AMT Kits Seen on the Classic Series #2 – The Enterprise at 55
By Glen Swanson
As a follow-up to my earlier posting on the AMT model that was made into the USS Constellation that appeared in the Star Trek second season episode “The Doomsday Machine,” here is another AMT model kit that was made into the USS Enterprise for another second season episode “The Trouble With Tribbles.” This episode was the fifteenth episode of the second season and was first aired on December 29, 1967. This model appeared to be moving ever so slowly on the outside of K7 space station manager’s Lurry’s office window.
I happened to get real close to the actual model in 2019 when it appeared at the Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation in Dearborn, Michigan as part of a larger traveling exhibit called “Star Trek: Exploring New Worlds.” The exhibit featured a host of original props from the original television series which included this AMT model as well as the original D7 Klingon ship and the original bridge helm from the series. The model shown here was acquired through auction by the late Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft.
The model is shown a little worse for wear as most of the decals have fallen off over time. Also, the original model builders for the show replaced the bussard domes on the warp engines of the kit with clearer machined domes which very well may have originally lit up but it is hard to tell from clips of the model as seen in the original episode.
To round out a discussion of screen-used AMT models as seen in the original series, we should also note that clips of the damaged USS Constellation were re-used in the episode “The Ultimate Computer” to show the damaged USS Excalibur.
In all fairness, this would make the original AMT Enterprise model an exact screen replica of those seen in the original series but try telling that to those who suffered the trauma of warp engine sag. And wait… have I been sniffing too much glue? What the heck are those stupid dimples under the saucer section of the primary hull on the AMT kit?
This is one in a series of original 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 Star Trek licensees in the history of the franchise. A close-to-the-original 1:650 scale model kit is still being manufactured and sold through Round2 LLC, the current AMT licensee. 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.
