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When Return of the Jedi left theaters in 1983, it also left Kenner’s massively popular Star Wars toyline with an expiration date. Without new media to support the line and inspire new, viable characters, it was a matter of time until retail and consumer interest faded. Kenner did a laudable job milking Return of the Jedi, covering each of the film’s major setpieces with variants on the film’s protagonists and deep rosters of Ewoks, rebel troops, and Jabba’s Palace goons.
By 1985, it was apparent that the end was near. Kenner’s Power of the Force line was sparsely ordered by retail partners; their tie-in lines for the Ewoks and Droids cartoons were doomed by the series’ lukewarm reception before the toys even hit shelves. However, the cartoon lines weren’t Kenner’s last hope. There was another: The Epic Continues, a new line of characters, playsets, and vehicles based off of an original story from Kenner’s design team, set in the aftermath of Return of the Jedi. The plot would have incorporated Ben Kenobi’s mention of the “Clone Wars,” alongside the return of a classic original trilogy villain and new characters like the “Mongo Beefhead Tribesmen” of Tatooine. Read on to see how it all would have fit together.
Kenner’s Own Episode VII: The Proposed Story of The Epic Continues
The dramatic, opening text crawl-esque introduction to Kenner’s portfolio brief on The Epic Continues does an admirable job setting the stage:
“A powerful force long kept in exile in a remote fringe of the galaxy has been released by the death of the Emperor. It moves now, like a plague, securing control over the shattered remnants of the empire and re-enslaving newly freed worlds. Atha Prime, genetics master, ruler of the dark worlds and architect of the Clone Wars, is free again. His advanced army of combat clones has already decimated rebel outposts along the galactic frontier. His goal is to crush forever the Rebel Alliance and control the Galaxy.”
Atha Prime and his Clone Warriors were conceived as the central antagonists of The Epic Continues, though they would be battling for control of the galaxy against Imperial Remnants led by Grand Moff Tarkin. Yes, Kenner would have revealed that the commander of the Death Star survived the battle station’s destruction and went into hiding, plotting his next move until Emperor Palpatine’s demise and the Empire’s downfall.
Tarkin would have been aided by a force of “Imperial Attack Droids,” conceptualized through kit-bashed amalgams of various Kenner droid figures like IG-88 and 2-1B. Atha Prime had a droid of his own, a “pilot and confidant” designated Blue-Four. A proposed all-new sculpt, Blue-Four is seen only in concept art.
The heroes are severely outnumbered in this initial proposal, as only three “Rebel” figures were designed: new costumes for Luke Skywalker and Han Solo, and an army-builder ally, the Mongo Beefhead Tribesmen, described by Kenner as a “friendly native group from the planet Tatooine. Members of the Rebel Alliance.” R2-D2 and C-3PO appear in much of the concept art for potential vehicles, suggesting they would also have been reissued as part of the line.
The Battle of Tatooine? What Playsets & Vehicles Tell Us About Kenner’s Story
Outside of Atha Prime and his clone army, the details of the story for The Epic Continues are a little sketchy. We don’t know how Tarkin and the Imperial Remnants would have fit in, nor what role Tatooine was to have played in the story – though it looks to have been significant.
Several of the Rebel vehicles conceived for the line were outfitted for the desert world, including a modified Snowspeeder known as the “Armored Sandspeeder,” colored a sandy orange and refitted with new weaponry. Also redesigned was Luke’s Landspeeder, with two versions shown. The first was the “XP-36” Landspeeder, a “modified high performance, lightly armored Land Speeder,” with a prototype made built off the existing Kenner Landspeeder vehicle. A concept sketch was also made for the more advanced “XP-38” Landspeeder.
Concept sketches were also rendered for a Rebel Blockade Runner, a T-16 Skyhopper, and a Bantha. As with Tarkin, this demonstrates Kenner incorporating existing designs from the original trilogy that hadn’t made the cut for their 1978-1985 line into the plans for The Epic Continues.
The villain factions had their own share of vehicles, with Tarkin commanding a force of “AT-ICs,” (All-Terrain Ion Cannons) modified AT-AT walkers with ion cannons mounted atop the body. Like the XP-36 Landspeeder and the Armored Sandspeeder, a proof-of-concept prototype was produced using the existing Kenner AT-AT and the Ion Cannon from the Death Star playset. A design for Atha Prime’s command ship, the Annilhilator, was sketched. Also designed were TIE fighter-like single person craft for Atha Prime’s Clone Warriors, the “Apex Invader” fighters.
Why Lucasfilm Passed on Kenner’s The Epic Continues
The figures and vehicles of The Epic Continues were designed by a team of Kenner employees including Tim Effler and Mark Boudreaux, who had previously spearheaded Kenner’s “Mini-Rig” initiative during the Empire Strikes Back toyline. Like The Epic Continues, the mini-rig vehicles were original Kenner concepts, intended to keep new product on shelves after they had exhausted the vehicles seen on-screen in the films. This explains the emphasis on new vehicles in the concept art and prototypes for The Epic Continues, as this would have been what Effler, Boudreaux, and the rest of the design team were familiar and comfortable with doing.
The designs were shared with Lucasfilm in a pitch meeting, who declined to sign off on the line. In a 1995 interview with Star Wars Galaxy magazine, Boudreaux explained that “They were very complimentary. They said that the new characters and vehicles were all very ‘Star Wars-esque’ and that they really appreciated the fact that we wanted to keep this going, but they were just not ready to pursue that kind of thing.”
Kenner elected to move away from new Star Wars product for 1986, and the line ended with the last of the Droids and Power of the Force offerings, with these tail-end items becoming some of the rarest Star Wars toys ever produced. This leaves The Epic Continues as a strange footnote in Star Wars history, another scenario for a post-Return of the Jedi scenario designed in a vacuum from George Lucas and Lucasfilm. Ultimately, Lucasfilm would go ahead with its own expanded universe sequels in 1991 with Timothy Zahn’s landmark Heir to the Empire.
Several ideas from The Epic Continues crept into the Expanded Universe, with Atha Prime inspiring the Imperial Sentinels from the Dark Empire comic series, and several of the Kenner design team’s vehicles cannonized in the 1995 short story “The Battle of Cadinth,” published in the same Star Wars Galaxy issue that first exposed many fans to these unique, bizarre designs.
Would you have wanted to see Kenner’s concept brought to life? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the Forum!
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