The Wildest, Weirdest Star Trek Action Figures

Star Trek has rarely been a series suited to action figures. Its heroes do occasionally phaser things, but they’re scientists and explorers, people who’s action involves sitting around tables and talking and investigating, or sitting at starship controls and getting them to phaser things. But that’s not stopped people trying over the years, and at Trek’s heights, it meant we got some truly wild action figures.

Throughout the ‘90s as Star Trek rode the highs of three huge TV shows and a series of movies, Playmates—which tried, and sadly failed, to revive its Star Trek toyline in 2022 to go alongside the current Trek renaissance on streaming—made tons of action figures for the franchise, alongside ships, playsets, and roleplay toys like tricorders and phasers.

But because of the huge boom of popularity Trek was facing, this meant that basically anyone and everyone was up for grabs as a toy, not just main characters and the occasional villain. Bless the rush, because when else would you be able to get a Vedek Bareil action figure? Click through for Bajoran Spiritual Leader Action and more, as we take a look back at some of our most unhinged faves.

(All pictures via the excellent, and spectacularly named Trek merch repository, Wixiban!)

Hands down one of the grossest Trek aliens ever, Voyager’s Vidiians are a tragically compelling race, brilliant scientists driven to drive-by organ theft after their species is laid low by a horrifying decaying disease. In action figure form, this just kind of looks like someone accidentally left the toy a little too close to a heat lamp for a bit.

Putting aside the general discomfort of a non-bald, non-bearded Sisko figure (he eventually got one), casualwear pirate Sisko from DS9's first Mirror Universe episode is mostly on here for the accessories. Oh boy kids, a bottle of liquid nutriment!

Speaking of pirates! Naturally once you’ve done a Starfleet officer in their uniform, you’re gonna have to dig deep to re-use those molds and keep characters around in future waves, and Playmates reveled at that task when it came to Star Trek. There were whole waves dedicated to “disguised” heroes in the line, but I just love the clarification to make things more exciting to kids who don’t remember that Galen is, in fact, a pirate, which is much more exciting than simply “Captain Picard in Leather.”

Worf was a prime choice for that aforementioned “stick ‘em in a silly costume” alternate figure. Case in point, no one else in the Generations wave got a version of themselves as they appeared in the Holodeck Master and Commander LARP from the film’s opening act, but Worf? By god, you dress that Klingon up.

The dress up continues with the most exciting action figure of all: Patrick Stewart In Suit. To be fair, a Dixon Hill figure is pretty cool, even if at a glance you could pass it for anything but a Star Trek figure. Bonus feature callout: hey kids, this one’s from a Peabody-Award-winning episode! Who ages 4 and up was convinced by that one?

A lot of the disguise series figures are on here, because they are ultimately very funny, like Jonathan Frakes With Noticeable Brow.

Continuing with Mr. Frakes, the even better way to reuse the sculpt is to just say it’s a Thomas Riker figure instead! Tom actually got a figure in the TNG uniform too, to go with his original appearance, but the DS9 figure is mostly fun by implication—the implication being that those sideburns are very much fake.

You can’t really sell an action figure about what Edith Keeler was really famous for—being hit by a car in “City on the Edge of Forever”—so she just comes with a series of insane accessories. Coffee pot! Handbag! Typewriter! Mug!

An ode to one of the most delightfully terrible episodes of Star Trek ever made, the infamous “Threshold,” unfortunately this one doesn’t come with a Janeway amphibian accessory, but does come with three of their mutant babies. 

Worf dress-up continues, and is delightful, but once again it’s the accessories here that seal the deal: a whole ass Alexander Rozhenko for your pleasure, given the same equivalence as a shot glass.

Every single subdescription for these figures is perfect, but “Morn, Frequent Visitor of Deep Space Nine!” as a way of getting around saying ‘that guy who just sits silently in Quark’s bark drinking for seven seasons” is immaculate. You enjoy that exotic beverage in that exotic beverage glass, my good man.

When we say these figures are weird or silly, this is not to disparage them. I would 100% purchase a Majel Barrett as Lwaxana Troi action figure today, I would’ve done so for this one if I wasn’t like, three years old when it came out. Do you realize how insane you have to be as a toymaker to put something like that out into the market? This is delightful, and once again, a great combo of insane feature callout—Ambassadress to Betazed!—and accessory. Love a crystal gong moment.

Another alien disguise, this time from “Identity Crisis.” In the episode Geordi is a very stark electric blue for the most part thanks to lighting, but in figure form it’s more... a very unfortunate set of colors.

Dr. McCoy would go on to get more suitable figures when Playmates expanded the Trek line to cover past movies and the classic show. But for a good while, the only way to get the iconic TOS character was as a pensioner. At least it’s kinder to DeForest Kelley’s aging than the TNG makeup department was.

No one will deny that “Darmok” is incredible television, but this once again speaks to the inherent weirdness of trying to make a show like Star Trek into something toyetic. “Discover commonalities in language through delicate social interaction and embrace a tragedy of communication!” is not exactly going to be a toy feature now, is it?

Harry Mudd comes through as the only Star Trek character whose toy accessories simply include “drugs!”

Playmates going back to the earlier Trek films led to some bizarre moments, like this figure of the Rura Penthe con Martia, who was arguably best known for shapeshifting to Kirk to double cross him to the Klingons, and then being killed after actual Kirk managed to dupe the Klingons into believing that he was Martia in disguise. At that point, why not just buy a second Kirk figure?

As the line began to wind down, Playmates got more and more eager to find new ways to make figures, even beyond the inspiration of the show—and, once again, to keep dressing Worf up. The Starfleet Academy series came with a CD of fact files and new versions of TNG characters aged down to their academy days. Days Worf apparently spent on night recon disguised as wallpaper paste.

Once again, “action” and Star Trek in the figure sense rarely go in hand, but Playmates kept trying with things like this “Alien Combat” series, which gave villain-themed toys exaggerated stylization and moving action features. This Klingon could wave his batleth around, but for the most part just looks like he really needs the bathroom after a bit too much gagh.

Playmates tried this with more regular figures too, which was arguably even funnier when it led to things like Picard with fencing action. Not even a phaser quickdraw, the man just wiggled an epee at you..  

Ah, there he is, the most boring action figure imaginable. Vedek Bareil—a one time love interest of Kira Nerys, occasional theological rival to the villainous Kai Wynn, and 100% of the time walking, breathing slab of cardboard on DS9, this is handily represented in figure form by the fact that he comes with a candleholder. And a box. Sure the box contains a prophetic orb, but as an accessory, it’s just a box.