Sunday 20 June 2021

Nanoforce Star Trek army-men figurines preview

Coming in November is a new range of Star Trek army-men type figurines(ad) from the brand Nanoforce, with two sets on offer featuring characters from The Original Series(ad) and The Next Generation(ad). New preview images of the sets have now been released, giving us a close-up look at each of the two-inch tall characters included. Continue below to check them out.

Both sets feature characters rendered in red, yellow, or blue, with appropriate Starfleet department colours used for each of the main characters featured in the set, and some bold colour versions of select aliens included as a result of the palette. Each set also includes a small model of the series hero ship, and a fold out display-map.


The TOS assortment(ad) includes six different aliens: Andorian (which looks super in blue), Gorn, Salt Vampire, Romulan, Klingon, and Talosian.







Almost the entire main cast is included too: Captain Kirk, Spock, Doctor McCoy, Uhura, Scotty, and Sulu. Alas poor Chekov has been left out! When asked about this on Facebook, the makers Fourth Castle Brands said:
Chekov and Chapel always get left out of first waves of anything in favor of the more "exotic" aliens of TOS, whereas on TNG its all about the crew because the aliens all just have stuff glued on their foreheads.
While it seems odd to leave out one main character from the set, I personally find those exotic aliens far more appealing, so can see the logic! Here are the crew, so far:







Previews have also released this little video preview of the whole set:



They've not yet released an image of the USS Enterprise model or the display-map, but here's the packaging:



And here's the TNG set(ad):


Next Generation aliens include a Borg, Cardassian, Q, Romulan, and Klingon.






Only five aliens means more of the crew included in this set: Captain Picard, Riker, Data, Worf, La Forge, Counsellor Troi, and Doctor Crusher. 








They have included of the USS Enterprise-D from this set, which is, fine. I'd have preferred more aliens though! 


There's a video preview of this set too:



And here's the packaging:


These are starting to spring up at various retailers for pre-order now, including Things From Another World(ad), who offer a 20% pre-order discount. If they sell well enough, Fourth Castle have suggested they'd like to play more with the format - It's not hard to imagine a box or redshirts, or Borg, or Klingons, etc. I think there's a lot of potential in these.

There is a weirdly complex network of companies involved in delivering this release. The Nanoforce brand is part of Fourth Castle Brands' EMCE Toys, but they are also released in conjunction with Fanwraps' Fanwares, and something called Spherewerx. And just to throw another company into the mix, they are Previews exclusives, which means you can order them via comic book shops and other retailers that work with Diamond Comic Distributors! 


For more Star Trek toys news, check back though my toys tag.




4 comments:

Unknown said...

I don't understand these products. Are they part of a game or part of some model building series?

Magistra Bella said...

These are cool. My kids love the Star Wars versions that came out a few years ago.

Unknown said...

Hey, thanx for this amazing piece and for actually quoting us about Chekov and Chapel. We caught a lotta flak for that.

As for the "weird collective of companies", it's actually a mishmash of brands that a few of us created that, once in a collaboration, turns into a word salad as bad as the logos you have to sit through before a movie starts. FanWraps started as an auto decal company that branched out into merch, hence the brand FanWares. SphereWerx is the legal name of Fourth Castle, which I did because nobody could pronounce "SphereWerx", and "EMCE TOYS" is my licensed toy brand, and "Nanoforce" is the format we created.

As you can imagine, during the course of this project, we realized it was time for a brand consolidation. It's only 2 guys, there's no reason for us to sound like we've got a board of directors.

Thanx again for this great piece. Cross your fingers!

Joe Sena
Fourth Castle Whatever We're Calling Ourselves This Week

kuvaszsleepybear said...

The Bases are TOO Thick!!

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