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 - Much better than it appears to beI just received my Star Trek 40th Anniversary Phaser yesterday, and I fell in love with it. It has features faithful to the TV show that are not described when you examine it online, which is why I'm writing this review. When I was a child, Star Trek was one of my favorite TV shows. I loved the phasers they used (what kid wouldn't want their own ray gun?). There were two types of phasers they mainly used on the original series: a small, personal, palm-sized unit they called a Type I Phaser; and a larger, pistol-gripped Type II Phaser. What is not well known outside the fan base is that the Type II Phaser consisted of a pistol-gripped housing that a Type I Phaser would be inserted into. This helped to focus, refine, and aim the energy beam, and was extremely well thought-out for a show in the '60s. Looking at the picture, you can see the smaller Type I Phaser (the dark grey unit) resting in the teal body of the Type II housing. This model is fully faithful to it. The smaller phaser can be released from the body and operates independently.The small Type I Phaser has a power setting wheel letting you choose several intensity settings. A small LED on the front of the unit flashes as a button underneath is pressed, and a sound effect is played (sounding very faithful to the show). As the intensity wheel is turned up several notches, the LED flashes more quickly and the sound effect increases in pitch. A second small wheel slightly raises and tilts a screened panel atop the unit which supposedly acts as a targetting sensor. The main body of the pistol-gripped Type II unit does not operate independently. Like the TV show, it must have the smaller unit snapped into it. Once inserted, it becomes operational and gains a couple of additional features. Pressing the trigger button, the same sounds are released, and the front of the unit flashes red. A dial on the top of the unit just behind the Type I unit allows you to put the phaser into "overload mode". When the trigger is then pressed, the sound effect starts low building in intensity and pitch, and the front lights up and starts flashing building up in brightness and speed, until an explosion sound effect is generated. A dial on the left-hand side of the unit allows you to control whether or not the front of the unit lights up. Twisting the front of the unit (the silver part where the beam "emerges") controls the intensity of the light. The unit is surprisingly well designed. The only drawbacks to it are minor and fully in-line with the price... it's made of plastic, and the flashing LED on the small unit could have been designed to be more prominent. The colors are also not like they appear on the picture, which is good because they're better than what is shown. The handgrip is slightly darker and more bronze-colored than the orangeish color that's pictured, and the body is a darker teal that borders on being grey. The colors are actually very faithful to the show. I saw once that a company made a limited edition series of these units that were made out of metal and VERY realistic and faithful to the show. Those collectibles were also VERY expensive and limited editions. While I think it should be priced about $5 less than what it is, it is designed very well and is beautifully faithful to the show by having all of the features I described. That design set is why I gave the unit five stars. Had it been priced higher, I'd have given it less of a rating, but the full feature set of the toy and dedication to the TV show earns it five stars in my book. I couldn't have one as a kid, but as an adult, I finally own my own Star Trek phaser. Rating: - Looks better in person than the picI just got mine in the mail and it's awesome! The color in the image here is almost completely off. The main body of the phaser is more grey than green and the handle is less yellow than the pic. It's a beautiful model, plastic, with nice sounds and cool blinking red light in the front. I have not taken it out of the box yet, and I'm not sure I will. But what I can see thru the window, it looks like it's well constructed and very detailed. I actually ordered another one just so I can have one to take out of the box and display. I'm really happy with this and I've always wanted one since I was a kid (I'm 42). Like a small dream come true.
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