Sunday, August 11, 2013

Vehicle Maintenance Energizer (ESB 1980-82)





OMG! OMG! OMG! The VME! The most exciting, versatile...ah forget it.
Yes, it did say “Toy” on the box as laid out above. I guess because they couldn’t exactly say “Vehicle” with this one. Wow. The Vehicle Maintenance Energizer. This was not officially a mini-rig, but one of the Hoth accessories that actually was in a movie. Well, it was on the Yavin base in the first movie, not shown in the Hoth base.
The top came up and could rotate all the way around. It also came with 8 tools that could be held in a standard figure’s hand, arguably the “hydrospanners” that Chewie's always using to fix the Falcon. When you closed the top you could store these tools inside it. However, most people that have these loose today probably lost all or most of these tools. It also has two black hoses with suction–cup ends to “attach” to vehicles and power them. The box showed Chewbacca working with it on Hoth, but this was probably due to his propensity for tooling around. Chances are good though, if they had one on Yavin they probably had one on Hoth. It came in both and ESB and ROTJ box.
Why should you own this, um, accessory? Five reasons:
1. Chewbacca finally has tools to fix something.
2. Fuel your X-Wing, even though you never thought of doing this before since they’re futuristic!
3. Have Chewie get mad at it and throw it at a generic Rebel Soldier.
4. Pretend it’s a giant Wookiee hookah.
5. Pretend it’s a brain transfer device. Okay, that’s just silly.  Although it looks like that one from that "Stargate" episode, hmm...
Backstory:
Nothing has really been written about this, other than it was simply used to supply energy to vehicles and maintain them. It is seen briefly in the first movie at the Rebel Yavin base, so it is presumed that they are used elsewhere as well for vehicles in the Star War universe.
169th in alphabetical order
 Kegger Physics

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