Back in December I tracked down and discussed here ten retro toys you could still buy as gifts for the holidays.  In that list I included Colorforms–those reusable, thin plastic stickers that you could use to re-create scenes on a cardboard backdrop. As a kid I went crazy for these–I had every Colorforms set from Star Trek to Peanuts, The Fonz, Marvel Superheroes, Mickey Mouse, Scooby Doo, Evel Knievel, and an awesome oversized set called Castle Dracula where you could house all of the classic Universal Studios monsters under one roof.  The Star Trek Colorforms playset came with a backdrop of the bridge of the original Enterprise and white, yellow, blue, and red colored stickers featuring crew, hand weapons and aliens.  It was a popular set and provided hours of fun.

Colorforms still exists but doesn’t license a lot of movie and TV properties, but I recently saw in a toy store playsets for young kids with Yo Gabba Gabba, Dora the Explorer, and Spongebob.  Clearly with all the high-tech toy options for kids these days it’s the littler kids that are the Colorforms target consumer.

Thanks to Universe Publishing, I was able to preview the next best thing to Colorforms, coming to stores later this month.  Targeted to adults who love all things retro (or kids with the Star Trek bug), Stuck on Star Trek is an amped up set of Colorforms-like plastic, re-usable stickers featuring the classic Star Trek television series characters.  Unlike the classic Star Trek Colorforms set, this new wire-bound, desktop stand-up playset boasts ten glossy, nicely illustrated original Trek environments, including the Enterprise bridge, transporter room, sickbay, the engine room, Kirk’s office quarters, and otherworldly backdrops from episodes “Arena,” “The City on the Edge of Forever,” “The Devil in the Dark,” and “Trials and Tribble-ations” and a site that looks like the planet Vulcan.

These backgrounds and the aptly named “Kling-on” stickers are designed courtesy of artist Joe Corroney, the alternate cover artist for last year’s borg.com favorite comic book series Star Trek: The Next Generation/Doctor Who: Assimilation², series artist for the excellent current series Star Trek: The Next Generation: Hive, and artist on several past comic book series featuring the original series crew.  The Kling-on stickers include Starfleet-outfitted Kirk, Spock, Scotty, Sulu, Uhura, Chekov, an obviously doomed background “red-shirt” lieutenant, extra costumes for Kirk and Spock from “The City on the Edge of Forever,” a Vulcan cloak for Spock, a Romulan, a Klingon, and a Gorn, comic balloons with phrases “I’m a doctor, Jim!”, “Phasers on stun!”, and “Beam us up, Scotty!”, sound effects, weapons and tools, and lots of tribbles.  Stuck on Star Trek also includes stickers of the Enterprise, as well as a Klingon and Romulan ship.  There is no outer space backdrop for these ships, so you’ll have to re-imagine them on the surface of one of the provided outerworld backdrops.

You really can’t miss with this playset.  All in an 8X10-inch binder, it pulls out to create a stand that will allow you to show off your newly created Star Trek Romulan vs. Gorn episode to like-minded office co-workers.  It’s all fun, and at under $20 retail it is a great gift for your favorite Star Trek fan.  Stuck on Star Trek will be released on February 26, 2013.  You can pre-order Stuck on Star Trek right now at a deep early bird discount at Amazon.com.

Live long and prosper!

C.J. Bunce
Editor
borg.com