By Gus Lopez
The Empire Strikes Back broke all the rules for merchandising a movie sequel as the Kenner toy line continued strong into the 1980s. It's hard to imagine that any Star Wars toy during this era would have been unsuccessful or cancelled for distribution, but the monumental success of Kenner's 3 3/4" action figures, which revolutionized the toy industry two years earlier, also cannibalized most of the remaining Kenner Star Wars toy line.
Around the release of The Empire Strikes Back, Kenner introduced a new smaller scale of figures and interlocking playsets called the Micro Collection. These plastic playsets with small painted metal figures allowed kids to connect multiple settings into elaborate dioramas -- something that was impossible to achieve with the 3 3/4" scale figures. For the initial release, the Micro Collection consisted of three Star Wars settings from the first two movies: Hoth, Bespin, and the Death Star, with multiple playsets for each.
After its initial introduction, Kenner made plans to expand the Micro Collection line with three additional playsets: the Hoth Bacta Chamber, the Bespin Torture Chamber, and the Dagobah playset. Unfortunately, the line was cancelled abruptly before any of these toys made it to retail. The Hoth Bacta Chamber would have allowed kids to recreate the scenes from The Empire Strikes Back where 2-1B and FX-7 operate on wampa-damaged Luke. This playset had a feature where the chamber could be filled with bacta fluid (aka water) pumped through tubes to the cylinder holding the "Luke in diapers" figure. The water never actually touches the delicate painted metal figure, but since there are only two known existing prototypes of this unproduced toy, it's not likely the feature will be verified any time soon by the owners. The playset also features a medical chair to place Luke in for operation by FX-7 and 2-1B, and control panels so that the medical droids can plug into the Rebel Base computers to diagnose Luke's condition or IM their friends. In addition to these three characters, the Bacta Chamber also came with a C-3PO figure, presumably to calculate the odds of every surgical option.
The Hoth Bacta Chamber was featured extensively in Kenner literature and offered to retailers for pre-order. Prototypes of this toy got as far as finished production samples and there are several byproducts of the production process that have made their way to the secondary market. There are even two different designs of the Bacta playset. The initial design (depicted in the blueprint image) had a narrower base and straight arm for positioning Luke in the chamber. The more finished design resembles the toy seen on the prototype packaging.
The Bacta Chamber box packaging was done in the same style as the other Micro Collection playsets with the metal figures displayed along the top flap with a wide shot of the playset in an action scene across the front face. Unpainted versions of the metal figures have turned up in some numbers on the secondary market and currently sell in the $50-100 range, with rarer, painted versions of the figures selling for considerably more. Besides the two known existing prototypes of the Bacta Chamber play set, there are around half a dozen boxes and proof sheets of the Bacta packaging making this an extremely rare collectible.
Kenner had also made plans to release a Torture Chamber that would connect to other playsets in the Micro Collection Bespin series. The Torture Chamber has an array of medieval punishment devices such as a chair that moves Han into position to shock with electrodes, a locking detention cell, and movable conveyer belt to place dismembered C-3PO on route to an incinerator. This playset came with six figures: torture chair, an Ugnaught holding C-3PO's leg, two Bespin guards, and Chewbacca with backpack to hold C-3PO. Similar to the Bacta Chamber, this toy was close to release at the time it was cancelled with final packaging and production toy samples created along with every other stage in development along the way. There are only two complete prototypes of Bespin Torture Chamber playsets known to exist. Although collectors never rule out the possibility that others may turn up, that's quite a small quantity after over a decade of collector interest in the unproduced Micro line.
The third and final unproduced Micro Collection playset from The Empire Strikes Back line was the Dagobah set. This playset was in the middle of development at the time the Micro line was cancelled yet some of the figures intended for the set have surfaced as "4-up" sculpts and hard copies. Almost every figure in the entire Micro Collection line was sculpted at 4x scale and reduced to the actual size of the metal figures using a machine called a pantograph that enables an object to be scaled up or down to a different size. One-of-a-kind 4-up sculpts of the Dagobah figures exist in various forms. Each Kenner sculptor used his particular choice of sculpting waxes, and one example of a wax sculpt from the Dagobah series was the R2-D2 on bog surface. One of the Kenner sculptors, Bill Lemon, used a unique method of sculpting figures out of acetate plastic using milling equipment, and unlike wax, this was an unforgiving process that required restarting after a significant error. The composition and workmanship of Bill Lemon's pieces make them highly prized by collectors today, and one such example is the Luke in X-wing sculpt from the Dagobah Micro set.
These and other Luke, R2-D2, and Yoda figures from the Dagobah playset also exist in 4-up hard copy form, made out of a green hard urethane material known by its trade name, Dynacast. Dynacast was used extensively by Kenner and its contractors during the 1970s and '80s. Years later, blue hard copies of some of these Micro Collection figures were made within Kenner from the original molds in the 1990s, although these blue pieces are not considered by collectors to be true prototypes of the Micro Collection line. Despite there being only a handful of unproduced Micro Collection prototypes from the Empire era, this series of what "could have been" has intrigued collectors for many years.
