Monday, September 13, 2010

PDT-8 Personnel Deployment Transport (ESB)




The PDT, or Personnel Deployment Transport, was one of the five mini-rigs made during ESB (there were more during ROTJ). These were smaller vehicles that could be purchased more easily than most of the larger vehicles that were actually in the movies. A way to give kids more play without gouging their piggy banks.

The PDT had a couple swiveling small lasers, two open figure compartments that had opening doors anyway, and two swiveling side engines. The engines actually seem pretty oversized for the vehicle, but I’m no designer.

Why should you own this mini-rig? Five reasons:

1. Small, white, sporty – like a VW Bug without the payments.

2. The picture on the package – what, are they going to put the droids in and blow the thing up? What are they watching? What's the big deal? Is it FX-7's driving test?

3. Looks much like that alien assassin’s ship from “The Last Starfighter.” Given that that movie came out in 1984, I would suspect they got a little inspiration from this toy. I smell laaaaawsuit!

4. The ridiculousness of an open-cockpit ship on Hoth? C’mon, get it just for that!

5. A sweet ride.

Backstory:

Since it is white and pictured with Hoth figures, presumably this was used by the Rebellion at Echo Base. This is still conceivable since there is much of the base never shown on film, and the galaxy is a big place. It could, theoretically exist in the Star Wars universe, even if we've never seen it used.

Wookieepedia article (not much else here)

119th in alphabetical order

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