Collectors Used to Laugh at This Kenner Star Wars Vehicle, Then The Mandalorian & Grogu Made It Canon

Even in a world as full of spaceships, aliens, and robots as Star Wars, a toy company eventually runs out of material. This was the case at Kenner in 1979 when, for the first time, they produced a vehicle for their Star Wars line with no on-screen counterpart: the Imperial Troop Transport. Released in 1979, the Imperial Troop Transport was released with Lucasfilm’s blessing, as well as their direct input. Designer and Boba Fett creator Joe Johnson revised Kenner’s initial concept sketches for the Imperial Troop Transport, helping it look like it fit within the world of Star Wars. In 2019, after previously appearing in an episode of Star Wars: Rebels, the season finale of The Mandalorian brought the Imperial Troop Transport into live-action for the first time. And while the Lucasfilm-designed Imperial Troop Transport making the leap to canon felt inevitable, fans were shocked when another Kenner creation soared across the big screen last spring.

The “Mini-Rig” vehicles were designed by Kenner’s Mark Boudreaux under the unifying principle that “if you didn’t see any of the mini-rigs in the Star Wars films, that’s because they were always just out of camera range.” Released between 1982 and 1984, these low-cost, small-scale vehicles were fondly remembered by Star Wars fans who grew up playing with them, if not exactly taken seriously. Made under Kenner president Bernie Loomis’s guiding principle that toys should be interactive, the Mini-Rigs included wild action features like suction cups, grasping claws, and spring-loaded extending legs. Although supposedly “just-off-screen,” the designs were for the most part too focused on being toys to really feel that way. In April of this year, fans saw something surprising on the poster for The Mandalorian & Grogu: the INT-4 Interceptor, one of Kenner’s Mini-Rigs, faithfully translated to live action. Appearing in a key sequence during the film, the INT-4 has become a fan favorite just in time for Goldin to auction a near-mint graded sample of the original Kenner toy next month.

Why Kenner Decided to Create a Whole Line of Made-Up Star Wars Vehicles

Kenner had a canny secondary motivation for the Mini-Rig line: budget. Smaller, simpler vehicles than a TIE Fighter or X-Wing, the Mini-Rigs could be sold at a lower price-point, making them an easier purchase for parents and kids to justify. Whereas a larger vehicle might retail for $14.99 (equal to about fifty dollars today), a Mini-Rig retailed for just $4.99 (about fifteen dollars today). Kenner tested the waters with an initial series of three Mini-Rigs for its The Empire Strikes Back line in 1982. When the line proved successful, Kenner produced a further six of the vehicles between 1982 and 1984. For their Return of the Jedi Mini-Rig line, several incorporated designs from the film, serving functionally as miniaturized versions of vehicles like Jabba’s Sail Barge or the Imperial Shuttle.

The first 1982 wave consisted of the MLC-3 Mobile Laser Cannon, the MTV-7 Multi-Terrain Vehicle, and the PDT-8 Personnel Deployment Transport. The packaging for the MLC-3 and PDT-8 envisioned both as being used by the Rebel Alliance on Hoth, with the Laser Cannon manned by the Kenner Hoth Rebel Trooper figure and the Personnel Deployment Transport used by droids at Echo Base. Lacking weapons or other action features, the Personnel Deployment Transport was one of the least popular Mini-Rigs, and was discontinued after 1982. The Mobile Laser Cannon proved more popular, as did the Imperial Multi-Terrain Vehicle. The Mobile Laser Cannon fit a single figure, and featured rolling wheels as well as twin gun turrets and a clear plastic canopy. The Multi-Terrain Vehicle had spring-loaded, extending legs, which returns to the central design imperative of the Mini-Rigs: while not inherently logical, the action feature was fun, and would catch the attention of a child looking at the box while at a toy or department store.

The INT-4 was one of two Mini-Rigs released for the second Empire Strikes Back wave in 1982, along with the CAP-2 Captivator. In a touch sure to capture kids’ imaginations, the CAP-2 was marketed by Kenner as the personal vehicle of the bounty hunter Bossk. This underlines one of the central selling points of both the Star Wars franchise and Kenner’s line: it was full of characters with an intriguing look and minimal screen-time, allowing your imagination to do the rest of the work. It’s arguably this premise in action that created the all-time fan favorite character, Boba Fett. The CAP-2 also serves as the platonic ideal of how ridiculous the Mini-Rigs were, featuring two (very difficult to stand) suction-cup tipped legs, spindly robotic arms, and a press-button capture claw in the back. The INT-4 was more restrained, looking like a flight-equipped version of an AT-AT or AT-ST head. Its action feature was more straight-forward, but just as cool: the wings clipped into the vehicle’s sides, and could be released with the push of a button, similar to Kenner’s X-Wing.

Return of the Jedi Mini-Rigs & The Line’s Legacy

Four further Mini-Rigs were released as part of Kenner’s Return of the Jedi line. The first wave was in 1983, AST-5 Armored Sentinel Transport and the ISP-6 Imperial Shuttle Pod. The Armored Sentinel Transport was designed for use with the vast compliment of Jabba the Hutt’s henchmen Kenner produced, with Klaatu at the controls on the vehicle’s box. Like the INT-4 or Multi-Terrain Vehicle, the Armored Sentinel Transport’s action feature centered around its flight and landing gear, with wings that could be raised and lowered for ground or aerial combat. Laser-turrets were also sculpted into the vehicle’s sides. The Shuttle Pod was a single-person version of the Imperial Shuttle seen in the film, also featuring folding wings and laser turret weapons.

The final two Mini-Rigs were issued with the 1984 Return of the Jedi line, and as a result, are the rarest in the line. By this point, with the film gone from theaters, retailer demand for Star Wars product waned, leading to lower production runs and lessened distribution. The Endor Forest Ranger was a heavily-armored single-person fighter, imagined as part of the Rebel attack on the Imperial Shield Generator station. The Desert Sail Skiff was a miniature version of Jabba’s Sail Barge, earning it an interesting claim to fame: this is the closest Kenner ever came to a Sail Barge vehicle or playset. By the time Return of the Jedi came to theaters, Kenner was wary of sinking money into tooling and development for a release on the scale of a Sail Barge, so they chose to bypass the vehicle altogether. The first and only version of it was finally made in 2019 by Hasbro as its inaugural HasLab crowd-funding campaign.

This year, Hasbro has revived the Mini-Rig, with an update to the INT-4 announced during San Diego Comic-Con, now finally based on an on-screen counterpart, sourced from its appearance in The Mandalorian & Grogu. The new, screen-accurate INT-4 retails for a hefty eighty dollars (offset somewhat by the included Imperial Remnant Warlord action figure), more than four times what the same vehicle costs back in 1982 … even with inflation factored in. However, a mint-in-box Kenner INT-4 is worth much more today, evidenced by the two hundred dollar starting bid on the sample up for auction at Goldin’s. Though a butt of collector jokes for decades, the Mini-Rigs distill what made Kenner’s Star Wars line so groundbreaking: the ability to imagine a whole world beyond what made it into the film. And with the INT-4 finally flying in from “just out of camera range,” that legacy continues to inspire Star Wars fans — both those that watch the films and the ones that make them.

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