At Flashbak: The Dinky Starfleet of the 1970s

My second article at Flashbak this week remembered some fantastic die-cast metal spaceship toys of the 1970s. In particular, I remember the Dinky “Starfleet.”

Here’s a snippet and the url: (http://flashbak.com/join-the-dinky-starfleet-remembering-the-dinky-space-toys-of-the-1970s-362678/ )

“Although Dinky Toys was in operation as early as 1935, I first learned of the company’s toys in the mid-1970s, when I was a young fan of Star Trek (1966-1969) and Space: 1999 (1975-1977).  Older fans probably knew the company -- a maker of high-quality die-cast metal cars and vehicles -- for an earlier generation TV tie-ins to Thunderbirds (1964), Joe 90 (1967) or even The Prisoner (1967).

But what interested me as a youngster was that the company had produced highly-detailed, heavy-duty miniatures of my favorite TV spaceship in the pre-Star Wars era.

For example, Dinky Toys produced two versions of Space: 1999’s amazing trademark, work-horse space craft, the Eagle. One was a transport, with a removable passenger section in the middle. The other was an Eagle freighter, which, with a magnet, could lower or lift barrels of radioactive waste.

From Star Trek, Dinky produced two great die-cast metal ships.  The first was the Constitution Class Starship Enterprise of Captain James Kirk.  The starship could fire small round projectiles from the saucer section.  Also, a small shuttle craft could be dropped from the bottom of the Starfleet vessel.

The second Trek vehicle was the Klingon D7 battlecruiser. Like the Enterprise, it could also fire small orange projectiles from its forward section…”

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