1996: Voyager was over a year old, First Contact was on the way, and Worf had been a fixture on Deep Space Nine for several months. In a way, this time frame was the last hurrah for Star Trek merchandising, before the public tired too much of the franchise. Playmates, having seen very limited success with its lines of Deep Space Nine and Voyager action figures, folded all of its Star Trek toys into a generically-packaged range whose blister card simply bore a movie-era “Star Trek” logo. While continuing to introduce characters from the later series, Playmates also acceeded to fan demand for more version of the classic Star Trek characters.
It was during this time that the Enterprise-B toy from Star Trek: Generations was repackaged as the U.S.S. Excelsior (although the original Excelsior lacked some of the added engines and fittings of the Enterprise-B, making the toy a little inaccurate), and a Romulan Bird-of-Prey ship was also marketed, though it turned out to be a very slow seller – there is still at least one Bird of Prey gathering dust at the Wal-Mart on Green Bay’s west side.
Not long after the movie-era characters hit the shelves, another selection of extremely classic Trek characters arrived.
