Trillions of Trilligs is a classic pop up in many ways. For those who are “Trekkies” this is a classic treatment of Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek in all its futuristic and adventurous glory.
The story is rather straight-forward. The crew of the Enterprise is traveling through space when they receive a distress call from the planet Ynobe. Captain Kirk orders the ship go there immediately to help out. When the landing party touches down, they are beset by innumerable legions of robots, the trilligs, that are causing mischief of the taking-over-the-planet sort.
The group makes their way to the leader of the trilligs, a man who appears to be an interstellar cross between Mr. T and Hugo Chavez. He is the mad robot maker and he’s hell-bent on taking over the universe with his robots.
Well, James Tiberious Kirk is not about to let that happen! He orders the crew to set phasers to “full effect”. After a few quick blasts of the phasers, the robot factory is in ruins and Hugo T is in hand cuffs on his way to proper justice.
What this pop-up book lacks in terms of a clear and plausible story, is made up by the mediocre pop ups. Unlike other popular pop-up books from the mid 1970s, this book contains no pulls, wheels or movable paper features. The pop-up elements in this book are rudimentary die-cut pieces that self-erect as the page is turned, pretty basic paper engineering to say the least.
This book, while underwhelming as a piece of art or literature, is a fun piece of Star Trek history. It captures a moment in TV culture when Star Trek was still young, but coming on as a pop culture institution.
The characters in the book are true to the ones a fan of the show watched on the Sony Trinitron while lying comfortably on orange shag carpet.
We are thrilled to have this book in our collection. It’s a fun piece to use as a cultural reference point and one that can be read again and again.