Got a bunch of these in a shoebox...
As several folks have pointed out, these were originally produced by Lou Zocchi as companion pieces for the Gamescience "Starfleet Battle Manual." Zocchi was primary a guy who made those large multifaced die used in tabletop gaming... if you ever bought a glow-in-the-dark 20-sided die, you likely bought something from Zocchi.
Zocchi put together the ships from the Starfleet Technical Manual as plastic ships, and he clearly made some really top-quality molds, since they're still useable (and only slightly degraded) today. The original parts were first put out in... I believe 1975, or perhaps 1976. So those molds have been in near-continuous (if low-volume) usage for thirty-six years!
He also produced several metal ships, which were of somewhat lesser quality in my opinion. There was a Klingon ship, made in two parts (a boom/bridge and a main hull where you had to carefully bend the wingtips and engines downwards using a hard straightedge), and a set which included one Tholian and one Romulan (both of which were quite nice, but quite small... albeit the Romulan was in proper scale for the Federation ships, the Tholian was obviously dramatically oversized.
All of these used a common stand, also molded by Zocchi, originally 1-piece stands, molded in black with large D-pins, then similar ones with smaller D-pins, then identical but in clear rather than black, and finally clear with a separately molded "post" which needed to be glued in (and in the case of the metal ships, the post was also metal in these later versions).
The stand is circular, with the four primary naval directions (fore/aft/port/starboard) marked in the appropriate arcs. The stand had four rectangular ribs. The main purpose of these ribs was to permit you to mount a heavy cardstock "compass card" onto the base. There would also be a little plastic washer supplied... the purpose of which was to tie a length of fishing line or thread to in order to simulate weapons fire. You'd estimate the angle to fire over, then (with a friend... the string was normally something like four feet long as I recall) stretch it out. Ideally, your called shot would actually pass over the profile of the ship printed on the compass card of your target, and it would be called a "hit."
Key to all this is that there was no "hex grid" involved. Instead, you made navigational changes using the headings on the compass card, just like you'd call out your firing vectors. Movement was calculated (using the old WF^3 standard) and you'd move using a straightedge (the compass cards were square, so this was pretty easy). While you had impulse engines, they were only able to allow you to rotate, but not to move (because, relative to any warp speeds, impulse is essentially the same as being stationary). They did provide additional power, however.
It was a blast. I would have played it a lot more, but few of my friends at that point wanted to do this, preferring to play with their trucks in the mud outside, or to blow up their G.I. Joes. Even today, I'd love to have a direct, computerized version of this game. (The Starfleet Command games came reasonably close, but weren't quite the same.)
Back to the ships... the plastic ships were molded in several colors. Originally, in a slightly tan-tinted white, later in a more grey-white and pure white. Additionally, quite a few were molded in clear (and were marketed as "cloaked") while there were also glow-in-the-dark versions, in both green and blue glows (the green was much brighter, but the blue looked a lot cooler in my opinion).
Once Gamescience was forced to stop selling their "Starfleet Battle Manual," Zocchi started selling his products through Amarillo, and they became the "default" parts to go with Amarillo's "Starfleet Battle," which was a hex-grid-based tabletop game. SFB also had some metal ships, but the plastic ships were much higher quality, at least in the beginning. (Amarillo made some better-quality metal ships eventually, though).
The Zocchi/Gamescience ships also are "very close" to the same scale as the FASA ships... close enough to sit alongside them on a display shelf and seem to all fit together. I have a little place on one of my bookshelves where I have pretty much all the various Zocchi and FASA ships, all together. (And right below there is the whole "Agents of Gaming" B5 fleet...) Plus, most of the "specials" (clear, glow, etc) in a shoebox in the basement.
It's not as good as a large-scale ship, mind you, but it's very, very good for having a fleet of "everything." My home isn't able to be overcome by that much geek-dom... and I know I'm going to have to argue over space for my Enterprise (maybe even have to store away the Master Replicas phaser, communicator, and tricorder I have out now as a compromise!)
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Edit: I found a pretty good reference, complete with photos (including the compass-cards) of the ships as used in the "Starfleet Battle Manual."
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3667/star-fleet-battle-manual
