Today I’m going to continue the Star Trek theme by going back to the decade before The Next Generation.
In 1979, Paramount Pictures released Star Trek: The Motion Picture to movie theaters. Quite a lot of Star Trek licensing and cross-promotions followed and one of those marketing partners was the Mars company. One of the coolest things they released as part of their Star Trek push was a mail-away “Action Fleet” of cardboard fold-up starships.
Consumers would have likely first learned about the promotion from special candy packs featuring it. I have only ever come across one of these Star Trek Action Fleet packs before. This is the one for M&M’s Peanut that I have in my collection:
Mars – M&M’s Peanut – Star Trek Action Fleet mail-away offer – candy package – 1980
Here’s a close-up of the offer info:
Action Fleet offer close-up
I can’t recall clearly, but I’m pretty sure I remember seeing these when I was a kid. I’d love to find some of the other wrappers with this promotion on them, but for now I’m happy to have at least one.
Since we have the pack, I also wanted to share the Action Fleet mail-away contents. I’ll start with the mailer envelope and then show everything that came with it.
Mars – Star Trek Action Fleet Mail-Away – mailing envelope – 1980
The return address on this is Young America, MN — I mailed away for a number of things as a kid, and Young America was the place that fulfilled quite a lot of the promotions back then. Here’s what came inside the packet:
Mars – Star Trek Action Fleet Mail-Away – instructions
Mars – Star Trek Action Fleet Mail-Away – Fleet Specification Guide
I felt that this specification guide required some close-ups, so here they are:
Mars – Star Trek Action Fleet Mail-Away – Close-Up 1
If you’re a Star Trek fan like I am — did you notice that they listed a cloaking device as part of the USS Enterprise’s defenses? That doesn’t sound right.
Mars – Star Trek Action Fleet Mail-Away – Close-Up 2
Mars – Star Trek Action Fleet Mail-Away – Close-Up 3
Next up, I’m going to share the actual punch-out sheets that the fold-up ships came out of. I wasn’t sure if these would be all that entertaining in flat form, but what the heck – here they are:
Mars – Star Trek Action Fleet Mail-Away – Cross Bars
Mars – Star Trek Action Fleet Mail-Away – Klingon Cruiser Main
Mars – Star Trek Action Fleet Mail-Away – Work Bee
Mars – Star Trek Action Fleet Mail-Away – Vulcan Shuttle
Mars – Star Trek Action Fleet Mail-Away – Enterprise Main
Mars – Star Trek Action Fleet Mail-Away – Enterprise and Klingon Cruiser extras
That’s the full content of the mail-away Star Trek Action Fleet packet.
I do have one other piece of promotion that Mars did with Star Trek: The Motion Picture. There may have been others, but so far this is all I’ve turned up. This is a Sunday circular for a mail-away for Mars fun-size packs and Star Trek pajamas. Star Trek pajamas!
Mars – Star Trek pajamas circular ad and coupon – 1980
And that concludes my weekend of Star Trek coverage. I hope you enjoyed it and I’ll see you next time!
That looks like a pretty awesome playset 🙂
The movie was awful, the toys were a let-down… but the premiums were all pretty great! The Happy Meal boxes and prizes were simple, but really well-done. And weren’t there some sort of glow-in-the-dark light switch stickers as well, maybe in cereal? I’ve got this set, though it’s not the one I ordered at the time.