It sometimes seems, with ever increasingly-detailed playsets and figures coming on to the market, that ‘toys’ today aren’t really designed for children at all, but are in fact aimed squarely at the adult collector market.

It’s a shame, because I’m sure I can’t be the only child of the 1970s who spent many a happy hour creating further adventures for Luke, Han & co. So let me take you back to a galaxy not all that long ago and not very far away, and remember a more simplistic toy for a more innocent age…

 

5. The Snowspeeder

Christmas 1983, and although we didn’t know it at the time, the first great Star Wars age had already peaked. This was the last Star Wars toy I got for Christmas (by 1984 I was into large format Doctor Who books, although that’s another story) so in hindsight it’s wrapped up in a fair dose of wistful nostalgia. It was a nice little toy to go out with, as it happens.

Scale is a problem we’ll return to again with these early toys, and certainly the ‘speeder is totally out of scale to the AT-AT Walker that I got the year before. But that’s the Walker’s fault rather than the Snowspeeder’s, as the speeder is sized around the figures that pilot it.

One delightful, albeit unintentional, feature of the Snowspeeder is that if you take the batteries out, the empty cavity is just the right size for an R2D2 figure. Perfect for any would-be smuggler!

 

4. The Imperial Troop Transporter

A bit of an oddity, this is a toy based not on the films but on the Marvel comic strip. It’s a very good realisation of the vehicle seen in the strip ‘Return to Tattooine’ and was regularly stolen from the Empire for use as a getaway vehicle by sundry escaping rebels (or at least, it was in our house).

Perhaps concerned that its questionable origins might affect sales, the wily toy makers added a much-celebrated feature, namely the ability to play back sounds and speech from the film at the press of a button.

This meant that our house regularly echoed to assorted laser blasts, the command “There’s one, set for stun” and most addictive of all, the cry of “R2D2, where are you?” I got this at Christmas 1981, which must have been a dark time indeed for the Rebellion because I also got…

 

 

3. The Imperial Star Destroyer

I have to play the nostalgia card here, because in the cold light of day this isn’t the most successfully-realised conversion from film to toy.

In terms of look, it’s not immediately recognisable as the same wedge-shaped craft that dominates the imperial fleet in TESB. On the other hand, in terms of getting a lot of elements into a small space, a great deal of thought has clearly gone into it.

There’s two levels, allowing the Imperial crew to stare at the Bounty Hunters’ feet (as in the film); there’s Darth’s meditation pod, which opens and closes (as in the film); there’s a sort-of holographic representation of the Emperor (as in the film); and there are even little pips on the ceiling which allow you to hang figures upside down (as in…. erm, no, not sure about that one actually).

It’s a good solid toy – and far more importantly in 1981 was a very useful ‘enemy spaceship’ to send into combat against…

 

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