New Star Trek merchandise is always exciting news. So when we got the word that The Nacelle Company would be making a new Star Trek Figure line, we were very intrigued. And even more so when we saw some examples of the upcoming figure line revealed at New York Comic Con earlier this year. Trek Central beamed down to get an update from Nacelle CEO, Brian Volk-Weiss about what led him to start its new venture.
You can watch our interview with Brian below on the Trek Central YouTube channel. Or you can read for an abbreviated article version. The new line of Star Trek action figures is based on characters from across the iconic franchise, spanning nearly 60 years!
A new line, from a lifelong fan
Jack: Many Star Trek fans watching this will want to know more about the Nacelle Company’s line of Star Trek figures. They may not have seen what came out of New York Comic Con. But let’s first start with the project. How did this come about? What made you decide to do a line of figures?
Brian: I hope anybody [reading] this knows that “Nacelle” was not invented by Star Trek. I would say 99% of the world that knows that word, learned it from Star Trek. So, I love Star Trek. It changed the entire course of my life. That’s an understatement. We started making toys about three years ago and started to buy older brands that were out of manufacturing. We were bringing them back, which was going very, very well. So I had a meeting at Alcon to talk about the TV side of the company. We (The Nacelle Company) make TV shows too.
People have been shocked lately. Are you the same Brian Volk-Weiss who did “The Toys That Made Us?” I’m like, that’s not weird. The fact that we’re making Star Trek toys is weird. So I had a meeting at Alcon. We were talking about working together on some TV shows, and as the meeting was coming to an end one of the guys in the room was like, “You want to hear a cool thing?”. This room we’re in right now is where every episode of The Expanse was written. So I showed him my arm covered in goosebumps, hairs standing up, and everything. And he said we don’t have a toy license. And I read that you’re doing toys now. So we got The Expanse license, announced it, showed pictures, and raised money.
Brian: About a year later I heard that Playmates was winding down their Star Trek toy line. The Star Trek figures, so I was kind of goofing around with one of my colleagues. The guy who runs our consumer product division – Michael Goodman. I was talking to him, and I’m like, do you know anyone at Paramount? And he was like yeah, of course I do.
We got on a Zoom call and we made the pitch. I’m friends with many people who own or work at toy companies, so I have been pitching them for years. I said don’t just do Kirk and Spock, do Captain Jellico and Captain Garrett. Of course, nobody listened to me for good reason. Then that’s what we pitched to Paramount. I called our head of development, Savannah. I was like, hey, I’m going to just vomit a pitch to you, can you turn it into a presentation? So that’s what we did, we pitched Paramount and they listened.
Then we had another meeting with the first guy’s boss. All we did was talk about Star Trek, not toys or anything. He was trying to see if I was passionate. I’m lucky, I didn’t scare him off. And then, about a month after that meeting, we received an email. I framed it on the wall, it said, “Congratulations, you’ve been approved to make Star Trek toys”.
Jack: It’s such a great story of starting out. I’m sure many fans are really going to love hearing it. Let’s rewind back to New York Comic Con. It saw the reveal of some of these figures. Could you tell us about those and what made Nacelle pick the characters? You mentioned it before, but can we expand on that?
Brian: If you look at my toy collection, it’s over 4,000 pieces. I have a lot of weird stuff. I love David Lynch’s Dune. The movie bombed, so the toys never did well. So I’m aware of that for myself. So I picked characters, some of which I feel make sense and will do well. I’m not the only one who likes Captain Jellico. I’m not the only one who likes Captain Garrett. There might be, one character in particular. We’ve been getting a lot of emails about it. “Why’d you do that one?”. I don’t want to single out which one it is, but the answer is I think the best toy lines in history… it’s a dialogue between the toy company and the consumer.
Going back to Kenner and seeing how they did Star Wars, you could make a book. You could make a book where each page was just one picture of, for lack of a better expression, fan maintenance. They put letters in every vehicle, anything that wasn’t one figure on a card. There were letters, there were fan groups, there were fan magazines. There were all these things that surrounded the toys that people forget about.
But as a kid who was born in 76 I grew up with Star Wars. I remember getting a letter, and you could see the Lucas film mailing and it was like… it sounds so cheesy, but it was like Christmas in March kind of stuff from a stupid letter. So I wanted it because I’m a collector. I knew that if I had read that [another] toy company had gotten the [Star Trek Figures] rights, my first thought would be, “Oh my God, this is the fourth company in five years”. They’re going to put out three figures. It will be Kirk, Picard, Spock, or Data. Maybe, if we’re lucky, Riker, maybe, if we’re lucky, a Guinan!
I wanted to say to the community… we’re going there. Like, that character that was on screen for three minutes, and you never even thought about making a toy. I’m not the first guy to think about doing Captain Jellico as a toy. All you have to do is go to Etsy and you will see lots of Jellicos. You will see lots of custom-made Garretts. You won’t see Valkris from Star Trek III.
That’s what I wanted to say to the fans. I wanted to say to the community we’re in it for the long haul. We’ll get to Kirk, we’ll get to Spock. Believe me, they will be in. We don’t see this as a one or two-year ride. We don’t see this as a one or two-wave ride. For me, victory is doing at least 100 unique characters. That’s first base, it’s not a home run. The first base is when we put out our 100th figure.
Engaging The Trek Community
Jack: Do you have an idea of who that might be? No spoilers, obviously, but have you got an idea in the back of your head who the 100th might be?
Brian: It’s funny, I actually do. I’m not going to say it because I’ve learned the hard way not to back myself into corners. I mean, we already know what we’re doing for the 60th; we’re designing Wave Two right now. But for the 60th, which I don’t even know if that’ll be a whole wave. It’ll be two or three characters, maybe four, but we’re already two or two years out.
Jack: That’s fantastic. Nacelle also took inspiration and feedback from the community, and emails were sent in. Can you talk a little bit about that? What was the community feedback for the figure line?
Brian: So a couple of things. Number one, wave one was supposed to be six figures. At the last minute, I realized I wanted to give the community what they wanted, as it’s what I wanted. I’m not talking about the community like some abstract third-party removed organization. I’m in that organization and have been since I was five. So what I wanted to do was make sure the audience understood we were listening.
Second, one of the characters in Wave Two happened because of the feedback in the comments section we got from the initial press release. So there’s no reason for me to hide it. It was Weyoun. We would not have done Weyoun if we had only done six figures. There would not have been a way because we went up to eight figures and had so many comments. We put all the comments into a spreadsheet, and then numbered who got how many mentions. We wanted to do something from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and I love the character. And then, like I said, we just got Wave 2 approved by Paramount this week.
Jack: That’s fantastic. I’m sure many are going to be loving that news as well. Also, having a Weyoun figure is going to be amazing. I’m looking forward to that one.
Brian: As am I, one of the most unique characters in the history of Star Trek.
Covering Each Trek Series
Jack: The original announcement revealed that the figure line would cover from The Original Series to Star Trek: Enterprise. Many questioned the lack of a new series focus, like Strange New Worlds. Is there a reason why it’s not coming out? Is it like a licensing thing? Could you maybe elaborate on that?
Brian: If I’m being honest and also hopefully a little funny, another company beat us to it. I can’t say who the company is, but you know Star Trek fans are very picky. So I’m just giving my own opinion. I love that company. I have, conservatively, probably, three dozen figures that the company has made. One of the things they made, I’m not even the biggest fan of. But they did such a gorgeous job with the figures. I don’t know how they make their price point. What I’m about to say is a compliment, because, at some point, you’ll know who’s making them like. Is this a mob front? Like, how are you selling toys that are this beautiful at this price point? So I’m a big fan.
Brian’s Star Trek Connection
Jack: Well, I’m sure many are going to be looking forward to that eventually. So one question we love to ask everybody. We sort of touched on it at the start there as well, but what was your personal connection to the Star Trek Universe? Could you tell us a bit more about that?
Brian: I mean it’s occupied 100% of my life since I could go to movies and understand movies. That being said, even if I were to take what… 13 movies? Probably over a thousand episodes at this point and zero into one thing. It’s the Genesis cave scene in The Wrath of Khan.
When Saavik says to Kirk about facing death, Kirk says you know, I don’t believe in the no-win scenario. I talk about this more than ever. I’m telling people this is something I wouldn’t have admitted to until I got married. It’s something I’ve never said in an interview before. But it’s in my will that when I am dead, and I hopefully have a tombstone, it will say the quote, “I don’t believe in the no-win scenario”.
Jack: Hopefully, many fans around the world will connect to it as well. We always hear some fantastic Star Trek stories and how people connect with them on a personal and even deeper level as well. Well, Brian, that brings me to the end of our questions for today. We’ve learned a lot about the Star Trek figure line.
Brian: The pre-sale is going to be in the middle of Q1 [2025], late February, early March. So early 2025.
I just want to mention two things. First, I swear we will do everything possible to get them into people’s hands before 2026. Second, we are doing every single thing we can, and I believe we will pull this off to keep them under $30. So our North Star is the Black Series or GI Joe Classified, and our goal is to keep them under $30.
Conclusion
Thank you to Brian Volk-Weiss of the Nacelle Company for chatting with us here at Trek Central about their new Star Trek figure line. We’re super excited about the upcoming Star Trek action figures available for pre-order in 2025. Keep an eye out for more information on the action figure line.
This Interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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