Kirk had a lot of faces, but Spock? Twelve expressions? One eyebrow up, the other eyebrow up, both eyebrows up, both eyebrows down, one smile from the time on the Farm planet with Paxil rays, and one agonized expression from mind-melding with a Horta. Maybe shocked surprise when the Vulcans on the Intrepid all died from astonishment. But that’s it.           

Notice that the design was “O.K’d by Gene Roddenberry (Great Bird of the Galaxy.)” There’s a leeeetle bit of image-buffing going on here, I think, since this collection of deathless collectibles was sold by Lincoln Enterprises, a company Roddenberry set up with his wife, Nurse Chapel, to sell Vulcan IDIC badges.

Here they are! In the colors no Tribble ever had! The idea of a tribble being a “mod special” because it had long hair makes you wonder if there was intergenerational tension between tribbles. Cut your fur, you look like a bum! Hey, Jesusibble had long fur, man.

Compact Tribbles were probably smaller than a golf ball. You can imagine some kid ordering them, waiting six to eight weeks with growing anticipation, running into the Tribbles episode in syndication halfway through the wait (it'll be so cool! I'll feed them quadrotriticale in Cheerios form!) then getting the package. He rips it open, expecting, well, tribbles; he finds two pink balls covered with synthetic hair. He puts them on his shelf next to his Revell models of the Enterprise (one was intact, the other was burned to look wrecked and had the decal numbers in a different sequence.) The tribbles just sat there.