#2: 2011 U.S.S. Defiant

Retail: $32.95
2021 Secondary Market: $2,499.95
Size: 5 1/4” L x 2 1/2” W x 1 3/4” H
Code: QMP4068
Quantity: 700

When I was a youngster one of my favorite cereal prizes were those that glowed in the dark. It was a rare day for any box of cereal to make it from the brown paper shopping bag to the cabinet before I ripped into the box to dig out my reward. When a box would show up with a glow-in-the dark prize it was an even bigger event.

It would be the same process every time: rip open the cereal box, plunge my grubby hands down into the box up to my elbows; first on one side of the box and then the other side. I remember that brief moment of panic when the prize would be hidden extra deep. Then my fingers would hit that familiar cellophane wrapper and the buried treasure would slowly rise from the depths, cereal spilling out across the table.

I would attempt to close up the box but it would now have that bloated center where the cardboard packaging had stretched out and the tab would no longer reach the slot on the opposite flap. But this was no time for food storage etiquette so off I would go, leaving behind the opened box of tomorrow’s stale breakfast. After a brief stop at the highest wattage in the house, my hands dangerously close to a light bulb, I was off to the darkest place in the house…the family bathroom. It was there that skeletons would magically dance in the mirror’s blackness, warning stickers would reveal themselves in all their glory, or spiders would come alive. The glow-in-the-dark technology was beyond that of rocket science to a six year old boy, it was magic.

Fast forward nearly four decades and Hallmark produces a repaint exclusive of their 2006 Enterprise ornament:

Commissioned in the mid-23rd century, the U.S.S. Defiant served as one of 13 Constitution-class starships that explored strange new worlds on behalf of the United Federation of Planets.  In the classic Star Trek episode “The Tholian Web” (1968), the Defiant became trapped in an area of spatial interphase between universes, the properties of which gave the starship an eerie green glow before it was consumed by a rift to suffer an uncertain fate. This special edition ornament is one of 700 issued for and only available at the 2011 New York Comic-Con Event.

2011 Defiant Keepsake Box Text

Every Christmas season since 2011, Hallmark reintroduces me to the glow-in-the-dark technology of my childhood. When the Christmas tree lights go off at the end of a long day, the Defiant Keepsake remains glowing in the darkness of space and always bringing a smile to my face.

The glowing aspect of the ornament may not bring back childhood memories for everyone. The secondary market prices may put a stale taste in the mouths of collectors but this ornament does exactly what it sets out to do in the simplest of ways. No batteries. No cord. No Magic sound. No Magic lights. No Magic motion. Just good old fashioned magic, glow-in-the-dark magic, the magic of childhood.

NINE down, one to go. Next time we reach #1 on our Top 10 list.