The Empire Strikes Back Twin-Pod Cloud Car
Kenner had a bit of a challenge when it came to the vehicles of The Empire Strikes Back. While the Death Star was no more, it seemed that many of the movie’s vehicles still wound up on the “big” end of the scale, from the newly unveiled Super Star Destroyer to its complement of literally monstrous AT-ATs. If you wanted new vehicles more on the scale of fighters, there were new variations on the TIE Fighter, the Snowspeeder, and the even more obscure Twin-Pod Cloud Car seen patrolling the skies of Bespin. (Click here to see the rest of the article plus pictures.)
Introduced in The Empire Strikes Back, Slave I was the strong, silent and mysterious steed of the saga’s strong, silent and mysterious new character, Boba Fett. In either movie or toy terms, it was a really interesting concept - a ship which, if one looked at it from traditional aerodynamic thinking, looked like it should fly one way, but instead seems to heft itself up on its side to fly in a completely different way. For kids like me who hadn’t grown up with the Apollo program and its completely non-aerodynamic lunar landers, this was a wild concept. 
While determining the scale of the Millennium Falcon vehicle may have set in stone the 3 3/4″ scale of Kenner’s Star Wars figures, the Falcon itself didn’t arrive in the toy stores until 1979. The first vehicles to appear were, in fact, Luke’s landspeeder, a TIE fighter and the iconic Rebel X-Wing fighter. 
As has been mentioned before, the size and scale of the Millennium Falcon as a toy vehicle made Kenner reinvent the wheel where character-based action toys for boys were concerned. To keep the price of the Falcon down, both for the company making it and for the people buying it, the figures were scaled down to 3 3/4″, whereas the previous industry standard had been set by foot-tall G.I. Joe figures with more points of articulation, interchangeable costumes and accessories, and so on - basically the boys’ equivalent of Barbie dolls, at roughly the same size (and price point). 
These days, toy manufacturers - including Hasbro, makers of the current line of Star Wars toys - have to pack an exclusive figure or something similarly enticing in with a vehicle in order to lure consumers and collectors in to buy the vehicle. But for the original Kenner Star Wars line, the Millennium Falcon was the first toy designed - even before the figures. 
I can almost guarantee you that there wasn’t another toy released in 1981 whose box carried the description “Contents: one mammal.” Very much like the dewback creature from Star Wars, the smelly and none-too-smart steeds of the Rebels in The Empire Strikes Back were designed to be “ridden” by the Kenner figures. 
With the X-Wing still doing most of the flying in Empire, the closest there was to a new hero vehicle for toy purposes was the Rebel Snowspeeder, which was only seen in use on Hoth. 
Four stories of figure-scaled fun, the Death Star from the original Kenner Star Wars line was the Rolls Royce of action toys in 1978. Combining several scenarios from the movie, and yet keeping things generic enough for open-ended play, this was the dream dollhouse of a galaxy far, far away. 
One of the earliest vehicles to blur the line between “stuff that showed up in the movies” and “stuff that Kenner just made up because it looks neat,” the Imperial Troop Transporter may also be a bone fide toy blooper: it more closely resembles a vehicle seen in the Rebels’ Yavin IV base than anything the Empire was using. 