Quark selling Deep Space 9 action figures
During the nineties, my interest in action figures dwindled. Yes, we had a Star Wars resurgence, but it never captured my imagination. I still had all of my original toys, and to me the new figures just looked wrong. This decade should have put an end to my collecting of figures, but I briefly got really into collecting Deep Space 9 action figures.
DS9 was not a show that I was attracted to right away. I was not a gold star fan. Throughout season 1, I was conflicted. Star Trek is some of my favorite TV. Yet, the pacing for this new series was just slightly off to me. As the season drew to a close, I decided I would not watch it anymore and during season 2, I was largely MIA. Then during season 3, things changed.
A friend of mine, who was also into Trek, proceeded to wow me with tales of DS9. He was so animated about it, I could hardly believe it was the same show. So I resumed watching it, and I am glad I did. DS9, as it matured, became one of the most solid shows in the entire trek-verse. Soon it was not enough to watch, I wanted to express my fandom in other ways. So I started looking for merchandise.
I found myself gravitating towards the Deep Space 9 action figures. This was unusual, since I had not gone out of my way to collect any other Star Trek figures. Perhaps I felt that this show, at this time, was important. And that I was collecting these to help keep this amazing run of TV alive in my imagination. More likely, I was just influenced by this commercial featuring Quark from the show.
I am a sucker for this type of advertising. A character from a franchise selling figures of themselves? Sign me up. It was a repeat of that Threepio Star Wars Cereal commercial all over again. Eventually I had all of them accept Odo. While I parted ways with most of Deep Space 9 action figures years ago, the very handsome Quark is still sitting in a box somewhere.
