The Big Three
"1701's"

6442 Captain Jean-Luc Picard from "Tapestry"
16043 Lt. Natasha Yar from "Yesterday's Enterprise"
16044 Lt. (JG) Reginald Barclay from Voyager "Projections"

"NCC-1701. It's the most famous ship's registry number in television history."

In honor of that number, Playmates, Inc. decided to produce three figures in 1996 with distribution limited to 1701 figures each. Only 1,701 of Captain Jean-Luc Picard from Tapestry were released. The result was an outraged collector community who felt betrayed by Playmates, Inc. since they would no longer be able to "collect the entire universe of Star Trek characters"...as stated on each Playmates collectors card. Eventually, Playmates responded to collector demands with an increased production size, but it was too late to catch the Yar figure release. Yar was also limited to a production run of 1701 figures. The third figure released, Barclay from Projections, resulted in an increased (but still extremely limited) production run of 3000 figures. The collector community remained at a high level of discontent.


Playmates, Inc. tried to make ammends with the remaining loyal collector community in 1998 with the release of the "1701 Collector Series" 3-pack, stating..... "In their original packaging, they are gone forever - thus preserving their value. But in response to popular demand, these three figures return once more, along with their original accessories in this exclusive NEW collector packaging!"


But now, the 1701 lucky collectors (sometimes fanatic collectors, paying very high premiums to obtain a figure) who proudly owned one of the original extremely limited (and valuable) figures ALSO felt betrayed. These figures were no longer truly limited to 1701 (or 3000) as promised by Playmates, Inc.

"1701 Collector Series" 3-pack

( The package is numbered, but the individual figures have no number on their feet )

The  1701 / 3000  Stickers

The first figure released, Picard, has a sticker on the bubble which reads " NEW only 1701 produced LIMITED EDITION".  The furor created by the search for these figures caused Playmates to rethink their release policy.  Playmates believed that the sticker made the figure stand out on the shelves and attract the attention of  "scalpers" , who prowled toy stores for the premium action figure toys as they were released and then immediately sold them on the secondary market for premium prices.  [As far as I'm concerned, they were right...scalper scum almost ruined the collector's ability to find limited items].  Anyway, to make the Yar less conspicuous, Playmates released the second 1701 figure WITHOUT the new stickeron the bubble.  Many collectors were unhappy about this, but a few were able to write Playmates directly and receive a sticker in the mail which they could add to their YAR.  Playmates had a limited number of stickers were left over from the Picard release, and when they ran out, Playmates stopped the mailings.   Following these complaints, and at the same time increasing production, Playmates again put a sticker on the Barclay figure.  So.....YAR "can" be found with the sticker, as well as the standard released format without the sticker.....and of course any sticker can be removed if desired.

THERE IS A DIFFERENCE

The Picard figure in the 3-pack is different from the Individual Picard in that the 3-pack Picard does not have a black star command symbol on the comlink and belt buckle. Whereas the original Tapestry Picard figure DOES show this Command symbol.