EMvTW 36: USS Grissom NCC-638 (Oberth class)

NOTE:  You can click on most pictures to get a larger view of them.

Rewrites: May 2016 & September 2018

It has been quite a while since I've written any of my Eaglemoss vs. The World articles.  As I stated in a previous post, life got in the way of my modeling and collecting.  Now I'm back with what I hope to be a good revitalization of posts.

The first of the next six comparative articles will focus on the Oberth Class vessel.  We are first briefly introduced to this type of starship  in the movie, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984).

Although there have been some companies producing a pre-built and pre-painted version of this ship, they have tended to be on the small side, like MicroMachine size small.  There also isn't many model kits of this ship either.

My current collection consists of an Eaglemoss, a Furuta, several Cozmo Heavy Industries resin kits (some of them kitbashed), and a MicroMachine model.


Per Memory Alpha and Beta, "The Oberth class was a small Federation starship used primarily by Starfleet and civilian scientists alike, as a scout class and science vessel, from the late-23rd to the late-24th century."

If you would like to read more official stuff on this type of ship, feel free to check out the following links:

Oberth Class Information: Memory Alpha LINK and Memory Beta LINK
USS Grissom (NCC-638) Information: Memory Alpha LINK and Memory Beta LINK

I have never been a big fan of this class of ship.  It seems like it was simply designed to be nothing more than cannon fodder, or if it was lucky, a personnel transport for a brief walk on appearance in an episode.  When you sit down and actually read the specifications on Memory Alpha and Memory Beta, it really isn't well suited to do any sort of deep space exploration unless it was part of a small fleet of more heavily armed vessels.  Although it is unique in it's looks, there are some design issues with the ship that have caused all sorts of fan confusion in regards to the secondary hull and what it is actually used for and whether it is manned or not.  We are not here to discuss those things though, so we will just move on to looking at the models.

I also have mixed emotions on whether I like the The MicroMachine toy or not.  The shape is right, but the painted details are splotchy.

 

I like to focus these review articles on larger scale models, so that will be all the attention MicroMahine will get a this time.

Eaglemoss vs. Furuta

I write this particular series of articles to give a good side-by-side comparison of the various pre-built and pre-painted small scale starships available to a collector.  I found that there was a serious lack of material showing what they looked like next to each other thus not giving me a good informed choice on what to buy.  I decided to start providing this information myself since I ended up buying the different manufacturer renditions of the same ship.

Eaglemoss vs. Furuta vs. Cozmo Heavy Industries vs. MicroMachine

While I don't normally include models that I've built and painted myself in these comparison pictures, nor do I normally include the MicroMachne model either, I felt that we really needed to get a grasp on the actual size of these main two models that I will discuss.  For a point of reference, the Cozmo Heavy Industries model is listed as 1:2500 scale.  As you can see, the Eaglemoss ship is rather large when compared to everything else out there.  I have to say this, I was very pleased with this fact.

 MicroMachine vs. Furuta vs. Eaglemoss

Eaglemoss

 

 

 

 

The first thing I'm going to say about the Eaglemoss ship is that it is by far the largest of all the Oberth models out there.  It is probably also one of the larger Eaglemoss ships from thier standard lineup as well.  I'm a big guy (6'2") and this thing fills my hand.

And the BIG advantage Eaglemoss had with making thier model this large is that they could pay more attention to details.  Because they were able to bring us such a small ship in such a larger scale, they naturally have a larger "canvas" to work with as far as detailing goes.  And does this thing have some detailing.

The sculpt and mold work on the the plastic and metal parts was well done and added a lot of details to the model.  The model is covered in panel lines and plenty of windows do the saucer section.

 

The overall painting of the ship was really well done.  For example, there is a nice aztecing pattern across the key areas of the ship.

The secondary hull, has some striking silver paint applied to several areas of that part of the ship that make it stand out very nicely.

 

The engineering section of the model was a part that REALLY impressed me with the amount of attention it received, both in molded and pained details.

I did see some minor smudging due to the paint not setting well on the molded details.  One glaring example was with the ship's name and registry on the saucer.

Another area where the paint could have been better is all of the windows on the saucer.  The blue paint that was supposed to be in the window molding, is badly mis-aligned.

Unlike other Starfleet ships, the Eaglemoss Oberth does not have any clear plastic parts on her.  Tha didn't stop Eaglemoss from doing a fantastic job with the nacelles though.

The grilles on the rear of the nacelles are reproduced in a nice and crisp appearance, that that metallic paint just makes them pop.

Since this class of ship has no visible deflector dish so we can't hyper-focus on that area as I usually do in my Starfleet vessel reviews.

The seams and the joins on this ship are almost non-existent.  Eaglemoss did a fantastic job of hiding them.

One glaring problem, and this has nothing to do with the actual model is in regards to the stand.  The stand is a little too firm gripping and has been causing some scratching of the paint work for some of my fellow reviewers, who like me, are prone to removing the model from its display from time to time to admire it.  While this is not a model issue, I felt it was still important enough to bring to your attention.

Normally, I would not comment on the magazine either, as that is not what my reviews are about, AND I usually find the magazines very informative as they get into "real world" information about the filming models and design processes for the ships.  When ever possible, the editors will actually interview the original model makers.  In this particular case I think that Eaglemoss seriously dropped the ball.  There has been some wide-spread debate over whether the secondary hull was manned and how exactly one would get into that area to even service the equipment.  I think that talking to the designers of the model and ship and asking them thier opinion would have been a great way to finally put this debate to bed.  But for now, it looks like...

[Editor's Note: I wonder how many of my readers 

are old enough to know that reference.]

In the end though, while I am not a fan of the Oberth class starship, Eaglemoss did warm me up to it enough that I decided to do some model building with the design.  You'll read more on that later.

Furuta

 

 

 

 

I always like to point the following out for my first time readers.  Furuta is a Japanese company that produced a series of gashapon toys.  Gashapon toys are meant to be nothing more than cheap little $1 to $5 bubble gum machine prizes.  I like to remind my readers of this fact so that they can take any critical reviews I may make in the spirit it is given.  I am in no way expecting these toys to be on the level of a Hallmark, Eaglemoss or Hot wheels toy.  I found a neat video about these types of toys and you can check that out at THIS LINK.

Furuta's entry in this ship class is rather small, being only slightly bigger than a 1:2500 scale resin model that I own and a bit bigger than the MicroMachine toy.  It was part of Furuta's 3rd volume set which is where in my opinion, they tried to save money by making smaller models than thier earlier Star Trek toys.

 Furuta vs. MicroMachine

Although I was disappointed with her size, Furuta still did a pretty good job with the molded details.

 

While there are some details missing, like the dome on the bottom of the saucer, Furuta still managed to squeeze in other details to keep the model interesting.

As far as the paint work goes, well, this is where the model comes up a little short.  The impulse engines are not powered on, and as you can see from the last two pictures, the saucer is missing some color as well.

Furuta did focus a lot of attention on that secondary hull though.

 

Fututa did manage to do a pretty nice job with thier nacelles.

At the time I got the Furuta model, she was the only pre-made model available so it did add some nice variety to my collection, so overall, I was actually pleased with my purchase at the time.

Conclusion

I would love to see Hallmark make an attempt at doing thier rendition of this ship.  Perhaps now that they are off of thier NuTrek kick we'll finally get to see one done by them.

[Editor's Note: As of September 2018, the chances of ever seeing this ship being done by Hallmark is pretty slim, considering the birth of Star Trek: Discovery, it looks like we are going to get inundated with ships from that universe from here on out.

At this point in my articles, I like to do a quick check on eBay to get some prices of the ships I've shared with you.  I will continue with the tradition of rounding up the most inexpensive Buy-It-Now prices (with shipping included in that price) from eBay at the time of this article's (re)writing (September 2018).

Eaglemoss = $35

Furuta = $25

MicroMachine = $20

NOTE: Prices were researched last on September 12th, 2018.  As of the writing of this article, you can not buy the Eaglemoss model from thier website, which means that we are stuck with the eBay prices.  It seems that those prices have almost doubled as well since the last re-write of this article.

We now come to the part of my article where I like to give you my opinion of which ship gives you the "best bang for the buck", which is my rough way of telling you which one is the best one to get, for the best price.  To put this in a nutshell, when I write these, I am trying to give my opinion of which model is the best for the least cost.  Unfortunately, there are only two different pre-made ships to really pick from.  Although the Furuta model is cheaper and rather good in what it has to offer, the size and level of details clearly makes the Eaglemoss version the better pick of the two, especially since it is only $10 more.

BONUS ROUND!!!

Every once in a while, I'll have a little extra stuff to share with you that sort of fits in with my comparison articles.

As I shared at the beginning of this article, I also own a couple resin kits of this class that were produced by Cozmo Heavy Industries.

 

 

 

SS Anaheim (Cargo Hauler)

 

SS Serrano (AEW&C and Science Vessel)

 

SS Rocoto (Missile Frigate)

 

USS Jeanette Isabelle (NCC-6199) (Medical Ship)

 

USS Deckard (NCC-170214) (Blade Runner Class High Speed Drop Ship Carrier)

 

SS Hermes (Junker Class (Courier))

Rather than rehashing the materials in those articles, you may feel free to read them by following either of these two links: 

Resin Kit Review: Cozmo Heavy Industries 1:2500 Oberth Class

Oberth Class Variants

As always, I hope you found this article useful and informative.  If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, please feel free to comment below.

So for now, "Live long and prosper!!!"



Additional Links To Photos Of My Collection:

Eaglemoss     Furuta   
MicroMachine     Comparative Shots

Other Reviewers Take On The Eaglemoss Model:
Some Kind Of Star Trek
Star Trek Starship Collection