History of the AMT Refit Enterprise; the Lights & Sounds Edition!

 Welcome to the next chapter in the History of the AMT Refit Enterprise! This covers the Lights & Sounds Edition specifically, so here we go!

AMT/Ertl released this version of the Refit Enterprise kit for the 25th Anniversary of Star Trek back in 1991. The kit included a wiring package consisting of 3 regular light bulbs, 4 blinker bulbs, 2 green blinking LED's, and 2 red blinking LED's. There was also a speaker attached that mounted to the newly-tooled base for this release, and of course switches to power on the lights and activate the sounds! While this isn't the first time the kit included lighting (the original release for TMP included 6 grain of wheat bulbs to light the saucer), it was a bold venture to get a pre-assembled lighting kit into the same box as the Refit Enterprise kit!

Box art for the Lights & Sounds release... yet another new piece of art for this release!

The saucer in the kit was modified so that the blinking LED's and bulbs could be mounted for running lights.

The secondary hull parts trees. The shuttle parts from the ST:V release were omitted from this release, as well as the ST:IV display stand as well as the original deflector housing part.

The new parts and their corresponding part numbers. The new parts looked so much sharper than the rest of the kit parts!

All of the secondary hull parts together along with the display base parts.

The decals!

The electronics package! Still works after all these years!

 

 

The phaser and torpedo sounds are pretty much lifted from the original TV series (and the torpedo sound is much better in person than it is on my video!). Not a big deal, still cool that these were included. Also, back in 1991, it was hard to get an electronics package included in a kit, so still a much-valued bonus! 

Modifications made to the existing kit included holes were the small bumps were before that indicated running lights on the kits run from 1983 through 1989. There were several parts that had to have the channels added for the light bulbs to pass through on the kit (most notably through the strongback pieces, the nacelle struts, and nacelles themselves). This was all done due to the electronics package being pre-assembled. If this has not been done, those who were inexperienced with wiring and soldering (like me) would have had a difficult time getting the lights installed. It made some parts of the assembly a little difficult; for instance, the saucer and nacelles all had to be "built around" the wiring after the secondary hull was first assembled. An experienced modeler would have simply put tape on wires to number them and then cut them, and soldered them back together. I couldn't do that back then, so I chugged on. I'll show off my result in the next post. Honestly shocked that model still works after all these years, but I can't wait to show off the horrid paint job on it! 😅

Holes added to the primary hull pieces for the bulbs to mount in place of running lights. These were also added to the nacelle parts as well.

As well as the modifications made to accommodate the wiring and bulbs, there were a couple of other minor changes made to the kit that wouldn't be seen but still there on later re-releases; the inclusion of two small "posts" on the inside of the lower and upper saucer parts for the clear light diffusers to attach to. These help spread the light from the only 2 generic light bulbs that ended up being in the saucer.

Small post added for the lower clear light diffuser part to attach on the inside of the lower saucer.

Lower clear light diffuser in place.

Small post added for the upper clear light diffuser part to attach on the inside of the upper saucer.

Upper clear light diffuser in place.

 

 As you can see from the above pics, AMT did a lot of things to try and make this a fairly easy build that would give even a fairly novice modeler (like me at the time) a chance to complete a fairly satisfying lighted Enterprise. I have to say the result I had back then was fairly satisfying at the time, although I still cringe at the paint job. Don't worry, you'll see it. 😆 

For all of it's inaccuracies and faults, it's still a neat kit to build. Whether it's the "smoothie" or any of the other released versions, I love this kit in all of it's crazy incarnations!

~Sean Kneeland, aka ZAKUFORMER