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| My childhood "Power Droid" action figure takes a walk outside |
As I've mentioned before in other posts, Star Wars dominated my world in 1978. I loved Star Wars figures and played with them every day in the late 70s and early 80s! I had all 12 of the first wave of figures and I thought every single one of them was amazing. Apparently, I wasn't alone because Star Wars figures were selling like crazy and I would imagine it took no time at all for Kenner to decide to make figures of more characters from the movie. At some point in 1978, a second wave of 8 figures hit the shelves.
The second wave included 4 bizarre and intriguing aliens from the cantina, Luke Skywalker in his X-Wing flight suit, R5-D4 (the R2-D2 style droid with orange detailing), Death Star Droid (who looked like an evil, silver C-3PO to me), and Power Droid. X-Wing pilot Luke was easily my favorite and I loved the aliens too! It was cool to have two droids that, even at the time, felt like knock-offs of R2-D2 and C-3PO. Death Star Droid was a much more dangerous, evil villain in my action figure world than in the movie and R5-D4 hung out with him or R2-D2 depending on the day. Then there was Power Droid.
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| vintage Star Wars "Power Droid" action figure 1978 |
Power Droid was a dark blue, boxy little guy with a pair of legs that look like a dryer vent hose and a short, stubby antenna. He's sometimes referred to as GNK or Gonk. His purpose was basically to be a portable battery. He would tag along with whoever owned him and recharge the battery in their Land Speeder or whatever. It's not the most exciting character to turn into an action figure. I could understand the decision to make this figure if Kenner had already exhausted all of their other options, but I remember wondering as a kid why they didn't make any Rebel Troops or some of the other pilots from the attack on the Death Star at the end of the movie. As an adult, Grand Moff Tarkin seems like an obvious choice considering he's an important character, but he wasn't really involved in much action and I didn't miss him as a kid. However, the Rebel Troops and Pilots just seem like such obvious choices. Anyway, looking at Power Droid now, his one eye seems to be saying hopefully, "Please include me in the fun."
As a kid, I didn't understand Power Droid. I don't remember ever wanting the figure, but I'm sure that the completest in me asked my parents to buy him just so that I would have them all. The art on his package was, admittedly, pretty cool looking! But once he was out of the package and mixed in with my other toys, he just didn't really capture my imagination. I remember thinking he looked like an old TV set. I suppose I played with him a little bit, but my vague memories of his role in my adventures was little more than set decoration. Looking at him now, I like him more than I did as a kid...and I feel a little bit bad for not playing with him more than I did.
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| "Oh how I wish I could play too." |
Did you have a Power Droid action figure as a kid? If so, do you remember what you thought of him at the time? Has your opinion of him changed over time? Tell me in the comments!
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I LOVED this figure as a kid. That whole wave (The Great Eight) was amazing to me. I was just so happy that they made more after the first twelve.
ReplyDeleteI definitely shared your enthusiasm that more figures were made after the first 12! It's great to hear that my opinion of Power Droid wasn't shared by everyone. I'm glad to know that there were kids out there who did enjoy the figure!
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