Last month, several fans reported to us that McFarlane Toys — who acquired a Star Trek product license last year for Star Trek: Discovery and the rest of the Prime Timeline side of the franchise — had been issuing cancellation notices for their long-awaited Discovery phaser toy.
The McFarlane Discovery phaser was the Trek toast of ToyFair 2018, where we got an up-close, hands-on demonstration of the prototype electronic toy, along with preliminary designs for packaging and pricing ahead of the then-planned late-2018 street date.
After retailers began cancelling preorders of the Discovery phaser toy, many wondered why the highly-anticipated product was being pulled, with fan theories ranging from possible disputes between CBS Consumer Products and McFarlane, to the highly-politicized gun control debate in the United States.
Our friends over at TrekMovie spoke to Todd McFarlane himself two weeks ago at a convention, where the artist and company owner shared some ambiguous thoughts on the matter:
Sometimes what happens is you get to these weird circular conversations where the studios want you to put out something that the retailers don’t want, and vice versa.
So, you have to start doing this dance – usually we can figure it out, but we’re just trying to make sure that everybody is sort of in agreement as to what should be and shouldn’t be out there.
While his comments were the first public statement regarding the status of the phaser toy, it didn’t really have many specifics as to why the sales preorders were being cancelled months ahead of the product’s planned release.
Today, we got our first official feedback from the company regarding the cancellation, in the following statement provided to TrekCore:
“Based on federal, state and local regulations around replica/toy weapons, McFarlane Toys has decided to cancel pre-orders on the Star Trek Discovery Phaser 2018 release until we can determine a more acceptable way to release it without compromising the integrity of the item.
We are still pursuing options on releasing this item in the future. We apologize for any inconvenience and disappointment this may have caused the fans.”
This statement — mentioning “compromising the integrity” of the toy — seems to set the reasoning for the cancellations squarely on the federally-required orange barrel, which we covered in April, a strict regulation covering toy weapons sales in the USA.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2vl9gGTwFE
While we don’t know if McFarlane will be able to find a “more acceptable way” to get the Discovery phaser into the hands of fans, we’re glad they’ve finally put to rest the current situation regarding its planned availability.
Keep checking back to TrekCore for all the latest Star Trek product news!