Colonial Archives / Data Bank

I started collecting Battlestar Galactica toys when I was eight, while the show was enjoying its first run on television. As any young boy, who was a fan of the show as well as the toy line, I had dreamt of figures and ships that would never become a reality (for Mattel, that is). Why we never got figures in the linkenesses of Apollo, Col. Tigh, or even Commander Cain, I'll never understand. But what we *almost* got from Mattel were two spectacular ships, the Landram (which was available in small numbers but only in Canada) and the Galactica itself. Back in early 1979, I was privileged to look through a Mattel Toy Fair catalog that really got my blood pumping. They they were, two of the coolest ships this side of a Viper, and they were coming soon! I couldn't wait to get my hands on a Galactica Command Ship! My Millennium Falcon would have taken a back seat for sure! You see, this wasn't information that a lot of kids had as there were no pictures of these ships on the backs of packages. As it turned out, my Father knew a man who owned a toy store, and every year after he got back from Toy Fair in New York City, he would let me peruse any of the catalogs he had. Because of my love for action figures, I always picked the catalogs from Mattel, Kenner, and Mego. I waited for these ships... and waited... and waited some more; the day never came to acquire them. As a kid, I guess I didn't really understand why the show had been cancelled, and why the toys couldn't at least have come out anyway. All I knew was that I would never be able to get my hands on some of the best toys in the entire lineup. That is, until 1999, when I got a call from my friend at Cloud City Collectibles. He knew I was a fan of the show and figured I might like to hear what he had just "picked up". I couldn't believe my ears. After twenty years, I was actually able to obtain the Holy Grails of the Battlestar Galactica toy universe! He had stated that these were indeed the toys featured a couple years before in an "Action Figure Digest" magazine article about the greatest toys never made, as well as being used at Toy Fair and presumably for the Toy Fair catalog itself. After some tweaking and thousands of dollars later, we were able to come to a deal, and they *finally* came home shortly thereafter. They were better than I had imagined. The Landram's missiles still fired, and the box it came with was an American style box. To date, only the occassional Canadian boxed Landram has surfaced. To me, the Landram prototype looked even better (and a little bigger) than the Canadian release, so I was completely happy. But the toy that takes the cake and really makes the whole toy line feel complete is the Battlestar named Galactica! This toy was way ahead of its time and must have cost them a bundle in Research and Development. There are opening hatches, hydraulics to raise the "space gun", Vipers that you can actually launch, Landrams that fit inside the cargo bay and travel down a lowering ramp, space sounds... the works! The box that it came with was only a mock-up, but the graphics depicted are very nice and colorful. Now that I have enjoyed these pieces lovingly these past few years, the time must come for me to relinquish them to a fellow fan, and one who will hopefully love them every bit as much as I do. I have a family now with two kids and a house payment, so I sadly cannot afford to keep them. I have been very happy to have owned them for as long as I have. These ships are the completion to the vintage toy line that everyone should have been able to have! - Greg Hanson