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Star Trek III – 1984

The ERTL toy company acquired the licensing rights to Star Trek after Mego went out of business. ERTL was well known for producing die-cast toys and models, but had never produced an action figure line before. They launched a small series of figures based on the new movie, Star Trek: The Search for Spock. In total, the line consisted of four figures and three different die-cast ships. 

For more information about ERTL’s Star Trek III: The Search For Spock products, see bottom of page for a complete summary.

ERTL released four figures for their 3.75 Inch series of action figures for the Star Trek Search For Spock line. These figures were actually done fairly well and unfortunately, we didn’t get any further characters from this series.

Star Trek III (1984): 3.75 Inch Playsets

ERTL did not release any playsets for their Star Trek III: The Search for Spock action figure line in 1984.

Star Trek III (1984): 3.75 Inch Vehicles / Accessories

No accessories or vehicles were produced for the 3.75 Inch Star Trek line, but ERTL did produce three die-cast ships related to the action figure line. Since ERTL was in the die-cast and model business, this only made sense.

After a very successful release of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan in 1982, a third Star Trek movie seemed a no-brainer, so Star Trek III: The Search for Spock was released in 1984 with a lot of high expectations. A toy line would normally be considered an automatic thing at that time, but since Mego’s dismal failure with their Star Trek The Motion Picture series in 1979, many toy companies simply passed on a new Star Trek license. Enter ERTL, a smaller toy company that was well-known for producing die-cast toys and models since the 1950’s. ERTL had never produced an action figure line before, but decided to take a chance on the newest Star Trek movie, mostly because the toy licensing rights came at a friendly price. Mego had great success with their original Star Trek 8 Inch line, and ERTL was hoping to get a piece of that action. The movie was considered a moderate success but was far behind its predecessor, Wrath of Khan. Search for Spock did gain some critical praise upon release, but many fans were left disappointed and a bit underwhelmed with the movie. This translated over to a very short lived action figure line.

The Star Trek III: Search for Spock toy line was a small one and only featured four 3.75 Inch action figures in total. The series consisted of Captain Kirk, the captain of the Enterprise; Mr. Spock, Kirk’s right hand man and best friend; Scotty, the Chief Engineer of the Enterprise; and Klingon Leader, who was loosely based on the character, Commander Kruge (portrayed by Christopher Lloyd). The Klingon figure didn’t really resemble Lloyd but was a solid attempt at a 3.75 Klingon figure. No further figures, playsets or vehicles were ever known to be planned by ERTL for future waves. ERTL used the same Starfleet uniform body for Kirk, Spock and Scotty, and just switched out the heads. Their head sculpts for figures are actually not bad. A new body mold was produced for the Klingon Leader and obviously a different head sculpt as well. A series of three die-cast ships were also produced by ERTL, featuring a Bird of Prey, The Excelsior and of course, the Enterprise.

The packaging for the 3.75 Inch line of Star Trek III: The Search for Spock was was very basic looking and probably what you would expect from ERTL. It featured the Star Trek III logo on the top of the card with ERTL in big yellow letters. To the right of the card were head portraits of Kirk, Spock and the Klingon, but no Scotty. The bubble sat on the left of the card with the character name next to it, underneath the head portraits. The card backs featured illustrations of all four figures, along the die-cast ships and an offer to join the ERTL collector’s club. Overall, this was a valiant effort by ERTL to make a new Star Trek action figure line. It will never be considered iconic or game-changing but it was still new Star Trek action figures, which is always a good thing!