Side Gunner (Droids 1985)

I am going to switch it up a little here and post a vehicle from the Star Wars Droids line, since, technically, this is a Star Wars vehicle - to the same scale - and it came out in the 1980's. Eventually, I hope to show every vehicle and figure from the vintage line as well as from the Droids and Ewoks lines.

For some reason the Side Gunner wasn't given a more creative name like "L-Wing" or "SUX-456," it was simply called Side Gunner. I'm not sure if Kenner ran out of ideas by this time or what, but the vehicle was featured in the animated early adventures of R2 and 3PO called Droids: the Adventures of R2-D2 and C-3PO.

This vehicle is featured during a chase sequence in one of the episodes, which also featured an A-Wing (before they were supposed to be built). However, it is a nice toy. How nice?

Five reasons nice:

1. It is a two seater, so you can put a pilot in the cockpit and a gunner in the side car - extra play value!

2. There is a lever opposite the gunner side car that lets you rotate the side car around 360 degrees, or move it back and forth. This was actually a very cool feature.

3. It has guns, plenty of frickin' guns. In fact, they are in the name - Gunner. Did you get that?

4. As long as it was featured in the Star Wars universe, you can put whoever in the hell you want figures in there. Don't limit yourself to those pansy-ass Droids figures!

5. While the figures for this line got more cartoonish, somehow the vehicles got more detailed - you can see that here.

Backstory:

Not much of a backstory. Very little is actually written about this vehicle, other than it was featured in an episode of Droids. It seems to have cool features, but one wonders if it wasn't meant for some Power of the Force line originally. It has no photos on the box of Droids figures with it, only a Death Star Gunner figure for some odd reason. Maybe someone just saw the word "gunner" and equated the two.

I guess my fondness for this vehicle comes from its mystery. It seem like a neat vehicle, it's just that there's no history. Had it come earlier in the line it would have been something I would have played with constantly, but I actually got it from a friend later when I was more, ahem, "adult."