AMT Kits Seen Classic Series #I – The AMT Enterprise at 55
by Glen Swanson
The same year that AMT released its first model kit of the Enterprise, viewers of Star Trek got to see several assembled kits appear in actual episodes. The first appearance was in “The Doomsday Machine,” the sixth episode of the second season that was first aired on October 20, 1967. Here viewers saw one of AMT’s kits built as the damaged USS Constellation. The second assembled AMT kit to appear in an episode was that of the Enterprise that was built to appear outside the office window of K-7 space station manager Lurry in “The Trouble With Tribbles,” the fifteenth episode of the second season that was first aired on December 29, 1967. We will post a close-up of the AMT model used in that episode in another installment but for now, here is Commodore Matt Decker’s ship after taking a beating from Norman Spinrad’s giant planet eater. Notice that the registration number “1017” is a scrambled version of “1701” so that they could use the decal set that came with the original model. AMT did not release decal sheets that allowed builders to create other ship registries until later. How ironic that the first Star Trek model to appear in an actual episode depicted the AMT kit in les-than-flattering form. Perhaps this helped comfort the many kids who suffered trauma from the kit’s persistent sagging engine nacelles.
This is one in a series of postings created to commemorate the 55th anniversary of the very first Star Trek model kit. In June of 1967, Michigan-based Aluminum Model Toys (AMT) Corporation began selling an 18-inch injection-molded model of the starship Enterprise. Before the year was out, AMT would sell over a million copies of the kit. Since that first release, AMT and its successors went on to release at least 23 unique kits making it one of the longest running and most successful product licenses in the history of the Star Trek franchise. A close-to-the-original 1:650 scale model kit is still being manufactured and sold through Round2 LLC, the current AMT license holder. Just in time to celebrate the 55th anniversary of the kit’s first release, Round2 has reissued the kit in the more commonly seen second long box (S951) form that first appeared in 1968 which features on the box top an assembled model kit orbiting the Earth.
