CADET DATA

STAR TREK: WARP FACTOR (PLAYMATES)

So, umm, apparently I haven’t reviewed any Playmates Star Trek here on the site since back in 2017.  Wild.  I mean, I don’t have a ton of them or anything, but that does still feel like further back than I’d expected.  I mean, I guess that’s what happens when you get ruled out on being a fan of the franchise.  Like, I just didn’t like it enough, so I guess I don’t really count?  Yeah, that’s definitely it.  Well, I’m still gonna review some figures occasionally, even if I’m some sort of dirty non-fan.  So, here we are.  When Playmates first started with Star Trek, all of the shows were divided up into their own lines, and there were even a few more on top of that.  The Next Gen line got its own brief spin-off in 1996, Starfleet Academy, which dud figures of that show’s main cast as they might have appeared during their academy days…ignoring the fact that they’re differing ages would mean that most of them, you know, wouldn’t have interacted at all.  But sure.  The initial spin-off ran only one series of four figures, but three additional figures were folded into Playmates’ Warp Factor line, which served as their main Trek line, servicing all parts of the franchise.  Amongst that second round was Data, a character that canonically didn’t actually look any younger in his Cadet days…but he gets a new outfit!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Cadet Data was released in Series 3 of the Star Trek: Warp Factor line, in an assortment which also featured the Cadet versions of Troi and Crusher, as Mirror Spock and Edith Keeler.  As with all of the Academy figures that Playmates produced, Data’s design isn’t based on anything actually canon or anything, and instead just sticks Data in this new looking thing.  The first assortment all got cool descriptors for what exactly the purpose of the new suits was supposed to be, but that was dropped for the second round.  Alas, no cool explanation for this one.  The figure stands about 4 1/2 inches tall and he has 12 points of articulation.  He’s sporting the standard articulation scheme for the line, which always had its pluses and minuses.  The upper half is decent, especially on the arms, but the hips are unfortunately those weird v-hips, which make it virtually impossible for him to do much other than stand or sit in some sort of weird split configuration.  Since Data was unaging, this figure used the same head sculpt as most of the standard Datas for the line; it had an okay likeness of Brent Spiner, and was honestly a pretty respectable piece across the board.  The rest of the figure’s mold was an all-new affair.  He’s wearing some sort of jumpsuit, with some webgear.  It’s all rather basic, and fairly unassuming.  His proportions do have him just a little smaller here than on other figures of the character, but that was true of the line as a whole; the figures kind of slimmed a bit as they moved along.  In terms of coloring, Data is quite monochromatic.  The outfit is a very dark brown, accented by a slightly lighter, but still rather dark brown, with some grey for the gear.  It’s not terribly eye catching, but it does honestly look pretty cool.  Of course, it also has him read a bit more as Lore than as Data, but that’s a minor thing.  Data was packed with a wrist communicator, two styles of phaser thing, a tricorder, and a Starfleet Academy display stand.  Mine has lost everything but the display stand.  Typical of those careless cadets, out there losing all their stuff.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I remember finding the first series of the Academy line somewhere in some bargain bin as a kid, and being frustrated that there was no Data.  This was before the internet was quite as expansive a resource as it is these days, so I didn’t actually know about this figure until seeing him in one of the included booklets with another figure from the line.  And then, you know, I found him at my usual go-to vendor at the local cons, and, well, here we are.