Seeing double? Spooky!

A set now complete! For those who've been following my Kooky Spooky adventure over the last year or so, here is my customized Mama Kaskit "Kooky Spooky" (far left) meeting... the real thing: a recent eBay "Buy it now" find. She arrived this morning.
To the right is a little guy I've renamed Little Formaldehyde, with customized death rattle (both concepts mooted by Patti Peticolas in her notes). He is meeting a pristine Baby Spook'em, complete with mint condition "Help" sign, thanks to the same eBay seller. (On the back, the sign reads "Boo!")
Looks like I'll have to add at least one more slide to my Photo Peach slideshow!
I was recently asked why I avoided bidding on packaged Mama Kaskits.
Toys should be free of their cardboard and plastic sarcophaguses! If I'd bought a Mama Kaskit mint-in-mint-box, I'd have had to remove her, to join her family, no matter the huge amount paid. I used to keep lots of my toys' boxes (from the 80s, 90s and 00s - we never thought to do that in 1969), but I've simply run out of room for all that packaging - and the stored boxes were getting putrid with dust in my garage under the house.
Also, many MIMB Kooky Spookys have "melt marks" where hands and noses have had 40+ years have been in contact with 1969-vintage acetate windows.

My PhotoPeach slideshow about Kooky Spookys is HERE!

Welcome to the family, Teena!

My Teena Terror "Kooky Spooky" eBay purchase (lower left of the above image) turned up recently, replacing the custom Teena I'd made earlier this year, but wasn't happy with. Teena came without her original, reversible sign accessory (a heart shape with "Love"/"Fun" written on it), but I'd already made a customized one. I had to coerce a US penpal to do the transaction for me; fewer and fewer eBay sellers will ship overseas these days, and when one pays by PayPal the item has to go to the address recorded by PayPal. Thanks Melissa!

Teena now joins her family. I'm quite pleased with my customized Mama Kaskit, so I don't feel a yearning need to hunt up a real one.


The elusive Teena Terror; not my one, but notice the
brittleness of her broken-stick accessory.

These cool Hasbro toys are from the late 60s: I've added to the family of six (five originals, one custom-made replica) with some customs made of glow-in-the-dark Fimo, derived from early Patti Peticolas designs. Also Gilroy the ghost from Avon. Note that my Baby Spook'em has a "death rattle", an optional accessory suggested in Patti Peticolas' design sketches, from a time when her ghosts were planned as Colorforms-style paper/vinyl dolls that little girls could dress up and change hairstyles.

My Photo Peach slideshow, The Kooky Spooky story, tells the history of this 1969 phenomenon.

Enjoy!

Invasion of the dodos

It might be extinct as a species, but there's certainly no shortage of dodos here this week! Above is a 2D scan of my Nimslo 3D shot, taken in January 1984, of a real dodo skeleton in the Natural History Museum of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC. I finally got around to scanning it. My newer scanner has difficulty interpreting the lenticular laminate on my 3D photos, but the old scanner handles it well.

But these are some recent arrivals, after a bout of dodo madness on eBay:


Dodos from "Primeval" (by Character Options) and Safari


A Harmony Kingdom dodo keepsake box

An unlikely earthquake survivor?

Not wanting to make too light of two international natural disasters, but this little plastic "Star Trek" Andorian charm was purchased on eBay a few weeks ago - and was rather late arriving from Japan. He finally turned up today, with an apology sticker on the envelope: explaining he'd been found in Tokyo, at the bottom of the returning mail bag. So back to Sydney he had to go. Seems he would have been caught up in the big Japan earthquake of 2011. (The envelope wasn't damp, so I guess he managed to avoid the tsunami.)

Andorians may not be punctual, but they are resilient!



The sticker reads: "Dear Addressee, We found the mail remaining in an empty bag which had been originally sent to the destination. Thank you. Tokyo International Post Office."

Meanwhile, this recently came back from Mr Kim, my favourite local framing guy:



It's the autographed cover of Dayton Ward's "Paths of Disharmony", for which I was a beta reader.



Dare you take a stroll in New Therin Park?

Salting the herd

I bought my mother this funky cow family pepper, salt, milk jug and sugar bowl set in about 1975, and they survived three house moves, including interstate. When she returned to New South Wales last year, one of the calves had gone rogue and has never been seen again. I took a digital photo on a recent visit so I could more accurately search for a replacement. I was on a mission! And I can now report success.

After several close calls, I recently found a single second hand calf (pointing in the correct direction) on "Buy it now" eBay. There are so many variations on this style of ceramics, seemingly dating from the 50s, 60s and 70s, with very few having the bull as part of the set (the bull sugar bowl is what appealed to me so much in 1975), and many sets have dark purplish colours under the glaze, or any variety of painted details on the bells, collars and hooves. Similarly, prices for sets vary from a few dollars for lone pieces from broken sets to very large amounts if the sellers consider them to be "rare".

The horns and cow bell on this one were pale yellow (notice I've just enameled one horn metallic gold in the photo, as a test), and the blushes of hair colour are mauve on the replacement, rather than light brown - the brown-tinted sets do seem to be the rarity in my several months of looking, but adoptive bovine parents can't be fussy.

On the positive side, this little guy came in a random set of five single ceramic shakers, but still a good deal for the one calf I needed. I now have shakers resembling a red parrot, a Thanksgiving turkey, a weird duck and a dodo-like bird all looking for a shelf to warm.

Hail the Neptunian!

I recently decided I needed to track down a vintage Neptunian action figure to join the more recent replica Mego "Star Trek" line that has been coming out.

While "The Keeper" resembled a strange combination of Ted Cassidy's Ruk the android ("What Are Little Girls Made Of?") and the scarecrow/puppet head version of Balok he voiced in "The Corbomite Maneuver", Bele of Cheron was in a monochromatic wardrobe malfunction, and the first Mego Gorn was originally a Spider-Man villain, The Lizard, but in Klingon uniform, the bizarre and scaly green Neptunian didn't seem to qualify for a re-release.

Neptunian was a complete leap of faith on the part of the Mego sculptor and designer. Only vaguely resembling some of the alien races we met in Filmation's animated "Star Trek" (TAS) - and highly unlikely to really hail from neighbouring Neptune (I guess the planet is supposed to be ruled by King Neptune?) - this aquatic alien supposedly sold quite well, being in the Wave 2 selection. It was Wave 3 (Andorian, Romulan, Talos[ian] and the Mugato, who wore his funky, fringed, 70s disco outfit) which was the hardest set of figures to find at retail, supposedly partly due to a warehouse fire and being closer to the end of the reign of Mego 8" figures in general.

The next wave of replica Megos are to be all-new figures (Pike, Vina as an Orion, Chapel and the Salt Vampire). Suddenly the classic 70s Neptunian was a "must have" item for my collection. I understand he even has the rarer yellow underarm fins, not the green of most of the line. (There is debate about a certain bolt of fabric used by Mego; either the intended green turned yellow over time or the wrong colour was used on several Mego figures that year.)

Thank you eBay and the "Buy it now" facility!


The newly revised Gorn meets Mego's classic Neptunian.

Check out Mego's original Gorn and compare him to Marvel's "The Lizard" Mego figure at:
www.megomuseum.com/trek/gorn.shtml

Impossible memories

Today's tribute is to "The Impossibles", superheroes extraordinaire! My two brothers and I loved playing "The Impossibles" in the 1960s. I was always Fluid Man. He had the best sense of humour. Such terrible puns; I think I developed my punning ability from them. We first saw "The Impossibles" in glorious black & white, because Australia didn't get colour TV until 1975! It was a bit of a shock to see that Fluid Man's costume was green. I'd always assumed blue = water.

"The Impossibles" contributed two adventures to each episode of "Frankenstein Jr and The Impossibles" (1966), topping and tailing a cartoon of the giant, robotic version of Frankenstein's Monster. As kids we were horrified to hear that "Frankenstein Jr and The Impossibles", probably our favourite Saturday morning show, was being canned after only one season because the American censors, under pressure from lobby group complaints, had decided that cartoon superheroes were "too violent". Sigh.

Coil Man, Multi Man and Fluid Man animation cels!

The Hanna-Barbera cartoon show had a single Gold Key comic tie-in, which is very rare today, but luckily the reprinted material, plus an all-new text story, appear in a UK "Annual" (for 1969?), published by Atlas. Thank you eBay. Thanks also to eBay for the Whitman's frame-tray jigsaw puzzle.

Above: Keyrings (dated 1998) of the superheroes and their all-singing, all-dancing band member alter-egos. Like the (once-boxed) figurines at the top of this blog entry, the carded keyrings are made in China for JUN Planning Co. Inc, of Japan. Thanks for these to Steve Gidlow, now living in the USA. When we started our eBay auction negotiations, Steve and I suddenly realised we knew each other from several "Number 96" screenings in the 1990s.

Itchy eBay trigger finger!

After selling 40 Hoyts' "Star Trek" logo aluminium water bottles to my friends at the Playtrek toy collectors' listserv, I had some Paypal funds just sitting dormant and burning a hole in my pocket - and my finger just sorta, kinda hit that pesky, tempting eBay "Buy it now" button.

I had accidentally come across a thread, on the Star Trek Prop, Costume & Auction Board I now rarely seem to visit, about someone selling off a "Star Trek: The Next Generation" Pakled costume. With the "It's a Wrap!" eBay auctions no longer running, I keep forgetting to go back there and chat with my fellow costume collectors. It's been to long, but my visit tonight was rewarded!

Now, as a long time Data impersonator in my heyday, a Pakled costume (rather like Data's lookalike evil twin, Lore, wore in "Brothers") was way too hard to pass up. Sadly, I'm carrying enough weight, and am jowly enough, to do the full Pakled these days! (As I found out when I bought my "Enterprise" Tellarite Ambassador costume - and I can wear it without the fat-suit undergarment that came with it!)

From "The Samaritan Snare":

Grebnedlog the Pakled
(He looks for things to make us go - and spend up big.)

The exciting "It's a Wrap!" eBay auctions finished up many months ago now, and I must admit to some withdrawal symptoms. Tonight was chance to grab a fantastic, authentic Trek outfit, at an excellent price, and considerably lower than the seller had paid for it himself two years ago!

The original "It's a Wrap!" listing said:

STAR TREK: TNG "GREBNEDLOG" THE PAKLED FROM "SAMARITAN SNARE"
An elaborate Pakled costume featured in the "Star Trek: The Next Generation" episode "Samaritan Snare" for wear by Chris Collins in his portrayal of "Grebnedlog". The costume is a series of thickly padded tan and brown elements consisting of texture patterned trousers, a thick woven sweater, a quilted jacket with brown trim and affixed brown leather straps and buckles, a pair of brown painted rubber boots, fabric gloves, multiple brown leather straps with buckles, and a sash with straps. The costumer's tag reads #143 TNG "Samaratin (sic) Snare" PAKLID (sic) – Grebneblog (sic) Chris Collins. This costume is believed to be one of the last two remaining Pakled costumes. Chris Collins is also known for his portrayal of the voices of "Cobra Commander" in the "G.I. Joe" animated series, and "Starscream" in "Transformers".

The late Christopher Collins did his animated voice work as Christoper Lawrence Latta.







Today's photo of the day, to continue the theme: my Pakled customised action figure from the "Star Trek: The Next Generation" episode, "Samaritan Snare", accompanied by an official Playmates' Lore, from "Brothers":




We look for things to make us go - broke.

Cover story

Trekmovie has previewed a new batch of Star Trek novel covers and blurbs. I'm excited that I own the Tellarite costume ("It's A Wrap!" eBay auctions), that appears on the cover of "The Romulan War"!


Staff dinner - Harness racing at Club Paceway, Penrith.

Trek stuff, of course

I have been very reluctant to say too much until the new "Star Trek" movie goes into general release next week. Even listing my favourite scenes would be like a list of spoilers for others.

At the free advance screening I went to (last Monday), the audience of competition winners was mesmerized. Laughing in the funny bits, sniffing in the sad bits, jumping in the scary bits, but otherwise totally engaged with the screen. I still haven't read a bad review, and it's also heartening to read comments from people online saying they went in fully expecting to hate the movie and ending up loving it. I know there'll still be people who absolutely hate what JJ Abrams has done, but hopefully the overall increase in ST popularity will hang around for a few years more.

I picked up a ticket for local evening screening on Thursday, and have a theatre party booking in the CBD with friends for Friday night. Maybe IMAX on the weekend?

As for the action figures, I'm just not understanding the hatred for them I've seen so far on various collectibles listservs and TrekBBS. I've now seen examples of most Playmates figures in 3.75" and 6", and they are great! (6" Uhura is still elusive). Even the 6" Kirk, which looked a bit odd in some preview pics, looked fine in the package.

The 3.75" figures are soooooo cute. They are way more articulated than Mego and Galoob 3.75" figures, and more cleverly-jointed than ERTL ST III figures. (Uhura's bare knees don't have ugly silver pins in them!) I can't wait for my huge mail order packages from Rick at NewForce to arrive, so I can assemble the tiny crew onto the bridge and transporter playsets. (Gosh, I think I ordered the playsets. It was soooo long ago.) The local 3.75" figures are not having bonus bridge pieces in their packaging, but these bits will come with Wave 2 figures later in the year, I've been informed.

Every figure I picked up had excellent painted detailing; I'm not seeing the poor face applications people have complained about. Others have mentioned that Uhura and Pike were the shortpacks in the US, and I only saw one of each on Thursday night at Hobbyco in the CBD, so I grabbed them for future customising. I'm thinking that I might end up securing any cadet uniform-outfitted figures I ever see on special and using them to make a roomful of alien cadets!

Ah, and my eBay-ordered "Buy it now" Funko Andorian "Wacky Wobbler Bobble-head" turned up yesterday. Very cute, but it doesn't talk. Many online references claimed that he was supposed to, but that's only the Kirk and Spock, I understand.

Now I want the Gorn, I think.


Funko "Star Trek" Andorian Wacky Wobbler Bobble-head
meets Playmates' 2009 movie Uhura (3.75"), evil Nero (6")
and evil Nero Mini-Me (3.75").

Back to Andor - boots 'n' all

The post office's parcel courier van arrived in my driveway bright and early this morning and I assumed it was my latest batch of "Star Trek" action figures, but no... it was a package all the way from Andor, via eBay!

A few weeks ago, I noticed some Andorian Imperial Guard uniform boots up for auction, as part of the It's a Wrap! eBay auctions (of "Star Trek" props, costumes and set pieces from Paramount's soundstages and warehouses), which have continued running for longer than any fan could have imagined. I've been very cautious about peeking at the auctions. eBay is soooo addictive. I'd already won the Andorian ambassador's outfit from "Enterprise" in 2007, as regular readers of this blog would know - and I did buy myself some very cool farmed-crocodile skin boots to go with it, but now I know how Andorians prevent their robes from trailing on the ground... they simply wear very, very tall boots!

Look what I won last month, and which just arrived:



They are purposely lightly "weathered" with grey paint, but otherwise are almost-new, commercially-available, leather boots. The big gamble was that the auction description omitted a size. They looked rather tiny. A tag inside each boot indicate that they were worn by one Chase Bandy, whom the Internet tells me has also been a stand-in on a Topher Grace movie, "Win a Date With Tad Hamilton!", has played a minor recurring character in TV's "Days of Our Lives" - and once attended the 2005 Hollywood celebrity gala premiere of "The Headhunter", at least long enough to be photographed by one M. Castner.


Chase Bandy,
up and coming Hollywood spunk?

Now that the boots are here, I can see that they are GBX brand boots. As they'd appeared online, and even when pulling them out of the box and bubblewrap, I was convinced they were quite small. Imagine my surprise when they had US size "10.5" marked inside! It's an optical illusion caused by the huge soles, I guess. Even placing my foot alongside the boots, there was no way I was going to be able to wear them, but... they are a perfect fit!


No, I didn't blue my legs just for the occasion, Sorry.


Art Asylum did a good rendition of the Andorian boots on their Shran action figure.

By wonderful coincidence, I also won some Andorian medical dressings, in a different auction lot, the same week, and the items arrived together. The bandage pads have Andorian script screenprinted onto them, and were probably created for the episode featuring the destruction of Shran's ship, the Kumari. Lots of gravely injured Andorians in that one. (Was Chase Bandy one of them?)

I guess the bandages will be perfect for my heels if my new Andorian boots cause some big blue blisters!

Monkeying around

From out of the blue (pun intended), I received a wonderful email this week!

An Internet friend from USA, Lori Custer, contacted me to say:

"Hope this finds you well! I went and checked out your websites, did a bit of reading up about you, and decided that you needed a little Therin [the Andorian], to go with your 'Lori Custer Monkey' collection. You now have three; that makes it a collection!



"All I need from you, is your mailing address, I`ve lost it, and I will get the little critter in the mail to you.

"There are a couple 'additions', but they will help him, not hinder, in his adventures. The 'tail' is equipped with the same 'feelers' they have on their heads, giving them a great advantage when being preyed upon from behind!

"The best to you this holiday season, Lori.

PS. I have enclosed a couple of snapshots, at his insistence... he is a bit of a ham..."
You're telling me, Lori!

What an amazing surprise! I lost contact with Lori not long after our eBay transactions were settled, but I found her again two Christmases ago when providing links to her sock monkey eBay projects. And then, this week, the email notification that something was on its way!



The miniature skateboard-riding Lori Custer sock monkey (above) was bought in an eBay USA auction in 1999, and is actually made from baby-sized "red heel" socks. The purchase started out as a joke when I was demonstrating to some colleagues (at the Scan office, where I was the editor) just how eBay auctions worked, and we all fell in love with this particular one. I decided he'd be perfect as a Christmas ornament for my tree that year. Note how he is hanging next to two M&Ms: "the candy of the Millennium".

Winning that eBay auction was fun, but the day the perfectly wrapped box arrived at Scan was a highlight of a great communal Internet adventure.

A few months later, when the creator, Lori, realised she'd overcharged me on postage, she sent me out a second miniature sock monkey for free: an editor sock monkey, blue pencil tucked over one ear, wearing spectacles, and working away at a tiny computer (below):



I have no idea what size sock monkey little simian Therin is, but it'll be fun (and frustrating) waiting to find out!

Glee in Glebe on a Saturday

Today had such a nice, relaxed, nostalgic feel to it, and the only annoyance was the crazy bumper-to-bumper traffic that seemed to be everywhere - all afternoon! so much for the petrol prices everyone complains about.

It's been a while since I've been to inner-city Glebe - but I wanted to gather up some reasonably priced Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander children's books for school/work, and past experience had told me that Gleebooks is usually the best port of call for these items. The staff were so helpful - at one point I had three staff members scurrying around at my whim - and any chance to wander through their children's and second hand collections is a pleasure. ("You can smell the shop before you get there", to quote - loosely - the line from "84 Charing Cross Road".) Because that store is at the opposite end of Glebe Point Road to their other bookstore, it meant that Jack and I had a great stroll past all the amazingly eclectic curio shops and cafes in between. And - more colourful than ever: Glebe Saturday markets in the grounds of the primary school. Jack found lots of happy, friendly, Glebe doggies to touch noses with.

Gleebooks also had three of the CBCA (Children's Book Council of Australia) shortlisted books I've been after. Thanks to the shop's trusty computer cataloguing, they identified that three of my elusive (ie. "awaiting reprint") needs were sitting, forgotten, on shelves somewhere in the well-stocked shelves! Every year it's like a crazy little hide 'n' seek game I love to play: how quickly can I round up all of the shortlisted titles for the school library. Thanks to Gleebooks today, my search is almost over for 2008. (Of course, but the time Book Week comes along, all of the books will be freely available in most bookshops - but I want to use them in my teaching in the lead up to Book Week in Term Three, not after the event.)

It's a shame so many of the Glebe stores are vacant now, victims of the nearby Broadway Centre shopping mall that has evolved from the old Grace Bros buildings. Where Grace Bros and Glebe shops had survived, almost side-by-side for decades, so harmoniously, it now seems like the might of the all-inclusive air-conditioned mall has done its job and killed off a lot of the life from the street shopping strip.
i recall in the 70s and 80s, people waited for restaurateurs to die before they could rent an empty shop in Glebe!

For three years (1977-1979), I spent many an afternoon or lunch break strolling through Grace Bros at Broadway, eventually venturing further afield into Glebe and its amazing shops, during my years at the Guild Teachers College. Then, for a while in the late 80s and early 90s, it was worth going back to Glebe Point Road every so often just to see what was for sale in weird shops like Half a Cow (now long gone) and second hand bookshops such as Cornstalk Books.

I've also been squealing with delight over some recent Amazon online purchases. The official soundtrack album of "Ironman", a few tricky-to-find old science fiction paperbacks (postage will be more than the $1 or so for the book, but who cares - I found them at last!), and some television rarities on DVD. Yes - I'm a happy shopper in both real and virtual bookshops.

For all the criticism that goes on about Amazon, such as odd quirks in their product descriptions, I still think they do an amazing job. It has become such a comprehensive website - with all their links to the international second hand and remaindered markets - that it's a rare thing to seek out a book (from any era) and not be able to get any leads. I can forgive their sometimes-bizarre semi-automated computer listings any errors that inevitably creep in. My days of haunting bricks 'n' mortar bookshops, week after week, on fruitless searches for impossible-to-find-stuff are mostly gone. Now when I go into such a store I can browse at leisure, not search frantically.

There is also a recent exciting eBay purchase, but I'll save that story for when it arrives from Melbourne - hopefully Monday - by registered post.

A capital idea

There's something rather ironic about me calling this blog "Have Phaser, Will Travel" and the only time it goes dormant is when I'm travelling.

One reason is that I don't have a laptop (yet) and, when on vacation, the last thing I really want to do is race off to an Internet cafe, and do hilarious and/or witty blog entries on-the-spot, live from the scene. While the concept is exciting, I guess, I'm not so sure it's a good idea to announce to the world, "Hey, I'm on vacation, so's the housemate, the abode is unattended - and I even have the watchdog on holiday with me, not guarding the house, while I blog to you daily from this poky cafe!"


We are taking the
blankie, aren't we?"

A complete break from the Internet is not a bad idea, either. If I had a laptop, I just know I'd never get anything else - but a little blogging - done. I almost cherish time away from emails and web surfing so I can get some Star Trek novels read!

We departed on Saturday morning and were at our Downer (ACT), dog-friendly bed 'n' breakfast by the afternoon, having spent a brief time in beautiful Berrima on the way. We bought some pumpkin bread there, that will taste scrummy, and some sweets from the good ol' Lolly Swagman to keep us munching along the way.

On Friday night, before we left, I'd paid a few bills via the Internet. Then I realised during the car trip south - to my horror - that I'd forgotten to organise payment for some vintage Star Trek metal miniatures I'd won from a US seller on eBay earlier in the week. Thanks to the wonders of the Internet and public libraries, I effortlessly booked 30 mins Internet time at Dickson Public Library yesterday afternoon, just before closing. I even managed to check my emails online, change my PayPal password and send $$$$$ to my toy seller. Whew!

And no, despite the date and time on this entry, I didn't write it (or the next five entries) in the library, although i was tempted. I did it the old fashioned way - handwritten notes on a scrap of paper. Yay post-vacation "Post Options" hyperlinks!

Sunday's magic number: 91.0. Yeah, the French food and red wine did it, I think.

Salute to eBay and Voyager - Weird Al style

This is one brilliant, conscientious fan's Youtube salute to all those "It's a Wrap!" auction-lovers who went through major withdrawal symptons as IaW moved warehouses for a week, and posted no new "Star Trek" costumes! Music by Weird Al Yankovic.

The Tellarite vs Australian Customs

"Tellarites don't argue for reasons; they merely argue." (Sarek of Vulcan)

How ironic that I felt like arguing over a Tellarite costume! I took a leaf from Star Trek and quit while I was behind. It really wasn't worth trying to argue with Australian Customs, especially when I had no choice but to admit defeat. But today, I also have to come clean - and tell you about my latest eBay acquisitions.

A few weeks after winning a set of screen-used Andorian robes from It's a Wrap!, I placed bids on two other Star Trek items. ('Tis the season to be greedy?) I had found an amazingly detailed Tellarite ambassador's costume from the "Star Trek: Enterprise" episode, "Babel One" (as worn by actor Lee Arenberg, as Gral*), that wasn't garnering much interest.


Ambassador Gral of Tellar Prime


Ditto a casual grey Starfleet shirt from the doomed Epsilon IX Space Station of "Star Trek: The Motion Picture". While I fully expected to lose both auctions, I was rather startled to win both auctions - for very reasonable prices!

For the two weeks of my recent vacation, I watched the mail closely. My calculations had the parcel due sometime in that fortnight, but alas! In my haste to save on postage, I'd requested that both items travel Down Under in the same carton. Because the combined total cost nudged itself over the $AU 1000 mark, my latest haul was delayed... in Customs. Drat! Thus, I got hit with a hefty inspection fee, plus customs duty, and GST (sales tax). Drat and double drat.

The most frustrating aspect was that the box was to be held up for at least five days while I filled in the paperwork, calculated the separate amounts in Australian dollars (as per the day they were purchased) and faxed them back. After ten days I'd still heard nothing more, so I rang to inquire. Yes, there was a general delay. When I pressed for my details to be checked, customs said they'd never received my paperwork, even though the paperwork was sent in two different batches and the fax machine had printed out receipts confirming the correct fax number.

The faxes were re-sent, and suddenly there was another form - the payment invoice for the Customs charges - to fill in and fax back. (That was last Thursday, so it's been an agonizing few more days.)

Of course, the top secret box arrived this morning, while I was in the shower. My housemate answered the door to the postal delivery man - maybe he'd assume the box contained new Star Trek action figures - but his first question to me was, "What costumes have you bought now?" Drat and triple drat.

Having come clean on my latest eBay adventures, I had to wait until this afternoon, after work, to open up the box. The costumes are quite exciting! The TMP shirt looks like it was made for me! Perfect sleeve length; a beautiful, raw cotton, grey shirt, in beautiful condition, especially considering it's been in storage at Paramount Studios since 1978!



"A costume featured in 'Star Trek I: The Motion Picture' for wear by characters on board the 'Epsilon IX Station'. The costume is a gray colored shirt with an open neck and an affixed yellow backed 'Epsilon IX' assignment patch on the left breast. Item Number 3716."

The Tellarite costume is an elaborate, two-layered brown jacket, covered in brass buttons, cords and tassels, and metal trim. It comes with matching trousers - and a "fat suit". Now, part of my strategy was that buying a costume requiring a fat-suit would be ideal, since if it was too small for me, I could just omit the padded undershirt. (After yesterday's "diet" post, it was all quite ironic.) Amazingly, the costume, although worn by the petite Mr Arenberg on-screen, fits me perfectly, even in the sleeve length. And yeah, I don't need the fat suit. Hardy har.



"'Ambassador Gral' (Lee Arenberg) was a high-ranking Tellarite official featured in the 'Star Trek: Enterprise' episode 'Babel One'. Gral was transported by the U.S.S. Enterprise NX-01 with the rest of his delegation to discuss a trade dispute with the Andorian Empire on the planetoid Babel however he complained for the entire voyage. His costume includes a cropped sleeved padded undershirt with padding around the belly and shoulders to create the Tellarite appearance. The ornate coat is ribbed brown with many gold and black colored buttons over the surface. It zips up the front and there are also two metal fastening on the front. Worn over the coat is a cropped long sleeved coat with more buttons and impressive detail on the back. Black cord with metal accents and brown tassels add to the detail. Corresponding brown trousers complete the outfit. Costume comes complete with costume tag. Item Number 3780."

By the way, the sewn-in "Enterprise" tag in the fat-suit shows that this costume element has an interesting pedigree! It indicates that, after "Babel One" (and "United"), the same fat-suit was used by stuntman Tony Brubaker, in the Klingon-themed episode "Divergence"; extra Pablo Soriano in "In a Mirror Darkly, Part I" (as Terev, the Tellarite in the agony booth); and extra Trey Stokes, as one of the Tellarite ambassadorial aides in the "Demons"/"Terra Prime" two-parter.


Shran & Gral shooting "United". Thanks Frontier of TrekBBS!

I must stop looking on eBay on Saturdays...

* By the way, Lee Arenberg has played a Ferengi - also called Gral - in the "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" episode, "The Nagus"!