VC- All Terrain Armored Transport (AT-AT)

(Back to The Vintage Collection Vehicles)

Discuss this figure in the corresponding THREAD in our forums.
Check out various reviews of this figure below!

Retail
$99.99

Reference

Banthapedia article on All Terrain Armored Transport
“AT-AT’s were massive war machines that made enemy forces lose control of their bowels upon seeing them.” - Banthapedia

Features video:

Major Variants
*There is a variant reported in Canada, in which there is a sticker that indicates two exclusive Vintage Carded Snowtroopers are included inside.
*There is a packaging variant.  Besides the regular “Shadow of the Dark Side” box, there is also a Toys R Us exclusive “Vintage” packaging.

Notes
*This is an entirely new sculpt, and is the latest in the (somewhat inappropriately named by collectors) “BMF” series of upgraded vehicles.

Roundtable Reviews!

nomadscout

Well folks, this thing is awesome.  Is it perfect?  Read on…

The new All Terrain Armored Transport is one of the most impressive Hasbro/Kenner Star Wars toys available.  It’s packed with play features and electronics, and looks amazing just standing there on the floor/shelf/table/ whatever.

It’s an all new sculpt.  One might complain that the head is still disproportionately large when compared to the body, and also somewhat misshapen when compared to the movie model.  I agree.  But it’s a small concession.  The paint is relatively simple, but effective.  A few differently colored panels and some weathering break up the otherwise uniform gray that dominates the color palette.  The only other major stand out is a red tinted “windshield”, which give the AT-AT a kind of evil Cylon-like visage, if I may reference another sci-fi franchise.  There are two cheek cannons, which rotate 360 degrees vertically, and each fire a spring-loaded projectile.  The mechanism is pretty strong, so the missiles will go a reasonable distance.  There are two chin guns which are activated by manually pushing a lever (located on either side under the head) back and forth.  When doing so, the cannons light up red, and trigger some appropriate cannon-type noises, including the occasional “maximum firepower” sound.  This is all pretty cool.  I always liked the original vintage version, which had a button and caused the entire length of the cannon to light up (in a non screen accurate way).  However, this version is not only manual, but the red light is very weak, at least on my sample.

Open the cockpit with the flip-up top, and you reveal a detailed interior.  There are two seats at the front for pilots, as well as space for 4 other figures to stand.  Additionally, there is a clear plastic tactical screen, so that the brand new Vintage Collection “Not Veers AT-AT Commander” can plan his next move.  A button inside the cockpit activates a series of special effects sounds and voice clips, accompanied by a bright blue light which illuminates the tactical screen.

For the “neck”, Hasbro opted to cover a hard plastic “skeleton” with a soft rubbery piece, which gives the appearance of a flexible accordion-like tube.  This covering is a bit flimsy, and, at least on my sample, gets crinkled in places, which makes it look a little cheap.  I would have preferred a more solid flexible tube.  A cleverly hidden lever can be revealed at the top-front of the body, just above the neck.  The lever raises up, and has some neat, but basically frivolous guns that swivel on the sides.  The lever is T-shaped, and can be gripped to raise, lower, and swing the head back and forth.  I feel the lever is a little on the small side for adult hands, and probably would have been better had they left the swivel cannons off completely.  Nevertheless, the controller gives the head a good range of motion.  I think if there was the old-school automatic chin-gun activator button on this controller, it would have been more awesome.  There are 3 buttons on the top of the body which initiate a series of sound effects and voice clips, some of which can be played simultaneously. 

The body is huge.  Both sides open up with a DeLorean style door on top, and a drop down door on the bottom. The bottom doors can actually serve as platforms (they have foot pegs) when open, to extend the “play” area of the body interior.  There’s a bunch of features packed into this space.  First off, I’d say there’s plenty of room to comfortably display about 8 figures (maybe more), and then 4-6 additional on the opened lower doors.  There are railings, displays, consoles, ladders, and other fun stuff for figures to interact with.  There is a button which activates a whole slew of effects, including sounds of battle, dialogue, and a red interior alarm light.  Inside, near each doorway, is a harness/platform of sorts that can hold one or two figures.  The harness actually locks into a slot when stowed away.  A rope is connected to a pulley through an extendable arm, that allows you to raise or lower the harness which reaches all the way to the ground so you can deploy troops.  The mechanism is simple, and is something I wish was included in other toys, such as the rappelling rope on the back end of the Republic Gunships.  There is a hatch on the bottom of the body, which allows you to lower or raise a tow cable.  You lower the rope by pulling down on it, but it can be raised by simply holding down a button.  It’s a bit noisy, but it’s effective.  The cable (string) has a claw on the end which you can connect to a figure, such as, say, Luke, and then raise him up to reenact that scene in that movie where he does that thing with the cable under the AT-AT.

The back of the body has a hatch with pops down, revealing a compartment which is a garage of sorts for an included speederbike.  A button kicks a special platform out, and the speederbike “feet” lock tightly into slots to hold it in place.  The platform can be pushed back into the garage for bike storage.  There is room for maybe 2 figures in there with the bike, maybe another 2 - 4 without the bike.  For good measure, there are two small gunport hatches on either side of this garage, allowing a figure to check out the view, shoot stuff, or, well, get shot, I guess.

The legs move forward and back, although it takes some force to do this.  This is good, because I wouldn’t want the thing to be all floppy like the AT-TE was on it’s first release.  The joints are all tight.  The “hip” joints are solid, and pretty much can be rotated 90 degreed forward or back.  The “knee” joints go about 45 degree forward or back.  I didn’t realize this at first, but the feet do in fact swivel forward and back, also in a sturdy clicking/locking fashion. This allows for some pretty decent poseability.

According to the instructions, here are the phrases/sounds you can come up with by pushing the buttons. They seem to be mostly random. Perhaps it would be better if you could control the phrases, but this is a minor gripe to me.

Clone Trooper Phrases (Booo hasbro!  Clone Troopers???? Booo!)
All right men load your weapons.
Blizzard squadron objective completed.
Ground troops deployed, sir.
Range to target, one-seven decimal twenty-eight.
Preparing attack vectors.
Primary guns charged and ready.
Rebel base located.
Rebel forces in range.
Rebel forces spotted.
We’re taking heavy fire sir.

Imperial Officer Phrases
Forward deflectors ar gull power.
Lauch speeder bike recon patrol.
Rebel snowspeeder squadron approaching on your flank.
Red light.
Target the Rebel scum.
Troops standing by for deployement.

Darth Vader Phrases
Don’t fail me.
Don’t let Skywalker escape.
That’s it, the Rebels are there. And Skywalker is there with them.
The Rebels are alerted to our presence.

General Veers Phrases
All trops will debark for ground assault.
Distance to power generators.
I’ve reached the main power generators.
Prepare to target the main generator.
Target, maximum firepower.
The shield will be down in moments.
You may start your landing.

Some Additional sounds
Guns, missiles, cannons
AT-AT walking sounds
speederbike launch
snowspeeder flybys

It comes with a Speederbike, which is painted in snow colors, but has the great “new” sculpt with awesome handlebars.  This sculpt was used once before during the first Saga collection in about 2002 or 2003, but not seen since.  My gripe is that parts of the vehicle body are made of rubbery plastic, which cheapens it, and can make it bendy if you store it incorrectly.  Additionally, it is weighted in such a way that without a figure on it, it leans forward.  Meh!.  Also included is an older sculpt AT-AT driver.  His articulation leaves something to be desired, especially when compared to the recently released Legacy Collection version.  Hey, whatever it takes to keep the cost of this bad boy down to $100, I’m probably okay with it.

Anyway, seriously, this toy is freakin’ phenomenal.  I have some minor gripes, which I think, if addressed, would make this toy nearly perfect.  I also feel that as a toy, the AT-AT suffers from its design in that making it “walk” is not an easy thing to do.  I think I even remember the original Kenner commercials showed two kids working together to move the legs in such a way so it could walk.  I don’t know about you guys, but I tried to stay away from other kids as much as possible, and letting some other kid get their grubby paws on my AT-AT wasn’t an option!  I haven’t changed much as an adult.  Meh, whaddya gonna do?  I suppose at some point down the line, it might be possible to have an AT-AT with legs that can move automatically, but that seems unlikely.

Get this AT-AT as soon as possible!!  The MSRP of about $100 makes it a great bargain, even when compared to other recent large vehicles like the Falcon, AT-TE, and Republic Clone Tank.

I would like to give a very special thank you, on behalf of Bantha Skull, to the great folks at HunterPR, who provided this sample for our website so that I could have one to snuggle with at night.

9/10 Bantha Skulls