Mini-Rig-O-Rama

With the reveal of the INT-4 from the Mandalorian and Grogu, there has been increased chatter about mini-rigs and their viability in TVC. While the original purpose of the Kenner mini-rigs was to provide cheap vehicles to fill a pricepoint between a single figure and a larger (Xwing-sized) vehicle, any fantasies that updated mini-rigs would be anything approaching cheap should be immediately dismissed.

So the big question about Mini-Rigs seems to be whether we would rather see updated version of the “inspired by the Star Wars” stuff Mark Boudreaux invented in the 80’s, modern Hasbro creations based on a similar aesthetic, or keep it limited to things that appeared in movies, TV shows, video games, etc.

The obvious answer here is stuff that is actually from Star Wars, with original Hasbro creations at a distant third. But what actually fits that bill?




OK. This is the actual point of this article. Come on, man. It’s time. I don’t know who even decided this piece of background equipment was a vehicle when it is very clearly meant to be an oversized droid head, but if anything on screen in the original trilogy fits the criteria of a minirig, it’s this. If we take the INT-4 revealed this weekend, mold it into a ball and paint it white, it's halfway there.

On top of that it would fit the "Halo" of the Haslab Cantina perfectly. Especially if the pack-in figure was one of the oft-requested Cantina patrons. While I personally feel like a "vehicle" like this would most likely belong to equally diminutive Rycar Ryjerd, I think the perfect pack-in is actually the unnamed spacer sometimes referred to as Cantina Dude. Not only do the aesthetics match, his potential shared tooling with both BoShek and Bossk makes this a perfect pre-tool/re-tool for those figures (that must be coming eventually).




I would argue that Speederbikes and similar do not quite fit the model here, but I went looking for other options. Unfortunately I discovered that Mr. Nomadscout already wrote this article like 9 years ago (even if some are too big to really be Mini-Rigs):
https://www.banthaskull.com/story/news-top-10-potential-star-wars-vintage-collection-small-vehicles

Anyway, I kept poking for things to add and I remembered the initial images from Starfighter that showed Ryan Gosling on a raft but the images don't show nearly enough to give us any idea what that might look like.



Googling "Starfighter Raft" I did however find this, which proves that my parents didn't love me or I would have had it.


On the other hand, parents who wanted their kids to grow up to be useless mindless losers could get them this great role playing toy:


Anyway... Let us know in the comments what (realistic) Mini-Rig type items you would like to see in the line.

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