The Genius of Kenner’s “Star Wars Collection” Mini-Rigs
“As inflation and the skyrocketing price of plastic pushed up prices of even the simplest vehicles, the Kenner marketing department sought less expensive accessories for the action figures. So Boudreaux started designing one-man vehicles and body rigs that looked as if the could have been in the films, but maybe were just out of sight of the camera.”
Kenner’s “Star Wars Collection” Mini-Rigs have been getting some special attention here at battlegrip.com lately (see “Spotted Online – Unproduced Star Wars Mini-Rig Concept Model”, “Spotted Online – Original Star Wars Mini-Rig Concept Models”, and “Star Wars INT-4 Mini-Rig Patent Drawings”) and I think it’s time to look closer at the line and offer my own opinions on why the Mini-Rig concept was so powerful and perfect for the Star Wars line.
Photo from Star Wars: From Concept to Screen to Collectible*.
A Low MSRP
One of my absolute favorite things about the old Kenner Star Wars Mini-Rigs of the eighties was the low cost of each one-man vehicle. Priced at about the same cost as three action figures when the series was launched ($8 to $10/each was fairly standard), I sometimes used my allowance to buy a Mini-Rig to add to my arsenal of Star Wars toys. Saving up for a larger vehicle took way too long for my impatient childhood self, but the Mini-Rigs were perfect since they were a vehicle I could quickly afford by doing some chores around the neighborhood for others.
Fun Designs
The CAP-2 “Captivator,” shown above, is just one example of the fun that was sunk into these inexpensive Star Wars vehicles. The patent application (hosted at Google), like most of the patent applications for the eighties Mini-Rigs, lists Mark Boudreaux as the toy’s designer and I have to say that Boudreaux was an excellent choice for the Star Wars line; this and his other toy designs prove to me that he got the universe and was a master at creating fun toys. The CAP-2, with its suction cup feet and grabbing arms, is probably the most unique design in the line and I can remember the fun of hanging the toy from the side of the refrigerator . . . at least until the weight popped the suction cups loose and the toy fell.
Photo from Star Wars: From Concept to Screen to Collectible*.
A Hint of Things to Come
The Mini-Rigs weren’t the first completely original designs from Kenner’s offices — the Imperial Troop Transport released in 1979 (see theswca.com) was the first — but they were the most visible, and because there were so many of them (five in the Empire Strikes Back line alone) almost every Star Wars toy collector at the time owned at least one. And that planted the seeds for the era when it would be up to fiction outside of the movies to expand the Star Wars universe. An “Expanded Universe” concept, if you will, that became the core of novels, roleplaying games, toys, and comics released between the late eighties and the release of The Phantom Menace in 1999.
“If you didn’t see any of these Mini-Rigs in the Star Wars films, that’s because they were always ‘just out of camera range.’ That, anyhow, was the explanation of Kenner’s Mark Boudreaux, who designed them all to provide lower-priced vehicles for the action figures.”
Use Your Imaginations, Children
And since the toys never appeared in the movies (also, unlike the Imperial Troop Transport, I can’t remember more than one of the Mini-Rigs being used in the Star Wars comics of the time) as kids the only influence we had on our imaginations when playing with the toys was the packaging. Nothing was stopping us from playing with the toys in whatever strange ways we wanted to and I can remember many a playtime with Mini-Rigs that were far from anything I suspect Lucas would have approved. I even remember writing my own Star Wars story the summer of 1982 and using Mini-Rigs in the fiction; I wish I had those old typewritten pages now.
Modern Mini-Rigs
In the nineties, with toys like the Imperial Cruisemissle Trooper (see review at Dark Lord Dungeon) and the Expanded Universe Cloud Car (see the photo archive at rebelscum.com), toy designers kept the idea of Mini-Rigs alive. And even today Hasbro’s designers embrace the Mini-Rig concept with toys like the Republic Attack Recon Fighter (see the review at Dark Lord Dungeon) and a completely new wave of toys just now hitting stores (mentioned here). The rising cost of manufacturing forces the creation of smaller, less expensive vehicles . . . some things never change.
Star Wars Mini-Rigs Forever
For over thirty years now Star Wars toy designers have been using their creativity to generate small, inexpensive toy vehicles for kids to use with Star Wars action figures . . . and it seems as if that practice will continue for many more years to come. All of us owe Mark Boudreaux a huge thank you for the work he sunk into the Mini-Rig concept in the early eighties; his sense of the Star Wars style and his design of those very first Mini-Rig toys had a lasting effect on Star Wars toys and I truly appreciate his contributions to the vintage Kenner “Star Wars Collection.”
And now I must admit that writing this piece on Star Wars Mini-Rigs has me growing excited again about the small vehicles. I had lost that excitement for Star Wars vehicles, but looking through all of the Kenner and Hasbro Mini-Rigs reignited my interest . . . writing about toys can be a dangerous hobby.
Related articles
- Where Kenner’s “Star Wars Collection” Failed Cloud City (battlegrip.com)
- Affiliate Link – Star Wars 2013 Class I Fleet Vehicles Wave 1 (battlegrip.com)
- I’m Not a Fan of the New Star Wars Packaging . . . (battlegrip.com)
I wish child-me had one or two of the MTV-7 – it looks like a fantastic little vehicle. 🙂
The only large scale vehicles I ever owned were the POTF-era Falcon, and a very large, very long GI Joe jet that split into two different vehicles. I found both just too… big and unwieldy to actually play with – so they collected dust. 🙁
That’s the magic of these smaller vehicles, and most GI Joe 2-4 figure ones – they’re just the right size.
My folks are shipping my original figures to me and – if I recall correctly – the box the figures were stored in also has both the Mini-Rigs I owned in it, so I’m hoping they’ll be coming along for the ride, too!
I liked the MiniRigs growing up, and I like them as a concept now. However, if they are still using the 3x the cost of a single figure cost price, I don’t think I would spend $30 for a single person rig now. I can justify it a bit with an included figure (assuming they will all include figures), but if they ever did just the MiniRig (like in the 80’s), I wouldn’t do it.
The mini rigs were a genius idea at the time, and I’m glad to see the tradition continues–but my one beef is the new ‘rig sized vehicles are coming in at or above $20.
Not what I’d normally think is in the spirit of the mini-rig idea. 🙁
I recall the GI Joe fang and ram being around $5. The vamp and hiss where around $10. That explains the size of my Joe collection. The non cannon star wars vehicles couldn’t compete.
I’m not sure why the new star wars minis are pakaged with two figures. Especially characters you might already have.
(Drat! There’s another ‘Jay’ lurking here; have to change the ol’ screen name.)
I guess I’m the odd man out here, because, even as a ravenous Star Wars fanatic child, I never really liked the Mini-Rigs. Not because of their size, but because of their design; they just looked weird. I mean, I didn’t need (or want) everything to be from the movie or screen accurate, & I loved some of the more out there ship designs like Slave I & the B-wing, but even at seven or eight, I could tell that the MTV-7 would not have been a very well designed vehicle in real life.
Yes, yes, I know it’s all fantasy; my imagination, though, vivid & wild as it was (& is), still needed a vehicle to not look like it would tip over pulling into a parking space.
I was a strange child.
@Jay – Inflation sucks. Going by the $6.99 price tag on the packaging shot in the article an online inflation calculator says $6.99 in 1981 dollars would be $17.03 in 2011. And yesterday I found one of the new Fleet vehicles at Target for $19.99 which includes two action figures and one vehicle.
I think the $20 price tag is actually a better deal today than the $7-$10 price tag was in 1981.
@Blayne – Was the GI Joe jet the Cobra Raven? (An SR-71-like plane with a smaller jet on the tail.) Yeah, that thing was a beast to carry around. Awesome design, but incredibly massive and heavy for a kid.
@Iok – I hope we see some reviews of the older toys!
@Paul – Something I’d like to see is size comparison shots between the eighties Mini-Rigs and today’s Mini-Rig like toys. Are the newer toys much larger than the old ones, or are they roughly the same size?
And didn’t Kenner/Hasbro try the “Body-Rig” idea in the nineties with a few Deluxe packs? I have to dig into that.
@Openchallenge – Something I never understood as a kid was why Transformers toys seemed so expensive when compared to G.I. Joe toys. I now know it’s because of the metal and extra expense of designing and manufacturing Transformers toys, but back then all I knew was that I could get a G.I. Joe vehicle and action figure for the same price as a Transformers toy.
And G.I. Joe toys also felt like a better deal than Star Wars toys. In 1982/1983 the action figures were priced the same and had dramatically different articulation and accessories.
@Other Jay – The trick when cornering in the MTV-7 is to activate those spring legs and drop low so you hug the ground!