HAPPY BIRTHDAY to an intergalactic treasure!
From Galaxy Con, Columbus, Ohio, 2025
By CHRIS FRANKLIN
Had William Shatner (born March 22, 1931) never set foot on the bridge set of the starship Enterprise, he’d still be assured some measure of pop culture immortality. His various early film roles, his appearances on anthology TV series like Thriller and particularly The Twilight Zone still endure. Had his post-Star Trek work come along in the same manner, he had T.J. Hooker, Boston Legal and various other gigs to keep him in the limelight.
But the role of Captain James T. Kirk has made him an icon. While that word is thrown around far too loosely these days, Shatner earned it. Leonard Nimoy’s Spock was the soul of the original Star Trek series, the living embodiment of “the other” that the series set out to find and explore. The outsider that the audience members could all identify with to one agree or another.
Shatner’s Kirk was the series’ heart. The ideal, the inspiration we could aspire to. He had the confidence, the swagger, the bravery to do what must be done, and make it look relatively easy. Except when it wasn’t, and Shatner allowed us to sweat alongside the captain. He wasn’t perfect, he had regrets, he’d made mistakes, and sometimes he did make the wrong move, but he always rebounded. That made him relatable as well. The hero we wanted to be, with just enough clay on his black boots to remind us of who we were.
Like many pop culture heroes of the past century, Shatner’s Kirk has been pressed into plastic, ceramic and glass collectibles capturing the likeness, the essence of the 23rd century’s greatest explorer. To celebrate Shatner’s 95th birthday, lets beam up 13 prime (directive) examples:
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Captain Kirk 8-Inch Figure, Mego, 1974. By 1974, Star Trek’s success in syndication resulted in not only a new animated series from Filmation with most of the original cast (including Shatner) providing the voices of their characters, but also an avalanche of merchandising far surpassing what was produced during the original series’ initial network run from 1966-1969.
Seen here sitting confidently in the chair from the toy line’s Enterprise playset comes the best figure on this list, Mego’s original 8-inch Captain Kirk. Many figures of the man and the character have come since, some of them quite expensive but none capture the attitude and the charm of Shatner as Kirk like this figure, designed to be a cheap children’s plaything. If you own only one figure of the character, this is the one to get.
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Bowl and Mug Set – Deka, 1975. Deka produced these handsome kid dinnerware items with some nice shots of the Enterprise and a Klingon Battle Cruiser (mostly on-model, which was no guarantee at the time). But the real standouts are the portraits of the series’ three leads.
The unknown artist captures both the likenesses and the essence of Doctor McCoy, Mister Spock and Captain Kirk. Is it just me, or is there somewhat of a Jack Kirby feel to Kirk’s face here? Plus, all those dots… Kirby Krackle?
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Fabric 1977 Calendar Towel – Franco Manufacturing Co., 1976. You can keep track of your star dates (at least in 1977) with this fabric calendar featuring groovy designs and stylized but accurate likenesses of both Shatner and Leonard Nimoy as Spock.
I picked this up a few years ago at an antique mall but recently found a packaged version for sale on eBay. It was advertised as a calendar towel! It’s made of very thin linen-like fabric, so maybe it was meant to be a hand towel hanging in your mom’s kitchen? It’s a bizarre piece, but that makes me like it even more.
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Admiral Kirk 3.75-Inch Figure, Star Trek: The Motion Picture – Mego, 1979. After attempts at producing a reunion TV movie and then a new TV series reuniting the original cast, the success of Star Wars led Star Trek rights-holders Paramount to mount a big-screen, big budget revival. And another flood of Star Trek merchandise began.
Unfortunately, the very-cerebral (even for Trek) tone of TMP left kids scratching their heads, wondering where the action and adventure aspect had gone. Mego was left holding the bag with a lot of unsold action figures, created in 3.75-inch and 12-inch scale, the same sizes Kenner used for their Star Wars toy line.
The small Kirk looks enough like Shatner in this scale, and it captures his nice admiral uniform, clearly the best designed outfit in the film, which replaced the color-coded TV outfits with shades of gray and tan.
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Star Trek: The Motion Picture Cup – Coca-Cola, 1979. This promotional cup by the Coca-Cola company focuses on the Trek Trinity in a very attractive design. Shatner’s likeness is notoriously hard to capture in both line art and sculpture. Remove the Star Trek branding, and the better realized Spock and McCoy, and you may wonder just who this is, but in the context of the brand, there’s no doubt.
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Captain Kirk Plate – Hamilton Gifts, 1991. In 1991, Hamilton Gifts released this set of mini collector plates based on an earlier full-sized plate series issued by Ernst and The Hamilton Collection in 1983. Artist Susie Morton not only creates an excellent likeness of a young Shanter, but paints Kirk in his full-dress Starfleet uniform. This is rarely seen on merchandise from any period.
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Captain Kirk, Classic Star Trek Collector Figure Set/ Captain Kirk (Environmental Suit) – Playmates 1993-1998. In the 1990s, Playmates boldly went where no toy company had gone before by issuing a fleet of Star Trek toys covering all the series and films up to that point.
Beginning with the concurrent Star Trek: The Next Generation series, diehard fans were delighted when they issued a boxed set containing the seven main members of Kirk’s original crew. Playmates’ body design style was a bit cartoonish and clunky, owing to their success with the squat and animated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles toy line, but they managed to capture actor likenesses well.
This is clearly Shatner in his prime as Captain Kirk. Several variations followed, including the captain in the memorable and well-designed environmental suit from one of TOS’ third season gems, “The Tholian Web”.
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Admiral Kirk, Star Trek: The Motion Picture / Captain Kirk, Star Trek: Generations – Playmates, 1994-1995. Playmates issued figures as new Trek series and films debuted, including Star Trek: Generations, designed to launch Captain Picard’s Next Generation crew into their own film series, and wrap up Kirk’s era… by killing him off.
I have mixed feelings on the film, but I was happy to get Kirk in his excellent “monster maroon” uniform from the film series, debuting in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and running through this film. This figure erroneously gives his rank as admiral on the packaging, ignoring his demotion from Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.
The following year, in 1995, Playmates began to issue more figures from the classic crew films, including those based on The Motion Picture. The head sculpts are the same, despite a 15-year span between the films, but at this scale, both still read Shatner and Kirk.
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Captain Kirk, Star Trek: Collector Series, Command Edition – Playmates 1994. In addition to their 5-inch figure range, Playmates expanded into other formats, including a robust series of cloth-costumed figures in 9-inch scale. Like Hasbro and Toy Biz with their similar DC and Marvel offerings around this time, the idea was to mimic Mego, but strangely all the companies scaled their figures up one inch.
The Star Trek figures are nicely conceived. The costuming is well done for the low price-point, the accessories are well sculpted and painted, and the sculpts are well executed. There’s only one downside: The hands on these figures are grossly out of scale, closer to what should be on a 12-inch figure! Maybe the Enterprise passed through a cloud that caused selective gigantism?
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Captain Kirk Figural Mug – Applause, 1994. With this mug from Applause, you can get inside the head of Captain James T. Kirk. Or at least your favorite beverage can! In Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, Kirk told the mind-probing Sybok to stay out of his thoughts, because he needed his pain, but you need your coffee, and Kirk is there to help.
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Captain James T. Kirk Keepsake Ornament – Hallmark, 1995. “First star on the tree, and straight on till morning.” OK, maybe paraphrasing Kirk’s recital of a Peter Pan line from Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country is a bit cheesy, but this ornament from Hallmark is sincerely cool: capturing Kirk in that classic pose in his command chair, hand on chin as he ponders his next move, or perhaps the cosmic mystery the Enterprise crew has stumbled upon this week.
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Captain James T. Kirk 7-inch Figures – Art Asylum, 2004. Art Asylum (and distributor Diamond Select Toys) picked up where Playmates left off, producing a wide range of Trek figures and collectibles from all the various iterations, more squarely aimed at collectors.
Having previously designed figures for other toy companies, Art Asylum brought several modern innovations: These two variations of Kirk, in his traditional gold tunic, and his more casual green wraparound, capture Shatner’s likeness well, and the added articulation allows you to recreate some of Kirk’s patented body language.
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Captain Kirk / Admiral Kirk – Mego, 2019-21. Coming full circle, we return to Mego. EMCE Toys (along with distributor Diamond Select Toys) reproduced some of Mego’s classic offerings and added new figures in the years prior to Mego’s official return in 2018.
The revived Mego continued to re-release classic figures and update others, while also creating all-new offerings. The classic-style Kirk has a new head sculpt that is fine, but a bit soft, and in no way an improvement on the original. The Admiral Kirk figure from the greatest Star Trek film, The Wrath of Khan, is a better sculpt, doing an admirable (no pun intended) job of capturing an older Shatner. It’s not perfect, but it’s close. But neither nail the character as the original Mego sculpt did nearly 50 years before.
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MORE
— 13 GREAT CAPTAIN KIRK MOMENTS: A WILLIAM SHATNER Birthday Celebration. Click here.
— The TOP 13 STAR TREK EPISODES — RANKED. Click here.
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13th Dimension contributor CHRIS FRANKLIN is a graphic designer, illustrator, writer, and podcaster, who co-hosts and produces several shows on the Fire and Water Podcast Network, including Superman Movie Minute. Check out his illustrative and design work at chrisfranklincreative.com.
