#INSS Mac Arthur

[chernobog13]

The Strategic Space Command galactic cruiser Leif Ericson model kit, originally released by AMT in 1968.

AMT had the Star Trek license at the time, but there were a limited amount of starships from the show that they could produce models for.  They approached U.S.S. Enterprise designer Matt Jefferies to come up with more ships for the model line.  The Leif Ericson was Jefferies’ first, and only, design that was produced.  AMT soon cancelled the entire starship line due to poor sales.

The Ericson model had a working shuttle bay, with two doors that opened to reveal a really neat shuttle for planetary excursions.  If you look real close at the fifth picture above you can see that the front of the shuttle resembles a duck bill.  Or at least I think it does.

Despite the model line being canceled, the Leif Ericson caught the eyes of science fiction authors Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.  They liked the design so much they used it as the basis for the INSS Mac Arthur, which is featured in their classic novel The Mote in God’s Eye (A book which is ripe for adaptation. Don’t tell me it’d be too expensive to film; that’s what they said about Dune, and it’s been adapted like a dozen times already).

As a kid I missed out on the initial starship series from AMT, and never heard about the Leif Ericson at all.  Luckily, Star Trek fandom surged in the mid-1970s, and AMT responded by re-issuing their original Star Trek models, and even added a few new ones.

However, AMT went a different route with the Leif Ericson.  Thanks to Chariots of the Gods and similar works, the mid-1970s also experienced a U.F.O. craze.  AMT decided to kill two birds with one stone and cash-in on that as well.  The Leif Ericson underwent a radical change.  All the parts were recast as glow-in-the-dark, and it was re-issued as the “interplanetary U.F.O. mystery ship.”

I was lucky enough to find that kit, along with all the other AMT Star Trek kits, in a store a few miles from my house.  The “U.F.O.” came home with me after I plopped down most of my paper route earnings, and I built it that afternoon.  

I hung it from my bedroom ceiling, going the AMT Enterprise and Klingon cruiser (I didn’t get the Roman Bird of Prey until much later).  The glow-in-the-dark feature worked great, too!

Perhaps too great, because the younger brother I shared the bedroom with had apparently stayed awake most of the night, terrified of the glowing apparition over his head.  He never said anything to me, but the next morning, after I went to school, he decided to face his fears.  With a whiffleball bat.

I came home from school to find the U.F.O. ship shattered into dozens of pieces on my bed.  The only thing that had survived intact was the shuttle.  Knowing I probably wouldn’t get away with feeding my brother to the Bigfoot that lived in the forest across the street, I tried to get my parents to punish him.  But somehow it turned out that its was all my fault for frightening the little so-and-so in the first place.  My brother got away scot free.

The next time I returned to the store the U.F.O. model was sold out, and the owner was not interested in ordering another one “for some kid.”  Not that it probably would’ve worked if he did, because AMTvcancelled their Star Trek/spaceship line again.

Luckily, several newer companies in recent years have used AMT’s original molds to reproduce the models of my youth.  I have managed to get another U.F.O. model, as well as the Leif Ericson.  And one of these days I’m going to build them, just as soon as I find room to display them (hanging from the ceiling is out due to an inconveniently placed ceiling fan).

#Leif Ericson #Strategic Space Command #AMT #Matt Jeffries #INSS Mac Arthur #The Mote in God's Eye #models #model kits