprise!
ReplyDelete