Polish bootleg industry is full of mysteries and riddles, still waiting for being solved. One of them is unart At-St Driver.
As we know, a sub-series of 10 unart items - in contrary to Kenner-shaped sub-series of 17 - has been copied directly from movable figures of Elektrospółdzielnia series. The latter was produced with three kinds of limbs, originated from Kenner's Scout, TIE Pilot and At-At Driver. Some movables were made in two limb versions. The makers of unart copies had to make a decission, which limb version will be the matrice. Or maybe they did bootlegs of what they actually got in hands? However, they used two of three limb versions in their production: we have today 2 unarts with Pilot limbs, Prune Face and Nien Nunb. There was not much choice there: in movable version both were produced that way, with totaly unique digits of Nunb with Scout limbs. But we have also 8 unarts with Scout limbs, some of them having double-version limb variants in the movable origin: Biker Scout (own limbs as movable), Fett (BS), Snowtrooper (BS), Rebel Hoth (BS), Luke Pilot (BS), Lando General (BS, unique TIE), Imperial Gunner (BS, TIE), At-St Driver (TIE, possibly unique BS). As we can see, the dilemma could appear in the case of Gunner, which was made as movable in equally numbered two versions. The makers used the BS limbed figure as a model here.
But what about At-St Driver? The Elektrospółdzielnia figure was made virtually ONLY with TIE pilot limbs:
Though we have two limb versions of this figure in the later generations, I don't know a trustworthy source showing the first generation BS limbs At-St Driver movable figure. I made one myself, as a custom, using black limbs from Elektrospółdzilenia TIE Pilot (which, ironicaly, had only BS limb version!), to create a possible outfit of such model for At-St unarts:
This would possibly be the father of figures traditionally made in the whole palette of colors:
To be honest, I don't remember them from the shops when I was a kid, in the middle 80's. But of course it could be just a normal situation those times. However, we may put three thesis here:
1. There was a number of unique first gen At-St Drivers made by Elektrospółdzielnia and luckily one of them dropped in hands of unart series makers.
UPDATE 11.2015! GOT HIM! The unique, original, first generation At-St Driver with BS limbs has appeared todayComes from original set from the 80's, right from the first owner's hands:
2. The change of movable figure's generation appeared earlier than we assume, maybe before 1989, and the unart was made from the very first examples of them.
3. The unart At-St was made in the new epoque, 1990's, from the normally available 2nd gen movables.
We may assume, the whole series of 10 unarts were started in the same time, and I remember I saw an unart Fett from about 1988-9. Maybe the case of At-St Driver would make us rethink the time context of the whole series, maybe it was really a late production, not linked with the 17 Kenner-shaped unarts available in shops already in 1985 (and maybe even before)... Please write me if anyone has a TRUE, proved first gen movable At-St in his collection!
Jakub
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Originally Posted by Leonidas280
