This past weekend at the Las Vegas Star Trek convention, our friends over at Hero Collector gave us a comprehensive preview of everything the Eaglemoss team has lined up for the next several months of model starship releases!
Hero Collector brand managers Matt Buss and Chris Thompson took the stage on Saturday morning to walk the assembled audience through the next additions to the Star Trek and Star Trek: Discovery model starship lineup, along with some new larger-scale XL Starships and even a few bonus and special releases set to leave Spacedock soon.
The team announced that the larger-sized XL Starships line of models has been extended to a total planned run of 22 models — of which 15 have been formally announced to date — and they revealed two of the next mystery models at the event.
After debuting the delayed Akira-class USS Thunderchild (#12) at their convention sales booth — and showing off a product image of the already-announced USS Excelsior (#15)– Buss and Thompson announced that the next two XL-sized releases will be the D’Deridex-class Romulan Warbird (#16)and the first station in the collection: Starbase Deep Space 9 (#17) which will come with a stand for display use.
The remaining five XL Starships models weren’t yet ready to be revealed, but the audience had plenty of suggestions for the Hero Collector team — hopefully we’ll learn more about their remaining plans soon.
Moving on to the bonus and special releases, the team gave us a first look at the next bonus edition, the SS Conestoga from “Terra Nova” (#20), a mid-21st century colony ship from the first season of Star Trek: Enterprise, and expanding the special-edition model line is the first alien ship from Star Trek: Insurrection — the Son’a flagship (#19) — followed then by Spock’s Vulcan warp sled (#20) from The Motion Picture.
Next up, the Star Trek: Discovery subscription line continues on with four new announcements. Release #19 is the Discovery-era Class-C shuttle, the long-awaited first shuttlecraft model from the new series.
Following that will be Jett Reno’s medical frigate USS Hiawatha (#20), T’Kuvma’s ‘Becon of Kahless’ Klingon obelisk (#21)… and then the flagship of the Terran Empire will round out this set of Discovery ships, as the ISS Charon becomes the second special-edition ship in the series.
For those of you who subscribe to the ongoing Official Starships Collection, the Hero Collector team announced that the series has been officially extended out to 180 issues — so start clearing out some more shelf space now!
Revealed this weekend were seven more issues spanning several Trek adventures, starting with the freighter Batris (#158) from TNG’s “Heart of Glory,” another Nilo Rodis-created USS Excelsior concept design (#159), and the transport ship Sarajevo (#160) from Enterprise’s “Daedalus.”
Following those ships are the Void alien ship (#161) from Voyager’s “Night,” the El-Aurian transport ship Lakul (#162) from Star Trek: Generations, and the Enterprise-era Orion Interceptor (#163) from “Borderland.”
Rounding out the standard-release announcements were yet another Rodis-designed USS Excelsior concept model (#164), as well as the DS9-era Karemma starship (#165) from “Starship Down.”
Finally — as if that wasn’t enough — the Hero Collector team announced that yet another line of starship models will be coming from the collectibles company… and we aren’t talking about tie-ins to the next round of television shows.
At the end of the panel, Star Trek Online lead artist Thomas Marrone came on stage to announce that Hero Collector will be launching an official Star Trek Online subscription program for starship models based on the long-running multiplayer game.
While specific ships were not detailed at the panel, fans of the game can expect many of the dozens of established Star Trek Online vessels to be included when more details are released.
We’ve got several reviews on the way for some of the recent Official Starship Collection releases, but in the meantime: do any of these new announcements already have places in your personal fleet?
Let us know what’s got you excited in the comments below!