Galileo Shuttlecraft

1996's Playmates Toys Galileo Shuttlecraft staring James T. Kirk himself! Captain Kirk was a pack in with the shuttlecraft toy, sporting his "Where no man has gone before" costume, and early version of the popular Starfleet shirt that the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise would make famous.



If it's one thing I like it's the classic shuttle craft, I don't know, it must be the retro box design. I've just always dug this ship. Another thing I like is that Playmates Toys went out of their way to produce just about every ship you could think of from the series, and the shuttles were doe at a similar scale as the figures. I say similar because it isn't actually to scale, the shuttle would be about two and a half times longer and a couple times higher to be in scale, but kids don't care as long as you can jam Captain Kirk, Batman, or He Man in there you are good to go!



I tell you when I was a kid I soooo wanted a shuttle for my Megos. I even thought about building one, but it was little more than a cake box that I later turned into a square version of the Jupiter 2. So jump to 1996 and this guy hit the market, at the time it seemed that Star Trek toys were sort of on a decline because when I first spied these they were already hitting clearance aisles, when I went back to the store on payday they were all gone, so about a year ago I found this guy online and beamed my payment right away.



Besides being out of scale it's a pretty cool little playset type vehicle, there are all sorts of compartments that you can open up for Spock and Scotty to make repairs. A couple of seats (with seat belts, huh?), open cockpit and cargo door (which the original shuttle didn't have), and the coolest the side door opens up! Along with the good captain the shuttle comes with a little missile firing Phaser Cannon for shooting at Klingons, Romulans, and Gorn (oh my!).



Now, this next opening hatch (shown above) I have no clue what it is. Looks sort of like missiles or something, though I like to think it's something scientific. My only guess is that it's an homage to the concept designer, Walter "Matt" Jefferies from the original series, and it's a G.N.D.N. hatch. G.N.D.N (Goes Nowhere Does Nothing) was what they would label those pipes and other set dressings in the original series, the ones you would see as the characters would walk down the hallways. Another fun bit of trivia, the Jefferies Tube was named after Matt, this is that section of the Enterprise that Scotty would crawl up into to make some sort of critical repair.



The Galileo here is the first shuttle to carry the name, it was lost in the episode The Galileo Seven, and later replaced with another shuttle bearing the same number designation, but named the Galileo II. While it's cool that it came with a Captain Kirk, I think this shuttle would have been way more cooler if it came with a Mr. Spock and Lt. Boma so you could have them fight it out like in the episode, teeeension.