Stormtrooper Transports

A little story for you: When LEGO first came out with the army-building minifig EVERYONE had wanted (a stormtrooper), they only released it in one single set... a $20 TIE Fighter. That means just 5 stormtrooper minifigs would cost you $100! I was more than a little bit peeved about this, calling LEGO (at least half-jokingly) "a bunch of sneaky ripoffs." The administrator of the forum I talked in was so offended by this statement for some reason that he later directly quoted it in the page's rules (under the title "respect the brick"... what the heck?). Anyway, I resolved to give LEGO some ideas on how they could sell more stormtroopers. They couldn't just make a set of minifigs like the one shown at the top up there, because that would fall under the "action figures" license, which Lucasfilm gave to Hasbro, not LEGO. But there are other ways...

(NOTE: The row of stormtroopers in the above image is actually fake, since I only owned three troopers at the time. You can see where the shadow of the third one from the right is cut off. These days, however, I own far more than 6 of the guys... but unfortunately I don't even really care anymore. Sad, eh?)

Jedi Knight Troop Hoversled (3/19/2001)

When I resolved to make some troop transport ideas, I decided to make them for a variety of price ranges. The smallest and cheapest trooper transport I could think of was the little hoversled from Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II that I always assumed was used for that purpose (it is never actually shown in-use in the game).

In case you haven't gathered it from my site, I was a huge fan of Jedi Knight (and I still think it's one of the three best Star Wars games ever made, right up there with Knights of the Old Republic and X-Wing Alliance), so when I built this, I couldn't help but love it. I can still imagine my JK character walking around on top of it. When the LEGO was built, I used to take my fingers and pretend they were a pair of legs walking over it, making clanky sounds. Yeah, I'm crazy. Anyway, as a set, this little guy would include at least 3 or 4 stormtroopers, along with, preferably, an Imperial officer and Commando (also known as Death Star Troopers in non-JK terms). The price would probably be around $10. LEGO's are pretty steep, you know.

Force Commander Troop Transport (3/19/2001)

The second and worst of my troop transport ideas was this vehicle from the strategy game Force Commander. As you can see, it's a sloppy and inaccurate model. The price tag on this piece of junk (as if LEGO would ever sell it) would be about $20-30.

Imperial Shuttle / Landing Craft (3/21/2001)

My third and final idea for an Imperial Stormtrooper Transport was this: the Imperial Landing Craft. First, here are a few shots of my improved Imperial Shuttle. I always thought LEGO's official Imperial Shuttle was one of their best sets (I especially liked it because it included Royal Guards). However, a few of the colors were a bit too garbled for my tastes, so I cleaned them up a bit, as you can see above. Also, I made one essential change that even LEGO was too lazy to make on their re-release of the shuttle set: I made the wings fold down all the way when it goes into flight mode. For some reason, the LEGO set is built so that they will only go down to a certain point before hitting the side of the ship and stopping. To fix this, simply detach the wings and move them down one stud on the joints that attach them. Then the wings will come down properly, as seen in the first photo.

My custom troop transport in this case was little more than a box. Yes, a box. This box, to be exact. Alone, it's just a box, but add it to the Shuttle like so...

And you have an Imperial Landing Craft! Pretty neat, huh? The way I figured it, LEGO could just sell the box individually and include instructions about how to attach it to the Shuttle. That way, the set would still be cheap enough to be a decent army-builder.

Of course, they didn't do that. Eventually LEGO did take up my idea and build an Imperial Lander set in 2007. I bought one, of course, but by that point I didn't really care that much anymore. The set was also too expensive to be a decent army-builder and included only like three stormtroopers! Instead of making a decent Imperial army-builder, LEGO opted to make such a set for the Old Republic instead, made up of Clone Troopers from Episode III. And as little as I now care about Stormtrooper minifigs, I care about Clone Trooper minifigs even less. Oh well... *sigh*