I'm curious if it's possible to create a persistent gameobject/mesh out of the Trail Renderer?
Imagine we've got Iceman flying/ice-skimming along and we want to create this frozen trail of ice behind him - would it be sensible to use the Trail Renderer?
(my question has nothing to do with Iceman. It just fits the question perfectly.)
Trail Renderer could work, but Eric5h5's nice Vectrosity package is easier to control and may give you better results.
Maybe try every second or so (depending on the speed of the object) have it load a prefab (your trail), then use raycasting (maybe?) to align the "trail" head with the end of the object creating the trail. Finally, have it delete the trail after a set amount of seconds.
...or you could use a particle system.
Hope that helps.
I think a trail renderer would achieve what you're looking for; by tweaking the width and time vars of the TrailRenderer component you can pretty much nail the silver surfer thing.