A good friend of mine is a longtime Star Trek fan and an active collector, but he has none of his collectibles on display — and he has a room available for this purpose. This bugs me to no end, because the best way to enjoy your collection is to put it out where you can see it.

A case in point: I recently created this Mego display area in my Star Trek room.

This was prompted by two recent acquisitions: a pair of Star Trek Communicators walkie-talkies and the matched Command Communications Console. All three toys work perfectly and are in surprisingly good shape. The Console seems like it has barely been used; the stickers are peeling a little with age but otherwise it looks great. I also got the original box, although it is a little beat up. The toy came from England, and the seller said: “I had an elderly relative who owned a small independent gift/toy shop and whilst clearing out the warehouse we discovered a wide range of action figures, including quite a few rare and collectible items.” We haggled over the price a little and settled on 180 pounds, about $280 Canadian, plus shipping. I got it in September 2022. I picked up the pair of Communicators for US$85, about $115 Canadian, two months earlier. 

The Console has moving red and green lights on the front, reminiscent of some of the computer displays on the show. Here is a video of those lights and another with the Console’s alert sounds.

I purchased the Mego U.S.S Enterprise Action Playset in 2018 for the amazing price of US$100 and it had been living on a bookcase shelf since then, but I always felt it deserved a better space. The figures were acquired over time. I bought Uhura, Scotty and Spock (all loose) for $200 from Steven Panet at Fastball Collectibles in Toronto (who has a number of Star Trek items for sale, including a nice playset with box), the Kirk was a steal for $25 at Hamilton Comic Con, and the Klingon and McCoy figures were both purchased loose years ago for about $20 each.

The three mint-on-card figures were about $100 each, acquired at different times, and the signature on the Kirk figure was free. 

Buying the Console and the Communicators convinced me I needed one home for all my Mego stuff, so I bought a nice shelf unit at Ikea for $150.

Add that up and the items in my new Mego display area set me back about $1,200, plus some shipping costs. Say $1,400 total. 

There is even room for expansion: if I ever manage to afford the Mission to Gamma VI Playset and the Telescreen Console Playset, I can simply remove the doors on the lower part of the cabinet. 

$1,400 is a lot of money, even spread over a few years, but the new display makes me happy every time I walk into my Star Trek room. Which is why people should display their collectibles. They don’t make you as happy sitting in boxes.

And now for some commercials

The commercial Mego made for the Command Communications Console also shows off the Communicators, although oddly the Console is different from mine: the colour seems much darker and the antenna is attached at the right side, rather than the left as on my toy. Perhaps that’s because mine is from England. The photo on this UK collector’s site looks just like my toy.

And here’s the commercial for the Communicators.