Federation Commander

So, a LONG time ago a friend of mine gave me two Federation Destroyers. They were Zocchi minis (Or clones of Zocchi). One was glow-in-the-dark (And it still glows! ) and the other was painted by my friend when he was, like, 12 or something. Anyway it was a horrid paint job.

I've had it in my box of "To be worked on" for a while, and tonight my wife asked me what I needed from the store and, on a whim, I said "Simple Green". I kinda wanted to work on this mini (Spurred on by the recent arrival of my 2500 squadron box).

So, I dunked the mini in the Simple Green tonight and when I started to peel away the horrid white paint I saw something I never expected:

The Destroyer is clear plastic!

Does anyone know the story behind the clear Zocchi knock-offs (ARE they knock-offs?). Obviously Feds don't have cloaks, so there isn't a real reason to have a cloaked Fed... so it's someone's interesting idea.

For that matter, anyone know the story behind the Glow-In-The-Dark Destroyer?

---G

Once you have paid for the very expensive injection mold tooling for plastic models like that and it's set up on a machine and running, it's actually quite cheap to have them just switch to a different color of raw material pellets.

Zochii is fond of all kinds of plastic colors (his company, GameScience, makes lots and lots of gaming dice). The glow-in-the-dark and clear were probably just Uncle Lou having some fun.

Production runs of injection molded plastic stuff is in the hundreds or thousands, so there are lots and lots of those "odd" Fed minis floating around.

ADB just recently was doing a "fire sale" on the very last of the new clear Fed dreadnoughts, probably 20 years after they came out of the mold.

The answer you seek is in the Grandfather of StarFleet Battles, Star Fleet Battle Manual. The clear and glow in the dark versions are explained in the rules.

They are not knock-offs, but molded intentionally in clear plastic, like the Blue and Green "Glow in the dark" plastic, white, and the now hard to find "Titanium White" or "accurate color" plastic many veterns are familar with.

You can still purchace the clear and glow molded versions from Gamescience.

ADB commissioned a new run of white Zochii plastic minis, last year.

Yes, Zocchi did clear Fed ships. No knock offs there.

I don't think there are any left in the oversized garage he refers to as his warehouse, but I will ask him next time I talk to him. (We have had hour-long chats twice this week, the first time we have spoken since Origins. It's not that we avoid speaking to each other, we just never think of it. We both started thinking that at our ages, one of us might not be there on some future phone call, and we have been friends for a very long time, about 37 years.