Star Wednesday: Imperial Troop Transporter / Imperial Cruiser

By 1979, Kenner must have been panicking. Owning the toy rights to the Star Wars franchise was essentially like being able to print their own money. Kids were lining up at toy stores across the country with cash in hand, eager to purchase any and every action figure the company released. We’re not just talking Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader here. Some of the first figures released included Power Droid, a small box with legs whose only line in the movie was the noise “gonk,” and Death Star Droid, a silver robot who had no dialog at all.

And while it seemed a lot of obscure characters could be mined from the film and turned into action figures, there weren’t as many ships. There were X-Wings and TIE Fighters, Luke’s Landspeeder and Han’s Millennium Falcon… but what after that?

I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when someone at Kenner suggestioned, “we’ll just come up with our own!” The outcome of that meeting was the Imperial Troop Transporter, later known as the Imperial Cruiser.

Because the Imperial Troop Transporter did not appear on screen in Star Wars, Kenner included a brief comic book in the box explaining to kids what the vehicle was, and how it fit into the Star Wars universe. Apparently not all Stormtroopers wandering around Tatooine were riding on the backs of dinosaur-like Dewbacks. Some of the imperial troops were being transported in… well, an Imperial Troop Transporter.

As the name suggests, the vehicle’s primary function is to move figures around. The front of the vehicle has two suicide doors (one per side) with a cool detailed console between the two front seats. Down the sides of the vehicle are a total of six “buckets” designed to carry action figures. The buckets are a little narrow, which means older vintage figures (like the original Stormtrooper) fit better than some of the later figures that featured a wider stance.

Electronically, the Imperial Troop Transporter was Kenner’s most advanced toy at the time. The top of the toy featured six red buttons, each of which played a sound when pressed. Inside the vehicle was a tiny record player, spun by a tiny motor and powered by a single battery. Sand from sandboxes across America that kids used to simulate the desert planet this vehicle came from was not kind to the sound mechanism, and most of these have failed over time (although it is possible to restore them with a bit of work).

The rear of the transport contained a black panel that also flipped open. Originally, there were two black “immobilization units” that could be placed over the heads of prisoners being transported. Without those, a couple of smaller figures (or one, uncomfortably folded up) could also fit in the rear compartment.

A couple of years after the release of the Imperial Troop Transporter, Kenner made some cost-saving to the toy by removing all the electronics and rebranding it as the Imperial Cruiser. Some of the decals (most noticeable the ones on the front doors) were changed and the red buttons were removed, but other than that, the vehicle looks essentially the same.

Although the Imperial Troop Transporter wasn’t one of Kenner’s most popular Star Wars vehicles, somehow over the years, I’ve ended up with three of them. One is the boxed transport I posted above. The second is this beater, which I’ve been using as a pen holder for the past fifteen years.

The third one, the one I leave out on display and the one that I used for the photographs above, is the one I got when I was a little kid, after I already owned an X-Wing and a TIE Fighter, Luke’s Landspeeder and Han’s Millennium Falcon. I didn’t mind at all that the Imperial Troop Transporter didn’t actually appear in the films. In fact, it was the opposite — it showed kids like me that there was an entire world that took place off screen, and sent our imaginations soaring.