Subscribe Posted by Michael Pinto on Mar 12, 2009 in Star Trek

Having watched the original series since my early childhood one of my early disappointments in life was the 1979 film Star Trek: The Motion Picture: You have to understand for me this was like Beatles getting back together again, but then producing a bad disco album. So it’s not surprising that I’ve blocked most of my memories associated with that “film” out of mind. But one thing that that the Paramount marketing dept. got right was the merchandising, and in this case I had forgotten that fast food giant McDonald’s had created a series of Star Trek themed Happy Meals to coincide with the film. Shown above and below are commercials that promoted fast food for Star Fleet officers in training.

Each Star Trek Happy Meals box art included comic strips and trading cards that you could cut out. The comic strip artwork was by illustrator Ron Villani who had quite a bit of fun with his subject matter:

But best of all each Happy Meal included a special toy communicator which included a comic strip that you could scroll through: