For fans of horror films and dioramas, Accoutrements has addressed this problem with the release of their Horrified B-Movie Victims. As the back of the packaging states, “We provide the screaming hordes! You provide the monster!” If only they had made Stormtroopers back in the day!

Included in the Horrified B-Movie Victims package are nine horrified b-movie victims — four women and five men, in various states of acting horrified. Four of the figures appear to be running away some unknown terror while the other five appear to be facing it, giving display makers some variety when it comes to placing their victims.

Each victim is approximately three inches tall — too short to flee from my cantina display, but just the right height to appear terrified when placed next to the average toy monster.

While these figures may only appeal to a small, niche audience, I must fall within that demographic. I love these figures! I’ve had a blast arranging them in my cubicle, and my co-workers people have had a kick out of seeing what horrific creature will be chasing them next.

Anyone who sets up displays around their work area (or just has a sick sense of humor) can pick up these figures from Archie McPhee, Accoutrements’ online store.

Tim-Mee is known for releasing small plastic toys of almost everything. From farmers and farm animals to army men, circus animals, policemen, firemen and fantasy monsters…you name it, Tim-Mee cranked ‘em out. If you spent any time at all on the toy aisle like I did as a kid, you probably remember them. Most of them were packaged in clear plastic bags, sealed with a cardboard label at the top.

As a kid and huge Star Wars fan, my favorite was Tim-Mee’s Galaxy Laser Team. The figures came in four colors (black, white, pink and green), although as I later discovered, bootleg figures from Mexico came in all sorts of funky colors. None of the figures had names, allegiances or back stories; those details were left to our imagination. A quick glance at the figures shows a strong Star Wars influence, although different enough to avoid a lawsuit.

If you remember these figures as well and are interested in picking up a set of them via eBay, think again. One of the biggest hurdles in finding these figures is that very few sellers remember the name “Galaxy Laser Team.” Over the past year I’ve purchased two different sets of these figures via eBay, and only one of them mentioned the company’s name (Tim-mee). The fact that these figures have no identifiable printing on them makes it difficult for sellers to know what to call them. When auctions do mention things like “Galaxy Laser Team,” expect the price to skyrocket. A current eBay search for “Galaxy Laser Team” returns one auction: a single, sealed bag of 28 figures for $64 (including shipping). If you are trying to avoid bootleg figures, make sure the characters you’re bidding on are in one of the four original colors. I recently purchased a batch of figures from Mexico which, upon closer inspection, were obvious fakes — cheap knock-offs made using the original figures as molds. The biggest clue was the package included yellow, red and blue figures.

And now, a brief review of Tim-Mee’s complete line of Galaxy Laser Team figures. Let’s begin with “the good guys.”

First up is “guy that kind of looks like Han Solo,” with a splash of Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers thrown in for good measure. Originally these figures had one antenna on top of his helmet, but these have been robbed of theirs (they typically broke off within minutes of opening the package). Apparently in outer space, antennae are directly tied to people’s sense of balance because every figure I have who is missing antenna constantly falls over. This guy is really good at lying down and shooting people’s toes through the cracks under doors.

Another familiar looking fellow was known around my house as “the guy that resembles Chewbacca.” He’s furry, he’s tall, he’s naked, he’s got a rifle, he has … antennae? Well, he used to. The green version kind of looks like the Creature from the Black Lagoon, but trust me; underneath this guy’s shoddy manufacturing, he’s all Wookiee. Almost.

Bringing up the rear is “the robot that kind of looks like R2-D2.” This looks like every home version of R2-D2 I tried to build as a kid after discovering that building a round robot with a dome-shaped head is pretty hard. I now refer to this robot as Square2-CB2. CB stands for Cereal Box. Unlike Han Solo, this guy is sturdy thanks to those big blocky feet.

Just like Star Trek has red shirts, apparently the Galaxy Laser Team also needed people for target practice. Rounding out the collection we have “female with computer,” “pink astronaut with Geiger counter” and “green astronaut with Geiger counter.” These figures always kind of baffled me as a kid. The green guy looks like he’s toting his lunch around, and his other hand appears to be holding an imaginary beer. Then there’s the pink guy, who looks more like he’s carrying around an intergalactic gas can, ready to help anyone low on space petrol at a moment’s notice. Finally there’s the lone female figure, who instead of a laser rifle or pistol, gets to model a futuristic cash register like she’s on an outer space version of The Price is Right. These guys were all pretty useless in combat unless you needed someone to deliver lunch or refuel your gas tank. If anyone got the old “firecracker treatment” is was typically one of these three.

And now, on to “the bad guys.”

There’s no question who the guy on the left is supposed to be — why, it’s “the guy that kind of looks like Darth Vader!” Note the helmet, cape, and lightsaber. Because of the open-faced helmet, this guy comes off as a cross between Darth Vader and a Roman soldier. I’m pretty sure my grandpa had a giant belt buckle that looked just like this guy’s.

Next up is the “alien-turtle-lobster-monster.” He’s got lobster pinchers, a turtle shell and some funky antennae. I’m not actually sure who or what inspired this guy. The best thing about him is he stands up really well because of his tail. Turtle-Lobster Guy’s special power is the ability not to fall over when someone bumps the shelf. In a space earthquake you can bet only Lobster-Turtle Guy and Square-2 would be left standing. Han Solo, Darth Vader, and Chewbacca would have to continue the battle from their backs, shooting at people’s kneecaps.

If you were lucky, down at the bottom of a bag of Galaxy Laser Team figures you might find one of these. Half X-Wing Fighter, half F-15, these jets came in the same color combinations as the figures and were good for attacking from the skies (or just poking people with those arrow-pointed guns).

And there you have it — the entire Galaxy Laser Team, created a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away (but pretty close to that other one where Star Wars took place, apparently).

This was great news for kids (and probably bad news for our parents), because now there were whole new populations to stand alongside those heroes from a galaxy far, far away, folks who could stand in the same playsets and fit in the same vehicles. The Black Hole figures were among the cream of Mego’s licensed crop. In pre-production for at least as long as Star Wars was, The Black Hole was trapped inside its own Hollywood development event horizon until Lucas’ movie struck gold. That event brought a lot of space epics out of development hell, for better or worse, at other studios, from Paramount’s long-stalled Star Trek movie to The Black Hole (formerly a disaster movie script called Space Probe One) at Disney.

Easily the highlight of the movie and its toy line were the unique robots. Faceless “Sentry robots” seen throughout the derelict U.S.S. Cygnus were clearly men in suits, but the starring robot characters were different. Though clearly influenced by R2-D2’s cute factor, VINCENT and Old BOB “floated” throughout the movie, obviously employing some clever futuristic anti-grav technology (and, in a few scenes, all-too-visible piano wires). The floating behemoth Maximillian (a character which had its name before actor Maximilian Schell was cast as its taskmaster) was also represented, both figures featuring a clear plastic stand to simulate their hovering ability. An Old BOB figure was made as part of the original line, but, along with a repaint of the Sentry Robot figure to represent the Sentries’ leader STAR, it was generally available only in Europe and has since become a pricey rarity.

Other figures in the Black Hole range included Dr. Hans Reinhardt (in a ceremonial outfit he only wore for about the last 1/3 of the movie), Captain Dan Holland, Lt. Charlie Pizer, “embedded space journalist” Harry Booth, Dr. Kate McCrae, and the ill-fated Dr. Alex Durant. Pictures of a prototype U.S.S. Palomino space capsule made the rounds, but the movie’s lack of stellar box office success prevented Mego from introducing any vehicles or further characters.

For dramatic effect, the Enterprise bridge set is barely lit at all, a practice that wouldn’t see much use in the series’ own episodes. Deep Space Nine and Voyager would later employ lighting schemes that embraced the darkness, but the lighting on the Enterprise bridge would remain bright, flat, and stagey for most of the show’s run - even when the ship was losing power or was otherwise in trouble. The Enterprise bridge wasn’t seen like this again until Star Trek: Generations.

Given that the “red alert” status lights above the five rear duty stations appear to light up brightly here, it’s possible that the film crew for the commercial had access to the sets before they were completely finished. It’s interesting to note that the sides of the bridge - which at this point, if they were finished and installed, would have been the somewhat visually bland brown wall panels with red alert lights built in - are barely seen in this commercial at all.

But man, those trademark Michael Okuda “computer” panel graphics are certainly on display here, and seen from angles that the show’s actual directors simply didn’t use, from Tasha Yar’s tactical station to the helm itself. It may all seem just a little bit dated now, but for 1987, it was mind-blowingly futuristic stuff. What futuristic method was used to get two boxes of cereal to sit on the sloped console, however, remains a mystery.

The Enterprise set, as the most-filmed locale in The Next Generation, was lit to provide the maximum coverage of light for shooting with the minimum time required for setting up those lights. Constantly shooting it as dark as the Cheerios commercial would’ve required more timely and painstaking setups to make sure that just enough light was hitting the faces of the principal actors in any given scene without creating distracting reflections - each episode would’ve required more time to film. Already the most expensive hour-long drama being made in 1987, Next Generation simply had to make do with a brightly pre-lit set. But would the show have benefitted from a more moody look like this?

You can see the entire commercial for yourself here. Just click the “watch the TV ad” button.

Based on the gorgeous shuttle design devised by Andrew Probert, this shuttle - scaled to seat only a few of the 3 3/4″ Galoob Next Generation figures - gets most of the major external details right. Compared to the figures, it actually should be larger in scale, but to keep the ship economically priced, the size was reduced, and a few minor concessions were made in the shape of its forward “pod” to accomodate seated figures.

Playmates would later release its own Galileo shuttle after aquiring the Next Generation toy license, but that toy was based on the more angular, boxy shuttlecraft design seen from Darmok onward (early in season 5), which itself was inherited and modified from the full-size shuttlecraft sets and miniatures built for Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.

The switchover to the less streamlined shuttle on TV was a matter of economics: the Trek V props were available and easily reworked, and furthermore, the interior set matched the exterior, which was something that the show never quite achieved with the original Probert design.

In fact, the Probert design had been pushed into the background as early as season 2, during which (in the episode Time Squared) a new, two-seater compact-car sized “shuttlepod” was introduced, with its interior and exterior matching. Attempts to build even sections of the full-sized Probert shuttle design fell short of the producers’ expectations, as the sleek curves involved would almost have to be machined like the body of a car.

Everything was tried, from partial full-sized shuttle sections in the shuttlebay set which never matched up, to trying to matte the miniature into footage shot on the soundstage. As a result, the original Enterprise-D shuttles seemed to fade into an early retirement, and as such this is, if not the only, then one of the very, very few, attempts to translate the Andrew Probert design into a toy.

The not-quite-an-Okudagram attempt to mimic the Federation LCARS interface on the interior control panel decals looks a little more like something from an early Star Wars toy, with none of the display even remotely resembling English…or, for that matter, anything seen in the series.

A small cargo area in the rear of the shuttlecraft can seat more figures. (The few times this part of the ship was shown on TV, the rear of the shuttle had the traditional Star Trek sliding door/hatch, not a ramp. (Oddly, this ramp anticipates the actual set/miniature of the season 5 shuttle.)

A “sensor pod” - never seen on the show itself - can be deployed, rotated, or stowed away.

“Missile launchers” - again, not something ever seen on the show (the smallest vehicle seen to mount photon torpedoes wound up being Deep Space Nine’s Runabouts) - are tucked away on the sides of the shuttle.

Ironically, 2/3 of this this diverse cross-section of three American space trailblazers in toy form don’t even come from the United States at all. To find readily available toy replicas of the Voyager and Viking probes launched in the 1970s, one must apparently be able to get them from Japan.

The two Viking probes were on the drawing board as early as the late 1960s, when they were conceived as a robotic mission that would collect and analyze soil samples in situ for signs of life. The samples would never be returned to Earth - the Viking landers were incapable of moving from their touchdown spots - and so the test results, while fairly conclusive for their respective locales on the red planet, almost seem to pale in comparison to the in-depth studies undertaken by the much more mobile Mars Rovers of recent years. At the time, though, the first soft landing on Mars by a human-made space probe was quite a feat, coming as it did on July 20th - the same date as the first lunar landing - in the bicentennial year of 1976.

The tiny, tiny Viking probe replica, created by Furuta as the prize packed in with a “choco egg”, is dwarfed by an actual Viking mission patch. This micro-Viking comes as a bag of tiny pieces, which presumably you can put together while you’re enjoying your treat.

Despite its size, the little Viking is actually quite detailed and proportionate to the real thing, right down to the smokestack-style cameras and the sample collection arm.

Ironically, the Viking probes were originally known by the slightly more poetic name of Voyager, though that was nixed some time before launch. That name was resurrected around the same time as the Viking probes made their respective landings on Mars for another mission, which otherwise would’ve been known by the mouthful “Mariner Jupiter/Saturn ‘77″ or “MJS77″.

Voyagers 1 and 2 and two of their descendants are all that was left of a ambitious plan for exploring the outer solar system. In the late 1960s, a Caltech grad student named Gary Flandro was studying possible trajectories for sending unmanned probes to the giant gas planets beyond the orbit of Mars, and his studies led him to a major find: a planetary configuration, occurring once every 175 years, which would allow a repeated series of gravitational “slingshot” maneuvers around the outer planets to send a single spacecraft all the way to Neptune in just over a decade. (With a more conventional straight trajectory, Neptune would’ve taken three decades to reach.)

JPL planners drew up plans for a “Grand Tour” to take full advantage of this starring lineup. General reconnaissance probes would’ve scouted out the outer planets, taking general measurements and pictures before moving on to the next world. A second wave of probes would’ve followed, but this time they would have stayed. One would send an orbiter to stay at Jupiter, fire an atmospheric probe into the planet’s atmosphere, and detach smaller, Viking-style landers to several of the major Jovian moons. Another would’ve done the same at Saturn, firing probes into the atmospheres of the ringed planet itself as well as the cloudy moon Titan. Somewhat scaled-down versions of those missions would have traveled in tandem to Uranus and Neptune, and one would have gone to Saturn again for the express purpose of grabbing a gravity assist on its way to the first visit to Pluto.

Two things caused a rethink of the Grand Tour program. NASA’s Ames Research Center beat some of the mission’s objectives to their punch by launching its own probes, Pioneer 10 and 11. The first probes to reach Jupiter (and, in Pioneer 11’s case, Saturn), the two unmanned vehicles took a series of somewhat low-resolution pictures - and had their electronic brains thoroughly cooked by the radiation surrounding Jupiter. By the time Pioneer 11 reached Saturn, some of its capabilities had been compromised or lost by its dizzyingly close approach to Jupiter. The Pioneers did demonstrate, however, that the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter wasn’t so densely packed that it would pulverize anything trying to cross it, and the Jupiter-to-Saturn route taken by Pioneer 11 was a successful demonstration of a gravity assist maneuver, even if it was a less economical one that meant it took nearly 7 years to go from one planet to the next.

The other setback for the Grand Tour was a Congress unwilling to grant NASA additional funding for R&D of a new spacecraft design. The multiple probes and landers were out the window, and the two waves of the Grand Tour would ow consist of only two spacecraft each: Voyagers 1 and 2 took the place of the general reconnaissance wave of the mission, passing by most of the outer planets at a distance, taking pictures and measurements, but not delivering any kind of payload to stay at any of their destinations. A trajectory to carry Voyager 1 to Pluto after its Saturn encounter was nixed. The second wave, which would have to wait until the ’80s, consisted of two spacecraft, now renamed Galileo and Cassini. Galileo’s landing probes to Jupiter’s moons were scratched off the mission plan, and Cassini would now carry just one probe, intended for Titan - and even then, the work on the Titan probe would eventually be undertaken by the European Space Agency. There would also be no R&D funds: the Grand Tour would require additional money, since most of NASA’s existing budget was being spent on the troubled Space Shuttle program, but instead the word came down that the Grand Tour - or what was left of it - would use existing Mariner components, which had been designed in the late 1960s.

Released in 2004 to commemorate a space exhibit at Tokyo’s Royal Museum of Science, the spindly Voyager probe from Takara Toys is another assembly-required item, but it’s a lovely replica with just about every minor detail right on the money.

The Voyager toy comes with a display stand, but in my case, the strut connecting Voyager to the base of the stand itself was not included. The stand held Voyager in its accurate “flying” position - laying on its side, with its antenna dish pointed back toward Earth to relay its findings and receive further instructions.

Takara is a toy company with a solid SF toy pedigree; Kenner farmed out the design of the original Star Wars C-3PO action figure to Takara in the ’70s - which seems doubly appropriate as the first of the Voyager probes to be launched, Voyager 2, lifted off on August 20, 1977, just over three months after Star Wars premiered. Other toys released in this wave of the Royal Museum of Science collection included a Gerard K. O’Neill space station, a Soyuz rocket with a launch gantry base, the Mir space station and a clear cube with internal etching making up a portrait of the galaxy.

Another holdover from the Grand Tour were scaled-down versions of the missions originally conceived as possible permanent residents of the neighborhoods of Jupiter and Saturn. Again based on the sturdy Mariner hardware, Galileo was built for a late ’80s shuttle launch that would boost it into deep space on the back of an interial upper stage (IUS), a small rocket booster which not only fit within a shuttle’s cargo bay, but pack a powerful bunch due to the fact that it was already weightless. Galileo was originally scheduled for liftoff in one of the missions following the liftoff of Challenger in January 1986, but of course it wound up grounded for some time afterward.

When it finally did get underway, Galileo suffered a major early setback: its foldable main antenna became stuck, and never fully opened. Galileo could still transmit data back to Earth, but at a crawl relative to the speed that its high-gain antenna would have allowed. Rather than damaging any more of Galileo’s systems with repeated attempts to force the antenna open by remote control, engineers on the ground opted to leave it be. And this is the curious (but completely accurate) shape into which the antenna is molded on the Hot Wheels Action Pack replica of Galileo.

Somewhat disappointingly molded entirely in black plastic (which almost completely robs you of the ability to study the otherwise fine detail work built into the toy’s mold), Galileo’s a very accurate replica, if a somewhat flimsy one in places. The probe’s long magnetometer boom can be folded back and retracted into pre-launch position, as can the two arms holding the RTG power plants. As nice as it would’ve been to have an interchangeable high-gain antenna in its intended fully-unfolded glory, I applaud Mattel on sticking to historical accuracy here. It’s not as pretty as the ideal form of Galileo (as seen on the original pre-launch NASA patch for the mission), but it is what was.

There are so many other unmanned probes that have made incredible steps into space and shown us things that our own eyes have yet to travel far enough to see, and thus there are so many others that would be great toys or desk models. But as “unsexy” as these missions seem to be to the general public, these will always be niche items - but very welcome ones.

The sheer size of the thing is a bit off-putting. I’ve mentioned in the past that the size of Kenner’s Millennium Falcon helped to dictate the size of the Star Wars action figures. The base of this TARDIS playset could serve as a landing pad for the Falcon, with a diameter of well over a foot (or, as the packaging brags, 60 centimeters). However, this TARDIS isn’t made for flying; once the Character Options TARDIS is assembled, unless you’ve built it atop a sturdy piece of wood or some other material that can be moved, you can’t move it without taking it apart. Given its sheer size and its delicate non-portability, that may be a turn-off for collectors (and/or young Doctor Who fans).

There are three “floors” to the interior: a spidery base with six “spokes” which support the tree-branch-like buttresses as well as the “front door”, a hexagonal “step” that fits within that, and then a circular floor which fits within that. The massive console - literally and figuratively the centerpiece of the whole playset - is placed in the center of that circular floor, and the buttresses attach to it at the top, as with the actual set. Each of the “floors” comes in three interlocking pieces, and the hexagonal and circular floors each have printed cardboard surfaces which need to be inserted, representing the mezzanine-like flooring of the TARDIS. Each of the three sections of the upper circular floor has a pull-out section to allow the Doctor to access the guts of his ship (a feature seen on-screen in such episodes as Aliens Of London and Rise Of The Cybermen). So far, keeping in mind that my TARDIS has been a display piece (as opposed to a play piece), the cardboard floorpieces have been more than adequate; they snap into place and stay there.

Three other pieces of cardboard, printed on both sides, snap onto two special buttresses places on either side of the doorway. From the inside, these are very nicely printed replicas of the TARDIS interior walls (and I almost wish there was more “wall” to go around, though a quick scan of the forums at Outpost Gallifrey reveal that some talented customizers have all but turned their TARDISes into full 360-degree environments). On the outside, those walls are a dazzlingly colorful pizza-wedge of the Time Vortex, with the exterior of the door - essentially 1/4 of the Police Box exterior of the TARDIS - appearing to be zooming down the middle of it.

I grew up with Star Wars playsets which were, at best, representative cross-sections of the environments they were meant to represent. And that was not a problem - actually, in terms of toys I actually played with as a kid, the “representative cross-section” approach was ideal, because it left more open for the imagination rather than restricting one to the practical realities of a given shooting set. But I’m very impressed with how closely this playset mimics the actual TARDIS set erected in a studio in Wales. That it doesn’t have 360 degrees of walls isn’t a problem - the TARDIS is, after all, bigger inside than out.

The minor details of the set are replicated as well - the railings on the ramp leading up to the hexagonal floor, the railings and the seats on the uppermost circular floor, and even the hatstand are included here. There are also “hammers” included so the ninth Doctor can provide the TARDIS with a bit of extra motivation.

The real detail work, however, is in the console, which can truly only be described with an Eccleston-esque “Fantastic!”. Just about every conceivable tiny surface detail of the console is reproduced here, meticulously painted and with no decals whatsoever. The “naked” portions of the console are translucent green, which light up when the console is activated.

The console can be turned off, switched to a “demo” setting (the default when it comes out of the packaging, since the box has a hole for inquiring fingers to reach through and hit the button), or switched to an “always on” setting which keeps the console lit and plays a constant loop of the TARDIS’ ambient background sound. In either of the active settings, pressing the button on the console will trigger the materialization sound, and doing so in “always on” mode activates the motorized time rotor as well, with clear moving parts that work like their TV counterparts.

(For the love of God and/or Rassilon, I hope Character Options will come to its senses and get the original series toy license, because I’d love to see a 1996 TV movie version of the console, if not a classic ’60s edition. Remember, Character Options - in 2013, Doctor Who turns 50 and I turn 41, and both of us could use a present.) The console is such a beauty, and since it’s the sturdiest piece of the whole playset, I’d bet a week’s worth of K-9’s dog food* that more than a few fans - and more than a few parents - have simply erected the console by itself for lack of space.

I was already aware of the slightly flimsy nature of the flooring assembly, so I built my TARDIS on a large slab of thick styrofoam (originally packing material from a microwave oven I had recently bought). Even though that piece of foam is as big as some coffee tables, the TARDIS portrudes from at least two sides of it. And it still doesn’t like being carried - after moving it anywhere at all, I have to make sure the floor pieces all snap together just right again. Collectors wanting this TARDIS in their space museum would be well advised to have a sturdy shelf, possibly with lighting, set aside for it (and about one to two hours for assembly). I’m not sure just sitting here and talking about it being big is really doing it justice.

It’s a beautiful thing, this TARDIS, even if it’s not quite as sturdy as it all looks on TV. Maybe, for the kiddos playing with these playsets out there, there’s even a valuable lesson in that - a reminder that it’s all just make believe. But how I would’ve loved to have a TARDIS like this to make believe with when I was a kid.

* Pretty safe bet, actually.

Not that showing up on film for fifteen seconds ever kept any character or vehicle in the Star Wars saga from being represented in toy form. For its short time on screen, the Cloud Car is surprisingly detailed, from its art deco design to fine detail work the implies the whole ship is made of riveted panels.

Because of its lack of easily-broken-off parts like TIE Fighter wings, X-Wing guns or Snowspeeder guns, the Twin-Pod Cloud Car may well go down as the most durable vehicle in the entire line of original trilogy toys by Kenner. With its only potentially breakable parts being the landing gear (which are very cleverly attached and aren’t that likely to break off) and the two cockpit covers, there isn’t much damage that the Cloud Car can take under normal play.

As usual for the Kenner vehicles, the entire body is molded in one color of plastic, with any other color detail being added with decals. In this case, that even means detailed “control panels” in each cockpit, something which wasn’t even seen in the movie.

The Cloud Car predated the Hasbro-era practice of packing in a figure with vehicles who would be otherwise unavailable, but by its very nature, it almost seemed to demand that its owner would bug the quartermaster on Cloud City - or Mom and Dad, whoever was closer - about acquiring a second Cloud Car Pilot action figure. (Only having one such figure, I always manned the second pod with a Bespin Security Guard… because… well… somebody’s got to look after the actual pilot, don’t they?

It may have gotten the bare minimum of screen time necessary to merit a toy, but the Twin-Pod Cloud Car was a welcome and well-designed addition to Kenner’s figure-scaled fleet.

Recognizing that it was one of the few fighter-sized vehicles to have a central role in Empire, Kenner turned Slave I into a well-thought-out, solid vehicle…though perhaps, in the end, the biggest problem with Slave I is that we barely got a hint of what it can do on the screen. To see the ship in its ass-kicking prime, we’d have to wait 22 years for Attack Of The Clones, by which point Boba Fett was paradoxically as young as we were when we first saw Empire. Funny old universe.

The ship’s cockpit wasn’t accessed directly, as with previous Kenner Star Wars ships. Instead, a hinged seat with an external lever could be lowered to admit a pilot (the bed-like seat was specifically molded with a lot of back room to allow for Boba Fett’s backpack, since he’s the most logical choice to sit there), and then raised to show that pilot behind the tinted plastic cockpit.

In order to get even that far, though, an entire corner-shaped panel has to be removed from Slave I’s cargo section. A rounded section of the hull could also be rolled down to serve as a cargo loading ramp; this was a feature seen in the movie (in the scene where the frozen Han Solo is being loaded on board), and while it was neat to see it replicated here, it was completely impractical - the “ramp” was rounded on top, so nothing could actually stand on it. Though not seen here, Slave I included a hollow replica of the frozen Han which could be loaded inside.

The “solar panel”-like wings attached to the ship by clamping onto a pair of smaller paddle-shaped extensions, and could be turned into the landing (flat, parallel with the back of the ship) or flight (perpendicular to the back of the ship) positions. A handle was built into the back of the ship, and it included a trigger that could be used to hold the wings in position (otherwise they’d move freely depending on the ship’s attitude).

It’s a neat enough ship, and indeed Kenner’s durable, compact and mostly functional design survived through the new Hasbro toy line, which reissued it as part of the “Shadows Of The Empire” collection (and later still for Episode II, though I’ll admit that I didn’t buy an Episode II and don’t know if the toy’s design changed by that point). But the biggest drawback for Slave I was that, in Empire, it just didn’t do much - it attached to a Star Destroyer’s hull (woo), silently tracked the Falcon through a stream of trash (woo woo), and then was seen shrugging off blaster fire as it took off with Han inside (boo). But at least, on the big screen and in plastic, it looked cool.

Very special thanks to Andrew Wester and Dave Thomer for making this article possible.

Lighter and sleeker, the X-Wing was much more likely to see some “flight” than the bulky Falcon was. Its laundry list of features was fairly simple. Pressing on the “R2-D2 head” in the fighter’s fuselage “opens the S-foils into attack position,” or, more simply, opens the wings into their familiar “X” position. (Pressing a blue release switch drops them back into a closed position - ungracefully, I might add!) A clear cockpit canopy swung up to allow one figure to sit in the pilot seat, while the forward landing gear could be swung down or up at the bottom of the fighter’s nose. (There was no rear landing gear; two “fins” stuck out of the bottom of the “engines” to stabilize the fighter’s rear section when it was sitting.) With the addition of two AA batteries, a red LED in the nose could be activated which, along with a buzzing sound, apparently stood in for the X-Wing’s lasers.

Like the Falcon, an impressive amount of detail was sculpted into the X-Wing’s surface, particularly on and around the engines, but as with all of the early Kenner Star Wars vehicles, any color detail on the surface was left up to the consumer; paper decals were included, though as you can see in this specimen, the typical wear and tear of play, and quite a bit of storage time, have tended not to be kind to many of the decals. (This one also has a missing “gun” from one of the wings - I’ve never understood the toy companies’ insistence on re-releasing vehicles and accessories in “battle damaged” form, when we kids of the ’70s and ’80s managed that quite nicely on our own.)

Whereas today, Hasbro includes special exclusive figures as an incentive to pick up their latest vehicles, the X-Wing was enough of a novelty at the time that it came with no figures. Indeed, the first trio of vehicles pre-dated the second wave of figures, so instead of Luke in his pilot gear, the publicity and packaging photos for the X-Wing’s first release showed Luke in his Tatooine farmboy duds climbing into the cockpit! (Again, in reference to the anything-but-tried-and-true small scale of the figures that had been decided to make the Falcon affordable for Kenner and the consumer marketplace, the packaging points out that “mini-action figures” are not included.)

When my age was in the single digits, my older brother wanted a Mustang more than anything. Not to be outdone, I wanted an X-Wing fighter. Thanks to Kenner (and my parents), I think I got my wish first.

Very special thanks to Andrew Wester and Dave Thomer for making this article possible.