“I’m a doctor not a model maker!” – The AMT Enterprise at 55
by Glen Swanson
“I’m a doctor not a model maker!”
AMT’s first model kit of the Starship Enterprise was enjoyed by old and young alike. Even though the targeted demographic of viewership for the new Star Trek television series was in the 10-14 age range, NBC soon found that the series was embraced by older people as well.
Here is an unknown photo found on the web showing Deforest Kelley who played the ship’s doctor Leonard McCoy in Star Trek at home with his wife Carolyn Dowling. Both are shown doing surgery on one of the AMT Enterprise model kits. The photo was obviously staged but I bet there is a good story behind it.
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.
