Miniatures for Rifts: An Inexpensive Solution

For a long time, I've wished that I could use miniatures for Rifts. Unfortunately, the only official Rifts miniatures are old school style... pewter, unpainted, and expensive (in price and also in shipping because of their weight). Alas, D&D Miniatures have spoiled me... now I want all of my minis to be lightweight and pre-painted.

Looking over the eFuture Tiles the other day got me thinking again about using minis for Rifts. I figured that if I could find replacements for Coalition soldiers, I would at least have the most common opponent taken care of and the rest would fall in line later. I was thinking about how storm troopers would make decent replacements if I painted them black, and then I struck gold. When I looked online for storm trooper miniatures, I found these:

 

While they aren't traditional dead boys, they'll do in a pinch. The fact that I won't have to paint them is just icing on the cake. And while I was at it, I also found a ton of other Star Wars miniatures that could be used as D-Bees, borgs, headhunters, and other random NPCs.