Hello, friends!

In nearly any other year on the Monday after Comic-Con International in San Diego, the last thing I’d be doing is penning a rundown of our 2026 Star Trek Keepsake Ornaments after repeating this information uncounted times to visitors to our Hallmark space in the convention’s exhibit hall.

Well, 2026 was not that year. While I can’t go into details, please know that our choice to drop out of convention spaces this year was not an easy one. Our absence freed needed time for us to discuss different ways of connecting with fans interested in making Keepsake Ornaments a part of their favorite property collections. I’m eager for what’s next with Keepsake Ornaments in general and our Star Trek ornaments in particular. On that note, allow me to share some info about what’s in store for Star Trek’s diamond jubilee.

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Shuttlecraft Galileo NCC-1701/7
Let’s start with what I regard as our tip of the hat not only to 60 years of Star Trek history but also to 35 years of Hallmark Keepsake Ornaments’ association with the property. In 2024, when I began concepting Star Trek ornaments for this year’s line, the first thought I had was to return the voice of Leonard Nimoy to Star Trek Christmas trees after age, mishaps, and modern LED light strings might have taken it away.

Getting one of our talented Keepsake artists to sculpt a detailed and screen-accurate Shuttlecraft Galileo would not be so tough, that I knew. Adding the original audio that Mr. Nimoy recorded especially for Hallmark’s second-ever Star Trek Keepsake Ornament, released in 1992, seemed nearly impossible. Hallmark sound engineers puzzled over this with me. We considered recording the audio played through the original ornament’s tiny speaker but ruled that out once we plugged the decades-old ornament into a vintage light string and heard it. We considered finding a way to play the sound chip directly into a computer to create a new sound file. We even (briefly) considered using software enhancement to bring more clarity and depth to audio printed on the original chip before rejecting that idea.

I decided to reach out to my pal and former Hallmark colleague Lynn Norton, who you will recognize as the sculptor of many a Star Trek ship for Keepsake Ornaments, to see whether he might have saved a digital file of that recording. I played the hunch as I know Lynn is terrific about preserving the history of Hallmark’s collaborations with Star Trek. He informed me with regret that he had nothing like that among his archives.

“What I do have is the cassette tape of the full recording sessionwith Leonard Nimoy for the ornament,” Lynn wrote in his emailed reply. “Is that something you’d want?”

Why, yes, Lynn. I’d like that very much.

I remember feeling the hair on my arms stand up as I read that revelation. What an artifact! Lynn said he socked that tape away as a souvenir for his wife, Tina Hacker, who wrote the line for Mr. Nimoy to record. Lynn said they had not played the tape in decades. He wasn’t even sure whether it would play. We set up a lunch meeting (because I never turn down an excuse to eat) and he loaned me the cassette.

Chris Johnson of Hallmark’s New Media Studio acquired a cassette player with a direct audio feed into a laptop just for the occasion. He fast-forwarded and rewound the tape to loosen it up, decided to record the first test of the tape, and hit play. Almost immediately, we were transported to the moment when Leonard Nimoy first read the line “Shuttlecraft to Enterprise. Shuttlecraft to Enterprise. Spock here. Happy holidays. Live long and prosper.”

The full session contained multiple takes of the line and lasted just under four minutes. The sound quality of the tape was wonderfully high; I felt like we were in the room as it was being recorded originally. Chris immediately checked the digital capture of the tape, which sounded noticeably slow but clear, then rewound the tape to transfer a second playthrough. The tape, however, did not cooperate. As soon as it slowed and started to strain against the player, he shut it off to avoid snapping it. Our first capture would have to do.

In listening to the transfer, we each noticed some drag in the tape. Chris was able to speed up the playback by small increments until Mr. Nimoy’s voice—Spock’s voice—sounded just as it did in the ornament. With multiple playbacks, we discovered that the ornament used the actor’s very first take excepting the phrase “Happy holidays,” which was pulled from his second take because of a slight quaver in his voice. We copied the edit, earned approval from CBS, and that file is what you hear in the Galileo ornament, which now operates on batteries rather than a connector for power.

We also chose to supplement the 1992 ornament’s audio with an audio clip from the final moments of “The Galileo Seven,” which features the trusty shuttlecraft and many of its capabilities.

U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-G
Back in 2018, Keepsake Ornaments produced a new take on the original U.S.S. Enterprise when artists brought a metal ornament to the tree. I have wanted to see a run of metal Enterprise versions ever since, so we’re giving this a try to see whether other fans and collectors agree with me. We started—or perhaps “resumed” is the better word—this treatment with the Enterprise-G, which previously was available only as an event exclusive made from traditional materials.

U.S.S. Cerritos
Lower decks! Lower decks! When taken across my 21-year Hallmark career, I’d say the most frequent request for an ornament I’ve ever fielded was for the Enterprise-B. Since we fulfilled that request in 2024, cries have come from far and wide for the Cerritos. Who am I to argue?

Space Serpent Attack!
The second Keepsake Ornament to honor iconic examples of Star Trek products is this representation of the Mr. Spock model kit first produced in 1972 (if the internet is to be believed). I loved this depiction of what the model kit box described as “Star Trek’s Most Popular Character.” This kit was one of several I built back in the day that my mom painted for me as she was much better at it than I was!

Nurse Christine Chapel
I’m very happy to bring this rendition of one of Star Trek’s original characters to our Christmas trees as a Nurse Chapel ornament is long overdue. We see her as she appears in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds because I saw this as a chance to represent the future of Star Trek given that half of our 2026 ornaments hail from the original series.

Shuttlecraft Einstein NCC-1701/6
We all have our favorite Star Trek episodes. Among mine is “The Doomsday Machine,” a second-season entry of the original series. Beyond the terrific script by science-fiction author Norman Spinrad and the ominous score by Sol Kaplan (one of only two he composed for the series), the episode features one of the top guest performances in all of Star Trek in William Windom’s portrayal of the tragic Commodore Matt Decker. I’ve wanted to get Matt Decker into a Keepsake Ornament for years. The opportunity presented itself with our new sculpt of the original series shuttlecraft. In October, you can bring the Commodore’s ill-fated attempt to save uncounted Federation lives to your tree with our limited-edition ornament of the Shuttlecraft Einstein.

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As always, I am thankful for this forum to connect with you all, for your support of what we do at Hallmark, and for your interest in sharing not only your enjoyment of Star Trek but also your belief in what the show has represented for 60 years. We’re hard at work fine-tuning our offerings for 2027 and I’m already brainstorming ideas for 2028. I look forward to telling you all about it.

-Kevin Dilmore