Vehicle Maintenance Energizer Toy

The last of the "Accessory" line I'm covering is the Vehicle Maintenance Energizer. And in doing so, I'm bending one of the collecting rules I've established for myself, which is "nothing in the collection that didn't appear onscreen in the Trilogy."

This means no Ewok Battle Wagon or mini-rigs, thank the Maker. However, the VME gets a bit of a mulligan here for me, since it's more likely than the mini-rigs to have been "just offscreen."

Like the other accessories, the VME debuted in 1982 in ESB packaging, but is most often found nowadays in RotJ box.

And once more, there's not a lot of box art to imitate here, just the one image of Chewie holding his hose (!)

But this is where the VME gets interesting - all the fiddly little "hydrospanner tools." Finding a VME that's not MISB but has all the tools with it has to be a rarity - and each of the 8 tools is subtly different. Fortunately, though, loose tools to complete your set are pretty readily available on the secondary market!

My boxed VME came with instructions, to boot. Helpful!

Gotta say that the suction cups are pretty useless in sticking to anything at this point. I pretty much gave up trying to stick one to the X-Wing in the tableau pic.

Another thing that shocked me, frankly, was the price point for this toy. You'll note the "Graham Crackers" price sticker in the first pic that notes a price of $16.95 (!)  Dunno bout you, but that seems pretty pricy to me, when an action figure cost 3 or 4 bucks at most in 1983. I'd have imagined less than $10 as a reasonable price here, but that's just me. And I guess if hydro-spanners are your thing, this is the only way you're gonna get any. Chewie seems to like them, anyway.