The Story Of The Vintage Kenner Troop Transport

We live in an era where, if Hasbro releases a Star Wars toy that falls short of 100% on-screen fidelity, the hue and cry is deafening, and I fully admit to being part of that problem. I'm the guy that points out that the Vintage Collection Han Solo in Carbonite figure is technically Episode V sourced since the shirt is untucked. I don't envy what Hasbro has to put up with. With that in mind, the legendary status of Kenner's Imperial Troop Transport from 1979 is amazing. At the time, it had never appeared on-screen, yet it became beloved. Creativity and imagination were once rewarded.

But how did this iconic toy come about? The story is a bit murky. I don't say the following as an insult: everyone is the hero of their own story. It's human nature. I hope I am attributing the creative contributions correctly in this article. I do not mean to slight any of the principals, and if I do, it's strictly an unintentional error on my part.

The preface to the Kenner Imperial Troop Transport starts with Bernie Loomis, the man with the "golden gut" and the former CEO of Kenner. Loomis insisted that every toy Kenner made had play value. In the excellent documentary, Plastic Galaxy, former Kenner Preliminary Designer, Tom Troy offers this quote. It's particularly noteworthy considering how the collector and "kid" lines started diverging in the early 2010's:

Every product that became a toy had to have child involvement as part of the premise. So it wasn’t a toy without it. Otherwise it was a collectible. It was a baseball card.

So that was the underlying theme at Kenner. The next motivation was purely business. Kenner had a relationship with the Ozen Sound Company who made talking devices for many toys such as talking dolls. Kenner wanted to maintain that relationship within the Star Wars line. They were to literally design a toy around the sound device, which the Official Site describes as "a speaker cone atop a stack of six small plastic records." After tinkering with a few ideas, the team landed on a transport vehicle as seen in this preliminary sketch which was a smaller "four guy" version:



Tom Troy had the idea that the center of the cockpit area should hold a prisoner or a droid. The legendary Mark Boudreaux was just starting out at Hasbro at the time. Taking Tom's input, he created his vision of this transport out of styrene, model parts and bits repurposed from other toys. Boudreaux transformed that preliminary sketch into what became the the “double point” prototype



Continuing to run with creative license, Kenner decided that a black R2 droid should represent the Imperial Droid occupying that center area:



Kenner submitted this "double pointed" prototype for Lucasfilm approval, who found the pointy aesthetic problematic. They submitted a revised sketch back to Kenner. That sketch was made by none other than Joe Johnson, the creative "father" of Boba Fett. You may also know him as the director of Captain America: The First Avenger among other movies. He's kind of a big deal. This revision gave rise to the "blunt nose" Troop Transport that went into production:



You know the rest of the story. In 2015, this off-screen vehicle became officially canonized in Star Wars Rebels:



Cartoon canonization is nice, but it's sort of like Roger Maris' home run record. It's real, but some stick-in-the-muds refuse to recognize it (in my day, Babe Ruth hit 60 home runs in a 12 game season). So when the Imperial Troop Transport made the jump to live action in December of 2019, it achieved double-secret canonization status. No one can deny it's on-screen status now:



This story, and it's absolutely a story, all culminates with Tuesday's incredible news that an updated Imperial Troop Transport is getting released in the Vintage Collection:



Pssst, Mr. Favreau, if you could find a way to canonize other Kenner inventions, such as the mini-rigs, your legendary status would be beyond reproach. If season 2 of The Mandalorian shows Bossk roaming around in the CAP-2, I will literally give a standing ovation in the privacy of my living room.

Site sponsor Entertainment Earth is already shipping out their orders for the Troop Transport! Don't miss out:

Click HERE to order yours (SPONSORED)

And don't forget, you're going to need more guys. The Troop Transport holds 9 to 11 Stormtroopers:

Click HERE to order the Remnant Stormtrooper (dirty) (SPONSORED)
Click HERE to order the Rogue One Stormtrooper (clean) (SPONSORED)

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