He couldn't take advantage of these premium Bandai Namco Star Trek kits because he isn't a total psychopath.

What's funny is that I can completely picture where these kits would have been, back in the day: they would have been in that hobby shop at that ancient crossroads in north Spokane called "The Y." This hobby shop stood astride two radically different demographics: quilters, and those for whom the Train is a source of profound fascination. In either case, this establishment carried a few other items, shrapnel scattered around the wider blast area of the previous two. Model cars, an almost inconceivable category, as my interest level for either of those things was situated below the Earth. I was there with my mom a lot, and I'm sure Gabe's mom had him in there too. They also had Gunpla. And I can guarantee - guarantee! - that neither of us would have given a shit.

Obviously, the models are completely hellafied. They're gunpla, even if they aren't particularly Gun - the pla, the result of more than four decades of iteration and optimization, was always gonna be on point. The kits are probably undergated and shit, they got the lights in. I remember I used to see the creatures that lurked in those aisles - woody, inedible stalks of men, orbited by a drumhead-taut ball of skin with feet. I might have had an opinion on those misbegotten creatures at the time, but it's clear now that we were just getting a preview. We need to consider that time travel may have been involved.

(CW)TB out.