Though never seen in any Star Wars movie, white speeder bikes always seemed appropriate for Scout Troopers, perfectly matching their armor. One could almost imagine them patrolling a cold, icy planet like Hoth. This build by James Shields gives us a visual delight as it seems quite simply a natural color for them to be in.
A tiny build at only 44 parts, yet with amazing detail, if you like them as much as I do, get your bricks out and start building because instructions and parts can be found over at Rebrickable (also available as a PDF for non LDraw users).
You’re right, the white looks really good.
Seems odd to come up with a design where the steering vanes have the ability to be canted to the correct orientation, and then not do so.
Also, I could be misremembering things, but I thought at least one white speederbike was added to the Battle of Hoth scenes for either the theatrical release of the Special Edition, or one of the two DVD releases of the same.
@Purple Dave: I’m confident you’ll enjoy reading this article.
It took some time hunting around the page, but I did eventually find the link to the David Sedaris article. Interesting. Not the best thing I’ve ever read, but worth a few minutes.
I’m not sure what I’m thinking of, but I did just scan through the Hoth battle on the 2006 DVD, and while I can find two instances of an AT-ST, I can’t spot any speederbikes, white or otherwise. Maybe it was a piece of concept art, maybe I’m thinking of the 4483 set, or maybe it was an episode of Clone Wars or something, but I’ve got this hazy sort of image in my brain where I can see a couple of AT-ATs, an AT-ST, and one or two Snowtroopers riding speederbikes.
Now, as for the steering vanes, in the movie they did move around a bit, but the default position, and the one seen on pretty much every official toy, had them canted over where they formed something close to a 90⁰ angle with each other. And yet, it seems that the vast majority of MOCs that I’ve seen have them set close to vertical. I don’t recall them being able to open up quite that much so it feels kinda like seeing a string of Millennium Falcon MOCs get posted where the quad-cannons always have six barrels. Sure, I’ve seen MOCs where the design just doesn’t allow the angle to be adjusted, but I’ve also seen a lot where it looks like it does but they’re still nearly vertical. Other than that, it’s one of the better designs I can recall seeing in that scale, and factoring in the significant limitations that a minifigure puts on what you can get away with.
@Purple Dave, you’re right, I should have angled the vanes more I will update at some point.
You’re also right that the speeders are never seen in the movie. And the AT-STs were in the original, not digitally added. There are various semi-canon sources suggesting speeders used were on Hoth, and there’s art in some of the DK reference books. The image towards the bottom of this page is used a few times:
http://www.jeditemplearchives.com/content/modules.php?name=JReviews&rop=showcontent&id=392
And just to make a minor correction to the article, there are 44 unique elements, but actually 73 parts in total.
The AT-ST is so strongly associated with Ep6, as the AT-AT is with Ep5, that it’s easy to forget that both vehicles made appearances in both movies. I’m doing a side-by-side of the 2006 DVD vs the 2006 “bonus disc” that contains the original theatrical cut. I can only find a couple instances of an AT-ST in Ep5, but they do match up between the two versions.
00:30:12/00:30:22SE right before Veers tells a Snowtrooper to debark, and the AT-AT drivers to prepare to target the main generator.
00:32:45/00:32:55SE right after Luke’s grenade blows up inside the AT-AT, as he’s lifting his head up from the snow.
I may have seen that image before (I may have even bought that pack, since the speederbike is my absolute favorite Imperial craft), but that’s not what I’m thinking of. Everything was headed to the left, the speederbike(s) were much less prominent, and there were at least two AT-ATs and one AT-ST. Maybe it exists, or maybe it’s just my imagination.